Five Greatest Fat Loss Mistakes

If you want to continue to screw up your fat loss program, look closely at the following five fat loss mistakes. These are common mistakes people make every day. Fix these and you'll get back on a successful fat loss program right away:

1)Not adhering to a preplanned, structured program. This refers to both your exercise and your nutritional program:

Your fitness plan should have short term and long term goals. You should check shopping lists and meal lists to make sure you are adhering to your nutritional plan. Lack of adherence is the number one reason dieters fail, especially on a long term basis.

Workouts should be written a couple of weeks in advance. Before each workout you should carefully examine the upcoming session and make last minute changes. Then, stick with it and see it through.

2) Not using social support.

Trying to lose fat by yourself is the wrong way to go. Most people have a minimum of a partner, workmates, family and maybe a trainer to back them up when things get tough. Research has proven you'll have greater fat loss if you work with a health professional and a workout partner. Get these two people behind you first, then work in the rest.

3)Never changing your workout or dietary plan.

Four weeks is the longest you should go without altering your workout plan. At about 4 weeks, your body will enter an adaptation phase where results decrease, then plateau.
Changing your exercise program every 4 weeks will prevent these plateaus and allow your body to continue to show increased fat loss and workout results.

When your body goes on a low calorie diet, it reacts by reducing your metabolic rate. Some of this can be avoided by adding high intensity exercise or weight training to your routine. Changing your diet "fools" the brain into thinking it is not in starvation mode. A diet change every 3-4 four weeks can stimulate fat loss also.

4) Never quits.

Continuing to add exercises (especially cardio) to your routine will result in overtraining. Again, your body make certain adaptations for overtraining which include reduced metabolic rate, less calories burned, decreased athletic performance, injury and susceptibility to illness.

If you tend to overtrain, work on negating the more is better attitude and focus on shorter quality workouts with plenty of recovery time between sessions.

When it comes to fitness and fat loss, less is often more.

5)Not understanding that nutrition is more responsible for your results than exercise.

If you want to lose fat, you have to eat right foods to lose fat. In other words, you can't train like a Neanderthal and then eat junkfood and expect to lose fat. It won't happen. Nutrition beats training everytime. Tweak your diet right now. Eat fiber, protein, fresh vegetables, healthy fats and low glycemic carbs. Drink lot's of water and green tea. That's just a start.

Most of the general public makes many of the above five fat loss mistakes. They are common mistakes and unfortunately make up the building blocks for designing a successful nutritional and fitness program with fat loss as a goal. Fix these five mistakes and you'll notice more fat loss every day.

Dr. Lanny Schaffer is an Exercise Physiologist and the President of International Fitness Academy. For more savvy fitness and weight loss facts go to http://www.aerobic-exercise-coach.com