Top 5 Fitness Mistakes

Are your workouts helping or hurting? Whether you are a fitness novice or a regular enthusiast, you may be making easy to fix blunders when it comes to your routine that are undermining your potential and your progress. Here are five
common mistakes to recognize and avoid.

Overdoing it. If you can barely walk the next day, you won’t be able to exercise. A little soreness and stiffness is fine but if your workouts are sending you straight to the medicine cabinet or right back to bed you’ve pushed too hard for your current level of fitness.

Doing too little. If you’re not breaking a sweat, breathing a bit harder, and not getting your heart rate up, you’re not going to see the kinds of results that will inspire you to stay with your regimen. If you are having trouble knowing if you are pushing it hard enough, I recommend that you invest in some type of heart rate monitor. This helped my workouts tremendously!

Watching the clock. There is a lot of advice out there telling you to spend at least an hour a day working out to see results. If you work full time or have kids, an hour a day might be unrealistic. And if you can’t manage an hour, why bother?
Right? Wrong. Don’t be afraid to start small. Ten minutes a day is better than zero minutes a day. The key is to establish a routine that is versatile, flexible, fun and fits your lifestyle.

Checking your weight everyday. Your weight can vary by several pounds, depending on water, hormone fluctuations and the type of workouts you’ve been doing. If you’re getting on the scale once a day or more you’re setting yourself up to be discouraged. Give yourself other goals instead, like fitting into your old jeans or completing a 5K. I see too many people obsessed with “weight loss”. Let’s call it what it what it really is.. and that’s “Fat Loss” not muscle or water loss. You can sit in a sauna and drop two to three pounds easily. Who cares, it was all water, and you will put them right back on as soon as you drink water, which you would want to do as soon as you got out anyway. The best scale in my opinion has always been yourself naked in a mirror, or seeing how your clothes are fitting.

Expecting immediate results. We get impatient and disappointed when we can’t take weight off as fast as we can put it on. Remember, an extra pound means you’ve consumed 3,500 extra calories and you will have to burn an extra
3,500 calories to lose that pound. During an intense work out, you can burn approximately 500 to 800 calories, and yes even a few more with EPOC. That’s not even half a pound of fat. It takes time to gain weight, and time to take it off. You just have to stick with it. Many people tend to get discouraged if they don’t see quick, visible, dramatic results, but the bottom line is being fit is a lifestyle and a process, not a quick fix. Unless you are severely overweight, the maximum amount of weight you should be losing is about two pounds a week. Yes I have seen people lose more, but they ended up putting it back on, or they ended up losing a lot of muscle, and now appeared “skinny fat” If you cut your calories back too much, you are setting yourself up for failure. First thing, you probably won’t be able to stick with it for long. For all animals, the desire to eat is rated number one from a survival standpoint, even higher than reproduction. Secondly, your metabolism will eventually tank, and you will be burning fewer calories. Your body will eventually know that it is not being given enough calories, and as your leptin levels drop, signals go to your brain telling it to increase hunger and slow down metabolism. So how many calories should I be eating? You can find out your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) by going to sheerbalance.com, clicking the nutrition tab and selecting “Calorie Requirement Calculator”.