6 Habits That Hinder Weight Loss

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Full Episode Transcript:

6 Habits That Hinder Weight Loss

Do you feel like you’re putting in the effort but not seeing the weight loss results you want? It might be because of habits secretly hindering your progress. Join me in this episode as I unveil the habits that could be sabotaging your weight loss journey.

My mission in this episode is to help you become aware of these habits that may be hindering your weight loss progress and preventing you from getting the results you want.

Because without awareness, it’s going to be impossible to correct them.

And speaking of weight loss success, I’m hosting a free live event where I’m teaching you how to lose weight in a very doable, lasting way.

This workshop is going to be transformative for you, especially if you feel like you’ve tried a lot of things that either felt overwhelming, or you felt like you couldn’t stick to the changes long enough to lose the weight you wanted to, or you lost weight, but then gained it back.

And in the workshop, I’m helping you with practical strategies that are so doable even on those super busy days or those days where you just feel like your energy levels are practically nonexistent.

The workshop is on Thursday February 1st at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. A replay will be made available, but only if you’re signed up for the workshop and cannot make it.

You will get so much more out of it if you can actually make it live, because let’s face it how many times do you actually go back and watch a replay, but I do have a replay that will be sent to you if you reserve your seat and really can’t make it.

All you have to do is grab your free spot here: https://katemjohnston.com/weightloss-workshop

Alright, let’s dive into habits that hinder weight loss. I’ve broken this up into behavior habits and thought habits.

So the very first behavior habit that hinders weight loss is mindless eating. Mindless eating is truly an eating habit, meaning you are automatically grabbing the food and putting it in your mouth and chewing without really being completely aware of it. It is so automatic and that’s what makes this this truly a habit.

The reason why mindless eating interferes with weight loss, is because you end up overeating. You’re unable to have awareness of when you’ve had enough. When you’ve had enough means when those hunger signals have gone away.

So even if you aren’t reaching into a bag or a box and have served yourself a portion, you may be overeating with that portion. You may be eating when you’re not actually hungry anymore. And that’s just because of that automatic behavior habit of reaching into the bag and putting the food in your mouth.

A simple solution to this is, no multitasking. When you eat, you eat. When you work, you work. When you read, you read. Etcetera. It

The next habit that hinders weight loss that is a behavioral habit is being sedentary. Humans are a lot more sedentary than we used to be, even just 100 years ago. We are also eating a lot more than we used to, even just 50 years ago.

Therefore, even if you’ve decreased the amount of food you’re eating in order to lose weight, if you still have a habit of being sedentary, you will hinder your weight loss progress.

Even just getting up every hour while you’re working just to walk across the building, is going to be really helpful. Or going for a 20 to 30 minute walk. You don’t have to go and workout intensely at the gym for an hour and a half. You just need to get up and get your body moving.

Another behavioral habit that hinders weight loss is not drinking enough fluids. Because we’re so focused on our work and the other things that we’re doing throughout the day, it is easy to forget about drinking fluids.

Here’s something to think about. If you are dehydrated, you’ll actually have more hunger signals, which will make weight loss difficult.

Also, your body needs water for effective metabolism. Water is needed to assist with transportation and absorption of nutrients from the food, as well as helping with the release of energy from carbohydrates, fat and protein.

Next up for behavior habits that hinder weight loss, is a habit of not getting enough quality sleep. Your body needs sleep to live and function well, but one of the ways that poor sleep can hinder weight loss is that you can actually feel more hungry during the day if you didn’t sleep well the night before.

Additionally, when you eat, the signals you would normally get that you’ve had enough to eat are lessened. So you might end up overeating more often due to those two things.

Now one night of poor sleep isn’t going to be that big of a deal as far as a hindrance to weight loss, however if you have a habit of not getting good sleep, this is when it can really hinder weight loss progress.

OK, let’s move on to thought habits. There are lots of thought habits that hinder weight loss, but I’m going to keep it simple and just give you a few common ones. You may have not necessarily had these specific thoughts, but probably something similar.

So thinking you’ll just gain the weight back. This is not a thought that you’re necessarily intentionally having, but it can absolutely be a thought habit. Something that automatically pops up frequently for you in sneaky ways.

This thought commonly pops up if you’ve lost weight and gained it back in the past period your brain will use that as evidence that you will always gain the weight back.

This is just the way our human brains work and it all goes back to survival. Your brain just tries to keep you safe by keeping you exactly the same, and that means that it doesn’t want you to attempt weight loss again. So sometimes it will do everything possible to discourage you.

And this includes thinking things that ultimately affect your results.

So when you think something like you’ll just gain the weight back, this will make you feel negatively.

And again, you might not be thinking this thought intentionally, but if it is floating around in your head in the background, especially frequently, you’re going to have an underlying negative emotion. And then this emotion will affect your behaviors.

You may not be putting in as full effort as you could be. You may be even sabotaging yourself, sometimes without even knowing it. You may be eating in response to feeling that negative emotion, which certainly isn’t going to help you lose weight.

So, when your behaviors are affected by that negative feeling, that negative emotion, your results are going to be affected as well.

Another example of a thought habit that hinders weight loss is that weight loss is hard. Again, if you had an experience before where you making too drastic of changes like severe calorie restriction or going from not exercising to exercising 2 hours a day, you’re going to feel like weight loss is hard.

So, then your brain will take that experience and run with it and keep telling you that weight loss is hard. Because again, your brain wants to keep you exactly the same. It thinks that it’s keeping you safe by doing so.

So, thinking weight loss is hard will cause some sort of a negative emotion. That negative emotion will sort of be like a block. It will make weight loss actually feel hard when it doesn’t need to be hard or feel hard.

When I lost weight and kept it off, I didn’t feel like it was hard. That’s because I did it in a way that made it not feel hard, which I will be teaching you at this weight loss you can do workshop, but also I had the thought that this was going to be kind of fun.

For me that thought really worked well, because since I had that thought, I was not having the thought that it’s going to be hard. But a different thought might work better for you. Something like “weight loss can be easy” or “weight loss can be really simple.”

Okay, so I’ve given you four behavior habits that hinder weight loss and also two common thought habits that hinder weight loss.

So with this episode, I’ve given you a little taste of what’s in store, but the real magic happens at the ‘Weight Loss You Can Do’ workshop. Sign up now for actionable strategies and a roadmap to create lasting weight loss habits.

Sign up with the link in the episode description. You can also sign up right on my website katemjohnston.com.

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