Fat loss.

Its probably the number one reason people workout or start a diet. Often people make silly mistakes that slow your progress down.

If you think they sound too simple, they are and thats the point. Just because something is simple doesn't make it any less effective.

Honestly try each and every one for more than a week and I promise you'll see a difference in your shape.

1. You're not eating enough protein

We all love a carbs and fat but we never think about protein.

Protein takes a lot longer to digest than carbs and requires more energy in the form of calories for you to convert it in to muscle and other processes. Protein is also fab at suppressing your appetite and does this very quickly. The next time you have a big piece of meat on your plate try to eat most if not all of it first. I'd be surprised if you finish the rest on your plate. The extra protein will also help you recover after your workouts (which I hope you're doing) building the calorie burning muscle that we have.

The portion needs to be a decent size too. Hold out your upturned hand with your fingers open. A portion of protein foods like chicken, fish etc. is the size of your palm. You should get at least 1 portion per meal no matter what meal it is. Wanting to lose weight? Add an extra portion 2-3x day. 

2. You're doing too much cardio

We've been told for years that cardio burns fat and calories. This is an obvious fact. You move more, you burn more calories resulting in fat burning. So people that want to lose weight start to do more cardio. Now if you're someone who's sitting all day every day I'm all for you jumping on to a cross trainer, going for a run, cycling etc. As you need to burn some extra calories as you've sat all day doing jack s**t. 

There comes a point of diminishing returns though. The more exercise you do the more your body wants calories. Lots of cardio is kinda tough on your body too. Its a form of stress so the more you do the more stress you put your body.

So what do you do to recover? Yep that's right you eat more food as you're way more hungry. Getting active is one thing but doing endless hours of cardio each week will most likely end up with more calories consumed due to your hunger levels increasing. 

Most people will deny this stating I'm wrong and what I'm saying isn't true. Ok think about this. You tried to lose weight? Yep. Did you do more cardio? Yep. Did it work? Err maybe for a while but the what happened after that. Yep, you put the weight back on.

To maintain your new lower body fat you have to keep up doing loads and loads of cardio. In fact you may have to do more in the long run. Why? You're body becomes more efficient at exercise and when it does you burn less calories. So to get the same results you have do more cardio to burn the same calories and thus it never ends.

You can't out exercise the amount of crap you're putting in your gob! The key would be to do just enough for health benefits and keep your calorie intake down to lose weight. 

3. You're not doing resistance training

Resistance training doesn't burn as many calories of say a session on the treadmill. But what it does lack in calorie burning it makes up by building you calorie burning muscle. Thats right the sexy stuff (muscle) is metabolically active.

Metabolically what?

You are basically burning more calories by just having more muscle on the body. In fact you'll burn more calories doing anything, walking, cycling, resting and even taking a dump!

Done right resistance training doesn't usually make you feel really fatigued like cardio and which in turn effects your hunger levels much less.

4. You're not having enough sleep 

Lack of sleep is killing us! I wrote about it here. GET BETTER SLEEP

If you don't get enough (7-9 hours) shut eye each and every night you will never lose weight. Loads of studies have shown that regular nights of reduced sleep effects your appitite massively.

It works like this. 

• You don't get enough sleep and feel really tired

• Your body needs to stay awake during the day so it increases your appitite and hunger.

• It does this to get more calories in you to help keep you awake

• You crave sugar and high calorie foods as these give you instant hits of energy

• You eat the crappy food and get that looooovely sugar spike that keeps you awake for about 20-30mins.

• You feel amazing then you feel like poop as your sugar levels drop quickly again.

• You need to stay awake so you go for that instant hit again of junk food

Most people do this several times over the day. The extra calories could equate to over 500 extra calories per day. Thats a massive increase and will gain you easily a couple of pounds of fat per month.

Getting enough sleep will dramatically reduce your sugar craving and calorie intake. There's even diet based in this. 

5. You're eating too much 

Ok this is obvious. If you eat too much you put on weight. Typically most people talk about overeating junk food but I'm talking about healthy food too.

Your portion sizes have a huge affect on your calorie intake. Not keeping an eye on your plate sizes can increase your calorie intake buy over 300+ calories per day. Something as simple as larger plates will make you eat more than you should.

Getting a handle on this is fairly easy (just really hard to do). See Precision Nutrition's awesome infographic about portion sizes. It's probably the most effective and simple thing to change as you're already eating food. You just have to eat less of the food you already eat.