If you are frustrated with the way you’ve been working out and eating right lately and getting little to no results, you are not alone.
I personally have had my own journey from over-trained female to hormonal distressed, over-trained female to hormone balanced, simplistic training female. Even after having two babies, my body was just not the same as it was in my youth and what may have worked then, certainly wasn’t going to work now. That’s when I started developing a system that worked for me through properly managing my food and fitness as a whole. After working with hundreds of women in the last couple of years at JBFit, I have noticed a common thread: women continue to approach their fitness and nutrition now with thoughts and ideas that aren’t designed for them.
So, I am going to share with you the top three mistakes women make with conquering the battle to find balance with fitness and ease with nutrition.
Let’s get started….
MISTAKE #1 – EATING TOO FEW CALORIES
Seems logical. You want to move the scale so let’s just eat less. Most women are falling hard into this category.
The problem lies in the fact that calorie reduction causes cravings, energy drop, and decreased metabolism. Your body loves to conserve when it can. Consider it a super saver and the number one conservation it’s going to hold on to is fat. Fat gives a multitude of purposes to our body, so the first to go is often muscle tissue. This is a big factor in metabolic distress because the less lean muscle tissue we have, the slower our metabolism will work.
Wouldn’t you love to feel free of the urge to snack on cravings, have more energy and start feeling your metabolism increase?
Who wouldn’t want that feeling?!
Remember food is your friend. The more starved you are walking around feeling, the less your body is working for you. Start adding in more protein, fibrous carbs like cruciferous veggies and healthy fats.
MISTAKE # 2- DEPRIVATION OF NUTRIENTS
I’ve heard this so many times.
“I need to start back on my diet.”
The cycle goes like this:
Deprivation of nutrients via diet…
Strong will power to never eat certain foods again….
Obsession about certain foods….
Binge and regret….
I am a complete failure….
All to start back again 🙁
The number one obstacle we face is breaking the binge and deprive cycle. This is the common “diet mentality” that sucks women in and spits them out with vengeance. Exactly what is saturated in the fitness industry now.
Self-care and self-preservation is key to breaking the cycle. You’ve got to understand that the more accepting you are of your mistakes, the more you learn from them. This is what I call intuitive training and intuitive eating. Once you learn these behaviors, you can learn to make a change instead of just bandaging a persisting problem.
MISTAKE #3 – HYPER FOCUSED ON THE SCALE
Scale obsession is a real thing with women. I’ve even talked to women who weigh themselves four and five times a day.
I know I have personally been victimized and had a day or two ruined by stepping on the scale. You may end up becoming so fixated on looking for a certain number that you lose sight of the steps you should be taking to become healthier. This can lead to a spiraling effect of mistake #1 and #2.
Self-care means focusing on how you feel. How you feel depicts the efforts you are putting towards your mind and body work. It’s all cumulative and the more you focus on how you feel, the less obsessed you become with the scale. The scale is just a tool to measure a particular state. It doesn’t tell you how you feel or what improvements you’ve made with changing your mindset and habits.
These are just those top three mistakes I have found after working with women in the fitness industry for the past 12 years. There is always more room to grow, but once you have these basic habits down, you can really start to flourish in your health and fitness journey! I have tons more tips, workouts and recipes available at myjbfit.com and you can join my free weekly newsletter! Each week you get a new recipe to try, fat loss tips, mindset shifts to help make changes and simple, effective workouts!
