Weight gain despite diet and exercise – 9 unconscious factors that increase your weight.diet and exercise
Did you know that some of your habits can prevent weight loss and even cause weight gain? These are so commonplace for you that you no longer notice them.
diet and exercise
It is precisely these unconscious habits that often cause you to gain weight. This article will learn which factors lead to weight gain and how best to avoid them.
With this knowledge, you can unmask unfavorable habits that don’t make you lose weight and replace them with good ones. You will finally lose weight successfully and be able to maintain your weight in the long term.
Weight gain due to high-calorie food
Even if you think you eat a balanced and healthy diet, your everyday diet can still factor in weight gain. A daily calorie surplus always leads to gain, regardless of whether the calories come from healthy or unhealthy foods.
Healthy foods are often underestimated in terms of calories. A meal plan that includes many healthy foods can be balanced but still high in calories.
Especially if you eat many high-fat foods such as nuts, avocados, cheese, or vegetable oils, your calorie needs are quickly covered. Some whole-grain products such as oatmeal, pasta, and bread can also have a lot of calories, depending on the quantity.
diet and exercise
solution
To uncover which high-calorie foods you eat in your everyday life, it would be helpful to keep a food log for a few days and calculate its calories.
The easiest way to do this is with a calorie counting app. With such an app, you can enter all foods with the number of grams and get your total number of calories at the end of the day.
You can use the calorie list to see which foods are exceptionally high in calories. You should use these more sparingly in the future and replace them with low-calorie foods to save calories.
Weight gain due to lack of exercise
Even if you do sports, such as strength training in the fitness center, it can still be the case that you don’t move enough. Especially if you have a sedentary job in your job, or if you sit a lot as a student or pupil, you often move too little.
If you have minimal everyday exercise, i.e., your calorie consumption will also be much lower if you walk a little and sit frequently. On the other hand, a person who has a physically demanding job, such as a construction worker, uses up a lot of calories.
People who are more physically active in everyday life can also consume more calories without gaining weight.
diet and exercise
solution
The solution to this problem is straightforward: move more. Even if you already exercise, you should think about how you could integrate even more exercise into your everyday life.
Start taking the stairs instead of the elevator, walk a lot or ride your bike to work or school.
Walks during the lunch break are also a good opportunity for more exercise. Or how about a leisurely jog or a long hike on Sunday?
You can incorporate more exercise into your daily routine and avoid gaining weight by making these small changes. In the best case, you can even promote fat loss with it.
Weight gain from unconscious eating
Not only what you eat can affect your weight. How you eat also has an inevitable impact.
For example, do you like to eat in front of the TV? Or do you scroll through Instagram and Facebook while you eat?
Such distractions while eating can cause you to eat unconsciously. That means you overlook the food and ignore your feeling of satiety.
This can result in you consistently eating more than you need. The consequence of this can be a calorie surplus, which leads to an increase.
In addition, you may feel like you didn’t eat an authentic meal because you didn’t notice it. This can lead to the urge to eat again soon after the meal and eat more than you need.
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solution
Just focus on your food. Leave all other activities on the side.
Try to perceive and enjoy your food properly. Then you will also feel complete much earlier and be able to finish your meal on time.
As a result, you are pleasantly full, and the meal also made you satisfied.
diet and exercise
You gain weight because you eat too fast.
Not only unconscious eating can lead to you consuming too many calories. Eating too fast can also be a factor in weight gain.
If you devour your meals, it can also happen that you eat beyond your feeling of satiety. The feeling of fullness only really sets in after about 20 minutes.
Of course, when you eat fast, you take in far more food in those 20 minutes than if you were to eat slowly.
diet and exercise
solution
Take your time to eat. Chew your food thoroughly, and don’t gorge.
Consciously put the cutlery aside and take breaks while eating. That way, you’ll have a better sense of when you’re full and can stop without overeating.
You skip meals and eat a lot more later.
Don’t have time for breakfast? Is it so stressful at work that you can’t get a lunch break? Or do you prefer to skip a meal to save calories?
Stress sometimes leads to skipping meals. But that can also be a factor in your gaining weight.
Skipping meals can lead to extreme hunger and cravings. You may end up eating large amounts of food to satisfy your need.
diet and exercise
solution
Unless you’re doing intermittent fasting, be careful not to intentionally skip meals. There’s no question that this can happen occasionally, but you shouldn’t plan on it.
In the end, you won’t save any calories if you eat more for it later.
But even if it is very stressful in between, you can at least try to include healthy snacks such as fruit, vegetable sticks, or nuts. These are prepared quickly, you can eat them on the side, and they at least curb the most incredible hunger.
Good planning and preparation can make a big difference here. For example, if you don’t have time to prepare breakfast in the morning, do it in the evening. Then you can have breakfast right away and save yourself time.
Homemade protein shakes and smoothies can also be a quick breakfast to go, filling you up and reducing hunger.
you drink too little
Not drinking enough fluids can also be a factor in weight gain.
If you drink too little, it is possible that you are more hungry.
The feeling of hunger is mediated by many mechanisms, including stretch receptors in the stomach. When your stomach is complete, the receptors register the stretch. After that, satiety hormones are released.
