6 Quick Weight Loss Tips to
Tip the Scale in Your Favor By Denis Faye
From Team Beachbody - Click here for resources, tools and
information to help you to reach your health, fitness and positive lifestyle
goals!
The annals of Team Beachbody are filled with
success
stories, which is probably why you buy our products. But what happens when,
no matter how hard you Push Play, and how fascist you get with what you put in
your mouth, that scale just won't budge? Usually, you get mad, you swear, you
throw the scale at the television, then settle down for a tub of Ben &
Jerry's and a good cry. Well, dry your eyes, little darlin'. Odds are you can
solve the problem easily. Following one of these six quick weight loss tips
should earn you a ticket on the Tony Horton train to Fitsville.
- You Aren't Losing Weight
 The problem: When
you exercise, you gain muscle, which weighs more than fat. If you're really
getting a lot out of an exercise regimen, oftentimes, the first four or five
weeks will find you losing fat and gaining muscle at a similar clip, so it
appears you're not losing.
The solution: Use
a tape measure to chart progress. That will give you a truer representationand
remember, muscle gain levels out quickly. The change is probably right around
the corner.
- You're Eating
the Wrong Things
 The problem:
Especially in this shove-it-down-your-throat consumer society, knowing the
right way of eating the right things is tricky. There are lots of foods that
are supposed to be good for you, yet actually work against you if you're trying
to lose weight. The classic example is fruit juice. Great stuff, full of
vitamins, but also devoid of fiber, so drinking a glass is basically a couple
hundred calories of sugar water from a weight loss perspective.
Another example is peanut butter.
Fats are highly caloric, meaning a little goes a long way and a lot goes too
far. When the nutrition facts say a tablespoon is 100 calories, that means one
flush tablespoon. Any amount of heaping can quickly double, triple, or
quadruple the calories.
The solution: Go
through your diet with a fine-tooth comb, questioning anything that's not whole
fresh produce, whole grains, or lean protein. If you need help, pop over to the
Beachbody.com Message Boards and ask the Advice Staff.
- The Daily
Cheat
 The problem: This is sort of a subset
of the above dilemma. You eat like a monk all day, but you tell yourself you
deserve one daily reward. A candy bar, a Coke, chocolate, a bag of chipsmaybe
even something that doesn't start with the letter "C." As far as we're
concerned, you deserve anything your heart desires, but will that help you lose
weight? No. It doesn't seem like much, but that daily cheat can cause all kinds
of problems. It can cause a sugar spike. It can send your fat percentage
through the roof. It might just be those extra 300 calories that are holding
you back.
The solution:
Treat yourself once a week instead.
- You're Not
Eating Enough
 The problem: I know, I
know, logic dictates that if you eat less, you lose weight, but it doesn't
always work that way. In general, the body wants to have more fat than you want
it to have. Fat is an emergency fuel source and it protects the vital organs.
While your brain thinks in the 21st century, your body still thinks in caveman
terms. If you don't eat enough and you're under stress (such as from exercise),
the body can panic, fearing famine or drought. It conserves energy (or fat) and
gives you less juice to do what you do throughout the day.
The solution:
Bump your diet up in healthy 300-calorie increments until you start
losing again. When you plateau, bump up again. Another trick is to zigzag,
eating 1,200 calories one day and 2,000 the next, so your body thinks it's
getting more than it really is.
- You're Overtraining
 The problem: People
tend to think that the body can handle as much punishment as we can give it.
Won't happen. When you exercise,
you're actually breaking down your muscles. If you don't give them enough time
to recover, they just won't be able to do the work. You won't progress. What's
even worse is when you overtrain your cardiovascular system, you're tiring out
your heart muscles, which can lead to a chronic state where you're tired and
lethargic.
The solution:
Just do what the Beachbody program recommends. Take a day off each week. Take
recovery weeks seriously. Another thing you can do is take your resting heart
rate each morning. If it starts to go up even though you're working out, that
means you're overtraining, tired, and it's time for a recovery week.
 You're Not Exercising Enough
The problem: It's
possible to go through the motions on just about any workout video without
benefiting. Just showing up doesn't get the job done. Also, working out three
or four days a week is fine if you're only trying to maintain fitness, but odds
are it won't help you progress.
The solution.
Make sure to hit it five days a week, minimum. Six would be great. When you
exercise, make sure you're sweating. If you push yourself to a point where you
need to stop, that's okay. Stop and take a drink of water. Better to get
yourself to that point than to underperform. This might also be a good time to
try a heart monitor, to make sure it's getting up there. |
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