weight loss traps
These 5 habits inhibit your metabolism
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Are you actually doing everything right, but losing weight doesn’t really want to work out? These habits could be to blame as they make your metabolism sluggish and prevent the pounds from dropping.
In order to lose weight, we need a properly functioning metabolism. Because it ensures that we burn a lot of calories – and that’s the only way we can lose weight. However, there are a few nasty weight loss traps that we can easily fall into and that inhibit our metabolism. You should keep these things in mind.
5 habits that slow down your metabolism and prevent you from losing weight
1. You are on a radical diet
In order to remain fit in the long term, we need a healthy weight. But extreme crash diets really do nothing! Because if you suddenly deprive your body of a very large part of its daily energy supply, it also shuts down its metabolism. And you don’t want that, after all.
If you’re consuming very few calories overnight, your body goes into survival mode and somehow tries to make do with what little energy there is. For this he tries to “hoard” – he wants to stubbornly hold on to the fat reserves that are still left to him. And of course that makes it almost impossible for you to keep losing weight.
2. You eat too few carbohydrates
You read correctly! Because your body needs all kinds of food components for a balanced diet – even the supposedly bad carbohydrates. It’s just a matter of degree. Of course you won’t lose weight if you eat a kilo of pasta every day. If you want to eat healthily and lose weight, you should rely on a high percentage of protein for saturation.
But if you stop eating carbohydrates, you make it more difficult for your body to produce insulin. And the hormone is important for a smoothly functioning metabolism. So no-carb slows down your metabolism – and of course you don’t want that.
So put carbohydrates in moderation on your menu, preferably complex ones. They don’t spike blood sugar levels that quickly, and you can find them in whole grain products and legumes, for example.
3. You drink too little
Many people have this problem: They simply drink too little. That’s not healthy anyway, but especially if you want to lose weight, it’s fatal. Because when you’re dehydrated, you also slow down your metabolism. So make sure to drink at least 1.5 to 2 liters of water a day. If you train a lot, it should be more. It is best to start the day with a large glass of water in the morning.
4. You don’t sleep enough
Just like drinking enough and above all good sleep is important for your overall health. Lack of sleep can actually prevent you from losing weight and also slow down your metabolism.
This is also related to the dear hormones: while you sleep, your body releases the satiety hormone leptin. If you don’t get enough sleep, you produce too little of this messenger substance and instead ghrelin, an appetite-stimulating hormone. That’s why you probably have a bigger appetite when you’ve had a bad night’s sleep.
You should get seven to nine hours of sleep a night. Exactly how much time you need in Slumberland to be fit and rested is very individual.
5. You are chronically stressed
In an acute stressful situation, our body produces the hormone cortisol, which gives it a quick boost of energy. So far so good. In day-to-day work, on the road or on the internet, our stress level is often so high that our body constantly produces cortisol. This is not only exhausting, but can also inhibit the metabolism.
In addition to cardio and strength-building training, you should definitely include relaxing units in your plan. Yoga and meditation, for example, are wonderful ways to learn to switch off consciously and to practice it regularly.
Sources used: webmd.com, healthline.com