Eating healthy doesn’t always come easily, even for those with the best intentions. There are times that temptation gets the best of you, and other times when hunger simply trumps your healthy goals. Even self-proclaimed health nuts make mistakes now and again.
The important thing is to recognize a mistake as a mistake, and to move on as quickly as possible so that you continue working towards your weight loss goals. The problem comes when a mistake goes unrecognized—meaning that you may continue making the same mistake over and over again, not realizing the potentially drastic effects that this one repeated mistake could have on your weight loss efforts.
The internet is full of weight loss advice—some of it great, some of it not so much. Remember, before you start making any changes to your diet you need to check with your weight loss doctor. Sure, a food may have great nutritional value and may even boast certain weight loss benefits, but adding another food to your diet for these reasons means that you are adding extra calories to your diet, which is going to hurt your bottom line, no matter how healthy the food in question may be.
Here is a quick list of some of the most common mistakes that even the healthiest of people are making regularly:
- Adding flaxseeds to cereal. Flaxseeds have a lot of health benefits, but adding them to your cereal means adding extra calories, and most often flaxseeds will pass through your intestine undigested. You need to use ground flaxseed to experience the nutrition benefits.
- Your smoothie is calorie-packed. Nut butters, bananas, creamy milk alternatives—these are the gems that make smoothies scrumptious and nutritious, but they are also where all of the calories are loaded. Be careful and measure properly before loading up a smoothie.
- Meat alternatives are loaded with sodium. Going meatless, even just once or twice a week, is a great way to cut down on calories, but what are you using instead? Canned beans or even some forms of tofu are loaded with extra sodium, which makes them not so healthy of an alternative.
The lesson that should be learned here is that before you make any changes to your diet plan, no matter how healthy of a change you think you are making, talk with your weight loss doctor first. During the course of your medical weight loss program, mistakes are going to happen. The best thing that you can do is limit those mistakes, and be mentally prepared to bounce back afterwards so that you can continue moving forward towards your goal.