5 Reasons Your Scale is Stuck

There are so many pitalls to dieting, and you may not even know you are making any mistakes! You can read on for these tips to stop undermining your diet, and get that scale to budge!

1. You celebrate your workouts with food. If you have just finished your workout, do you go home and grab an apple? Or do you just feel so amazing that you aren't hungry? Or do you overeat at dinner? If you do ramp it up at dinner after your work out, you are not alone. Following an intense workout, many women are prone to eating up to 120 more calories than they would have following a less intense workout, even though they burned about the same amount of calories working out. The way to avoid this is to stash healthy snacks into your gym bag and your car to stave off hunger so that you don't overdo it at the next meal. A bag of low-fat granola, an energy bar, an apple, or some trail mix would do the trick.
2. You don't count calories. You may think you are super-vigilant with your portion sizes, but mindless eating, like tasting your food while you cook, or finishing your kid's sandwich can derail your diet big time. The best way to get in the habit from my experience is to create an online account that tracks your foods, like a food diary. If you have a phone with internet access you can log your meals while you're out, or you can log it all at the end of the night. If you don't think you can remember every morsel you ate all day, buy a small journal and write it down after you eat. Then you can log it online that night. Most sites that log your food have built in calorie counts, so that you don't have to spend a lot of time looking things up. Or you can get an old fashioned book and look up different foods and write them all down. It really will stop you from eating that brownie when you have to write it down later on.
3. You work late. Women that work more than 40 hours a week are more likely to gain weight than their part-time counterparts, due to many reasons. Being too busy or tired to cook dinner, not eating breakfast and bingeing at lunch, not enough time to get to the grocery store, off too late to get to the gym…the list goes on and on. You might be making more money, but your health and weight are taking a beating. Take a break during the day to walk around the office or parking lot. Insist on one night a week of time for yourself, so that you can go to the grocery store, meet with your trainer, etc.
4. You shop for groceries when you're hungry. When you hit the aisles of the grocery store with a rumbling stomach, you are more likely to fill the basket up with junk and food that you want RIGHT NOW. Stay away from impulse buys by shopping the perimeter of the store…what I call Peripheral Shopping. The outside edges of the store have the meats, dairy, and vegetables. Things that cannot be shelved because they are not loaded with preservatives, or frozen. Or order your groceries online and have them delivered. You can control what you are ordering and reserach the nutritional contents from the comfort of your own home, and you don't have to take the time to go to the store and spend an hour.
5. You're an Emailer. Instead of walking over to tell a co-worker something you IM her or send an email. Or instead of catching up with your girlfriends on a long walk, you just put all that's going on in your life in an email. Get away from the desk! Try to add as much physical activity to your day as you can. Walk the mail to the mailbox instead of tossing it to the Mail Boy. Open the heavy glass door at the store instead of going through the automatic doors. Take the stairs instead of the elevator. Sit on an exercise ball at your desk instead of a chair.

More to come…

Be eXcellent! Ms. X

Hollywood Personal Trainer