Drinking also expands your stomach, which can fill you up in the short term.
To put it simply: If you drink enough, you won’t be so hungry.
Not only that, drinking a lot can curb your hunger pangs. Not drinking enough water can also cause cravings.
It often happens that thirst is confused with hunger. You register that your body needs something and eat something when your body needs liquid.
However, the food will not satisfy you in this case. As a result, you may experience more and more cravings as you are not giving your body what it is asking for.
solution
So that it doesn’t get that far, it’s essential to drink enough throughout the day.
Standard recommendations are usually 1.5 to 2 liters per day.
However, the amount you drink depends on various factors such as height, weight, and activity.
A better rule of thumb is to drink about 1 liter of water for every 50 pounds of body weight. If you sweat a lot during exercise or if it’s hot outside, you’ll need even more fluids.
You drink too many high-calorie drinks.
If you drink enough, but unfortunately the wrong thing, it can also lead to an increase. The liquid calories are often underestimated.
Fruit juices, lemonades, and other soft drinks or sweetened coffee with lots of milk: If you drink these drinks every day, you will take on a few extra calories.
Even if you eat healthily and exercise enough but drink these beverages every day, you may be in a calorie surplus.
A cappuccino with sugar, for example, has around 80 kilocalories. If you drink three of them, you have already consumed around 250 more calories.
Fruit juices also make quite a difference. A quarter-liter of apple juice has around 120 calories. If you like to drink such fruit juices, you can add many calories that hit your hips.
Soft drinks such as cola are as high in calories as fruit juices. Half a liter of coke for lunch equals 250 more calories.
solution
Limit the consumption of high-calorie beverages.
Treat yourself to calorie-containing drinks less often and enjoy them consciously. A glass of diluted juice now and then doesn’t hurt. Calculated over a year, however, larger quantities can be problematic.
It is best to drink mostly water. Water may be very dull for many, but drinking water is entirely normal once you get used to it.
If pure tap water is still too bland for you, you can drink soda, for example, or pimp the water up a bit with fruit.
This works best with lemons, limes, various other fruits, mint, etc. So you have a wide variety of tastes, and it never gets boring.
Unsweetened fruit and herbal teas are also good alternatives to sweetened lemonades. For the summer, you can also make your iced tea and drink the tea well chilled with a squeeze of lemon.
If you are still a fruit juice fan, definitely start diluting the juices. So the taste of the fruit juice is still there, but you have taken in fewer calories when you look at the same amount of fruit juice.
In addition, diluted drinks also quench your thirst far better than the delightful versions.
Too much stress leads to weight gain in problem areas
Stress can be a massive factor in weight gain. When stressed, you eat more high-calorie foods and generally eat more.
This has evolutionary reasons. Stress puts the body on alert by releasing stress hormones.
On the one hand, this happens through adrenaline. This makes us forget any appetite and hunger.
At the same time, reserves are mobilized that we often used in the past, for example, to flee from danger.
The stress is then followed by the rest phase, in which our body tries to reclaim what it used up in flight or combat. This is why there is a growing desire for food that can be digested remarkably quickly and, above all, is high in calories.
This strategy was used to save our lives in the past. However, since our stress mainly occurs in everyday life, we do not necessarily have to flee or fight.
That means you don’t exert yourself physically, but unfortunately, the stress hormones are still released.
If you always reach for high-calorie foods, you will probably gain weight soon because you don’t use these calories.
Certain hormones, such as cortisol, are also increasingly released during prolonged stress. This stimulates the appetite and can trigger cravings, leading to weight gain.
solution
First, try to find out what is stressing you out and try to eliminate or reduce these stressors.
Think of strategies to deal with the stress. Depending on what you like to do, you will find some alternatives.
On the one hand, this could be sport and exercise in nature. On the other hand, autogenic training, listening to music, reading, spending time with friends, and meditating can also be strategies that reduce your stress somewhat.
You sleep too little and therefore gain weight.
Getting enough sleep is very important to our overall health. However, insufficient or poor sleep can also harm weight.
Too little sleep can massively promote cravings and thus lead to increased calorie intake.
It was thought that this problem only occurs for a long time because too little sleep affects the hormone balance. However, recent studies show that other factors could also cause increased appetite.
For example, researchers found that lack of sleep affects the reward system in the brain and thus triggers the desire for lovely and greasy foods. You can read more about one of these studies here.
diet and exercise
solution
The solution, in this case, is, of course, simple: sleep more. Try to get to bed earlier to get at least 8 hours of sleep.
If your problem stems more from that you sleep very poorly, you should also consider various aspects.
If you always go to bed very stressed, it can affect the quality of your sleep. So try to come down first.
Also, don’t eat too late. Many people sleep less well when the body has to deal with a lot of digestive work at night.
Also, check whether your mattress and bed suit you. They may not fit optimally and thus hurt the quality of your sleep.
Conclusion
As you can see, many factors can affect your weight. Since you are not consciously aware of these everyday habits, you must become aware of these problems.
You can avoid gaining weight or even speed up your weight loss with some minor changes.
Do you also know some of these unconscious habits? If so, I hope my tips will help you get them under control.
Many greetings and see you soon, Nazmul