Losing weight in a healthy and sustainable manner requires a holistic focus on bringing lifestyle changes by inculcating healthy eating, sleeping, and dietary patterns in daily routines.

Losing weight is one thing but losing the inches in a healthy and sustainable manner is a different process altogether. Many times, in our enthusiasm to lose weight quickly we fall for fad diets, adopt extreme calorie deficits or worse resort to using supplements and steroids. These might help you to take some kg off the body quickly but surely the results won’t be sustainable in the long run.

To lose weight and manage it in a holistic manner, one can’t skip the importance of adopting wholesome practices such as making lifestyle changes, altering food preferences, and modifying sleeping patterns. Importantly, there are certain things that you must avoid if you’re up for weight loss and here’s the list of our top picks:

1) Going Fat-Free

A fat-free diet might sound tempting for weight watchers but sadly it’s among the most common mistakes that people commit in their weight loss journey. Fat, along with carbohydrates and protein, is counted among the macronutrients that are required by our body for its proper functioning. In addition, fat is required by our body to absorb a range of vitamins and minerals including vitamins A, K, and D among others. Now you can easily imagine in the case of a completely fat-free diet, you’ll deprive yourself not only of energy but also of essential vitamins and micronutrients. In addition, fat-free diets are often high in sugar and make you hungry again quite quickly, thereby leading to the consumption of more calories than required by the body.

2) Gluten-Free Diet

Gluten-free diet helps to alleviate the symptoms of celiac disease although no scientific evidence proves that food free from Gluten is helpful in weight loss. In fact, marketers have exploited the craze by launching a range of snacks, cakes, and chocolate bar options which are although gluten-free but come loaded with excess sugar and salt. These products have a high glycemic index and cause an instant spike in the blood sugar level in the body. Further, these products are full of artificial sweeteners, preservatives, and colourants – all of which come together to make these gluten-free products a strict no for weight watchers.

3) Extreme Starvation

Not only damaging to the physical well-being but depriving your body through starvation can also lead to mental anxiety and disordered eating behaviour in human beings. The method is not sustainable for weight loss and if adopted over a period of time, it could lead to serious issues such as anorexia nervosa, fear of food choices, and psychological issues among others. Extreme starvation can also lead to a permanent change in the digestive system, slow down your metabolism, and lead to a loss of energy, thereby hampering your ability to perform well in daily routine tasks – both physically and mentally.

4) Lack of Balanced Diets

A balanced diet comprises both macronutrient and micronutrient components distributed in well-classified proportions. While macronutrients act as fuel to the body, micronutrients are essential to the healthy development of the body and the prevention of diseases for achieving the overall well-being of the body and mind. Many people tend to avoid carbs in their quest to lose weight although restricting the intake of this important macronutrient can lead to a severe lack of energy, headache, and fatigue along with a host of other issues. Remember, there is no shortcut to weight loss and if you want to sustain a healthy weight for a lifetime, you can’t do away with a well-balanced diet.

5) Unrealistic Expectations

Setting over-ambitious goals such as losing 10% of weight in a week are likely to work against you. We agree that challenging targets motivate and inspire but keep in mind that the burden of expectations must not bog you down. It has been found in studies that missing weight loss targets can lead to dissatisfaction and make it difficult for people to stick to their commitment. Rather, it would be wise if you set doable targets such as losing 1-2 kg of body weight in a fortnight or so. This will help you to achieve your goal and keep you motivated to achieve even more impressive results in the time to come.

It is important to understand that everything worthwhile in life comes at a cost. There is no shortcut to success and the same applies to the weight loss journey. The challenge here is not to drift to one or another extreme and rather strike a middle path by making lifestyle changes and developing good eating patterns and sleeping habits. It’s only when all these things come together, that visibly sustainable results in the weight loss journey can be experienced by users.