Have you decided to lose weight in January? Avoid these mistakes!

January is always full of New Year's resolutions, most people want to lose weight, but people make a lot of mistakes. For example, they try to lose weight too fast and drastically reduce their calorie intake or cut out all carbohydrates completely. The results may be good at first, but then progress stops, motivation fades and the diet is over without the desired result. Let's take a look at some mistakes to avoid.

1. CUTTING YOUR CALORIES TOO QUICKLY

A common mistake that many dieters make is cutting calories and carbs too drastically right at the beginning of the diet. I get a lot of questions from people asking if it's a good idea to go on a ketogenic (keto) diet (which is an extremely low carb diet) to get lean. Honestly, cutting all carbs day to day is the last thing you want to do! Especially if you are an active person and not a person working in an office with no exercise.

Yes, a drastic drop in your carbs can lead to a big drop in body weight, but that drop will be short-lived. The problem with dieting is that your body is constantly fighting to prevent too much fat loss, because fat is a great energy store if times get tough and food is no longer plentiful. While this may have been a problem for our ancestors, it's not a real problem for most of us today.

So no matter how low your carb (and calorie) levels are, your body will eventually adapt to the new caloric intake. If you've cut out most or all of your carbs, your body will adapt to those low carb intakes and you won't have room to cut back further. So what are you going to do? Will you starve, eat air or just drink water? That's probably not going to work.

The real key in dieting is to eat as much as possible while still losing body fat. Then, when you get to the point where the fat loss stops, you make a small reduction in carbs or calories. That way you can continue to lose body fat.

I usually start with clients on a diet by setting their food really high, roughly only 200-500kcal below caloric maintenance. I use this number as the initial caloric intake of the diet. This gets my clients into a slight caloric deficit, which helps them start losing fat. I then vary the macronutrients so that in these calories they consume from their diet 2-2.5 grams of protein (all protein counted) per kilogram of body weight per day and about 0.5-1 gram of fat per kilogram. The remaining calories come from carbohydrates. Of course, I divide and round macros according to current employment, type of exercise, goals, etc.

I suggest you follow a similar process until you are still losing fat and only when you stagnate do you slightly reduce carbs or calories. Thus, each time a new level of fat loss is reached, reduce calories by about 200kcal (which may be 50g of carbs).

2. TOO LIGHT WEIGHTS IN THE GYM

Another misstep is training for fat loss that includes light weights and high repetition counts. This misconception is probably the result of thinking that a higher rep count means more work done, which will help you burn more calories. But it's not just about how much work you do, it's also about how the work you do affects your body and your metabolism.

Research confirms that using heavier weights in your workout leads to a higher metabolic rate post-workout compared to low weight. What does this mean? You burn more calories!

At the Norwegian University of Sport and Physical Education (Oslo), researchers analyzed multiple studies and concluded that training with heavier weights for fewer reps can produce a greater and more sustained rise in metabolic rate at rest (post-workout) than training with lighter weights for higher reps.

Heavier weights and fewer reps: I'm talking about loads that limit you to 8-12 reps per set when training to failure. This will burn a lot more calories and make you lose weight better than doing 20 or more reps as many think.

3. TOO MUCH REST BETWEEN SETS

Another area that can hinder your fat loss is wasting time in the gym between your sets. If you want to get lean and lose weight faster, you should spend as much time as possible in the gym moving and not standing or sitting.

My advice is: Minimize your rest time between sets. Researchers at the College of New Jersey found that when you keep the rest between sets to around 30 seconds, you burn 50% more calories than if you rest 3 minutes between sets.

To make better use of your time in the gym and rest less, you might want to do supersets. This means that you do two different exercises in succession without resting, either for two different opposite (antagonist) muscle groups (e.g. a chest exercise followed by a back exercise) or for the same body part (e.g. two leg exercises).

Research shows that the use of supersets can increase calorie burn both during and after a workout by about 35% compared to standard sets. So don't sit on your butt after the set is over!

4. LONG SESSIONS OUTSIDE THE GYM

What you do outside the gym can compromise your efforts to shed fat, not to mention your health. Research from Australia found that of more than 2,000 people who exercised vigorously for at least 2.5 hours a week, those who watched more than 40 minutes of TV a day had higher waist circumference, blood pressure and blood glucose levels than those who watched less than 40 minutes of TV.

Studies believe that if you sit for longer periods of time during the day, burning fat is much harder on the body. This was supported by researchers at the University of Missouri (Columbia) who reviewed studies conducted in both animals and humans and found that prolonged sitting significantly blunted the activity of enzymes involved in fat burning, particularly lipoprotein lipase.

Other research also supports a link between time spent at rest during the day and body fat levels and negative health consequences. If you are sedentary most of the time during the day, even if you exercise regularly, there is a significantly higher risk of diabetes, heart disease and death.

Avoid slowing your fat burning by staying active throughout the day. If you sit for long periods of time at work, try getting up and stretching or taking at least a small walk around the room every 20 minutes. Do the same if you sit at home in front of the TV or computer. Try to walk short distances without a car and use the stairs instead of the lift.

Getting all of these opportunities for physical activity can contribute to lots of other activities that can keep your fat-burning engines running and your health optimized. Then you won't have to look for reasons why you're not thin, because you just will be!

If you don't know how to set up a diet or workout, want to have everything lined up including meal composition, calculations and caloric intake, then feel free to contact me at www.supertrener.cz I will work it all out for you plus I will be available to everyone for three months to consult results and answer your questions.