9 Nutrition Mistakes that Are Giving You More Weight!

Last Updated on April 4, 2021

We all want to maintain a healthy body weight and prevent obesity. But some of us feel an insane urge to lose those extra unwanted pounds as soon as they’ve put them on, and that’s when they start making mistakes.

The desire to stay healthy and fit can backfire when coupled with all the misinformation one keeps reading on the internet. We’re likely making several diet mistakes without even realizing it, like eating the wrong things that we believe to be beneficial or any other habit that we’ve originally adopted to help us lose weight while all it does is make us fat instead.

To avoid the most common nutrition mistakes that are making you gain weight instead of losing it, check out the following list and see if you’re guilty of making some of them too!

9. Assuming that all calories are equal

If you think that all calories are equal, then your calorie counter must be delivering all kinds of wrong results. Actually, there are bad and good calories. For example, the calories that enter your body from eating veggies are beneficial, while the calories you get after eating a juicy burger are not so good.

The reason why some calories can be good for you and others not is that the amount of insulin your body releases is based on the type of calories you ingest rather than how many calories you eat. That’s why sometimes you can eat just a small number of calories from the wrong food and end up dealing with some very unexpected extra pounds.

8. Consuming only low-fat or diet foods and drinks

It’s not always true that low-fat, processed, or diet foods are the perfect option, especially when you’re trying to lose weight. Actually, many of these seemingly healthy foods are usually filled with sugar to make them tastier and more appealing to people.

And that’s exactly why low-fat can make you feel even hungrier rather than make you feel full and satisfied. This is very bad because it’ll lead you to eat more than you should. A healthier alternative is to eat a mixture of nutritious and preferably unprocessed foods that can offer your body what it needs to function and keep your full longer at small portions.

7. Not eating enough protein

To meet your weight loss goals, you need to eat enough protein, which is a crucial nutrient. In fact, a high protein diet has a positive effect on multiple weight-regulating hormones, plus, it reduces appetite, prevents cravings, and boosts metabolism.

What’s more, eating enough protein every day can also help protect your muscle mass while you’re losing weight. According to research, having a diet that consists of around 0.8 grams of protein per lb can improve not only appetite control but also overall body composition.

6. Having a low fiber diet

If your meal contains enough fiber, it’ll fill your belly up more quickly and thus help reduce your appetite. Fiber is also good for weight loss since it keeps the body from absorbing too many calories from the foods you’re eating.

According to studies, increasing your fiber intake per day can lead your body to absorb up to one hundred and thirty fewer calories.
To include more fiber in your diet, you can simply start making some small adjustments, such as replacing white bread, rice, and pasta with their brown whole-grain varieties.

5. Eating when you aren’t hungry

If you’re trying to lose weight, then you must have certainly been recommended to start eating small portions of what you normally eat and to increase the number of your daily meals from three to five or six. But this popular weight-loss method can easily end up being a total failure.

In fact, the best way to lose weight is to eat only when you feel hungry, even if it’s just two times a day because having multiple small meals every day can lead you to consume way more calories than you should, thus messing up your weight loss plan.

4. Never skipping breakfast

During our tedious weight loss journey, we also keep hearing that we should never ever skip breakfast no matter what. But that’s a terrible mistake because we follow this piece of good advice blindly without even our appetite into consideration.

According to a recent study, people who skip the first meal of the day ate a greater number of calories at lunch, compared to those who didn’t skip breakfast. Nevertheless, when researchers counted the calories these people ate throughout the day, they discovered that they had consumed about four hundred fewer calories on average.

3. Drinking packaged fruit juice

Are packaged fruit juices healthy? Definitely not, especially for people who are trying to lose weight. If you truly want to shed off those extra pounds, you may have stopped downing soft drinks or any other sweetened beverages. However, there’s a chance that you’ve left packaged fruit juices out of your ban.

You need to know that even those 100% fruit juices are filled with enough sugar to make your weight loss efforts instantly go to waste. To give you a clear idea, you may end up consuming more than 35g of sugar while enjoying as little as twelve ounces of unsweetened fruit juice. It’s best to avoid all kinds of packaged fruit juices for better and visible weight loss results.

2. Not eating whole foods

Highly processed foods are the very worst enemies of any weight loss plan. They can easily ruin your diet and make you gain weight instead of losing it.

According to studies, processed foods are a huge factor that continues to help increase the number of obese people.

If you really care about your health and well-being, your best option is to eat only whole foods and ditch all sorts of processed foods once and for all. Whole, unprocessed goodies can easily keep your body satisfied and nourished, in addition to helping you prevent overeating.

1. Failing to include fresh fruits in your diet

Having a diet that consists of very few to no fresh fruits can crash all your weight loss dreams and even make you gain more pounds, especially if you usually have large meals during the day.

While all fruits are nutritious and highly beneficial, the best fruits for weight loss include grapefruits, apples, pears, and watermelons.
When buying fruits, make sure to pick only the amount you’ll actually be able to eat while still fresh and avoid loading your fridge unnecessarily so you won’t end up eating more than you should.

Tell us the truth, were you guilty of making some of these mistakes? Leave a comment if you feel like sharing your weight loss/gain experience and don’t hesitate to share this article with people you know.