Weight loss is a huge industry, which is not surprising considering 60 percent of us are overweight.

It has become such a huge marketplace and, like any other, competitors try to get a leg up on each other, offering differing methods and ideas about how to lose weight. And of course, everybody says their way is the best.

As a result, there’s a lot of confusion and half-truths about how to lose weight. People end up wasting a lot of time, energy and money on things that don’t work.

So let’s cut through the noise and discuss the common weight loss mistakes and how we can turn it all around.

Focusing on the number on the scale

There’s so much more to how much you weigh than fat. How much water is in your system (water is quite heavy)? How much waste is built up in your intestines? Did you just eat a meal? Have you been gaining muscle at the same time you’ve been losing fat?

Weight fluctuates quite a bit during any given day, and can change by up to 4 lbs. throughout the course of a day. Rather than focusing on the scale, pay more attention to how you look and feel. Are your jeans a bit easier to button? That’s a good sign. Do you have more energy? That’s a good sign. If you really like data, we have a scale at my office called a Tinita that will tell you how much of your body is composed of fat and where in your body it is sitting. Also, knowing whether or not your body is in ketosis (using a cheap ketosis meter) will tell you if your body is in weight loss mode or not.

Counting calories

This is one of those myths that just won’t die. Eat fewer calories than you take in and you’ll lose weight. There are so many reasons why this is wrong.

Fat storage is the result of hormonal signaling and an excess of CERTAIN TYPES OF FOOD, NAMELY SUGAR. As a result, either gaining or losing fat is a function of WHAT you eat, not a function of HOW MUCH you eat. If you eat 1,000 calories per day of snickers bars, some of that will be burned for energy, but some of it will be put away as fat. If you eat 3,000 calories a day of avocados and salad, none will be stored as fat because there’s no sugar to speak of.

My advice, focus more on what you’re eating instead of how much.

Not finding the exercise sweet spot.

If you change the way you eat – for example, you cut out carbs and increase protein and fats – but you don’t exercise, you’ll lose muscle mass. Then when you step on the scale, it’s lower and you’ll think everything is working. But it’s not. You need to do some exercise all throughout your life, whether you’re trying to lose weight or not. It’s good for your heart and lungs and muscles to stay active.

However, if you exercise too much, you cause your body stress, which releases a hormone called cortisol that signals fat storage. There are fascinating reasons for this that we don’t have time for in this post, but the point is, you’ve got to do some exercise, but don’t overdo it.

A great method is called burst training. You do it for 21 minutes a day, preferably in the morning on an empty stomach. You simply split the 21 minutes up into 7 three-minute increments. For the first two minutes of every increment, you go full on intense at whatever you’re doing (let’s say it’s jogging). You go as fast as you can for two minutes. On the third minute, you go nice and easy to bring your body back to homeostasis. Repeat 7 times every day.

Cutting out fat

No! Don’t cut out fat! Eat more fat! Eat lots and lots of fat! It’s only a trick of language that we gave the fat in your body that makes you overweight the same name as the nutrient known as “fat.” They are not the same. What you need to cut out is sugar—which also means carbohydrates.

If you eat actual fat (things like salmon with omega-3 fatty acids or avocados or coconut oil), it actually boosts your metabolism, puts you in ketosis and helps your body to burn the other kind of fat.

Furthermore, it is what your cells are made up of. Most of us have damaged our cells with all the additives, medications and pesticides we put in our bodies and healthy fats help to regenerate the cells.

When you go to the grocery store and buy foods that say “low-fat” or “fat-free,” look at how much sugar they have. Spoiler alert: it’s A LOT! The reason for this is that food companies use one of three ingredients to make food taste good: sugar, salt and fat. Take one out, you’ve got to make up for it with something else.

Not eating enough protein

First of all, it’s good for you. Second of all, it helps with weight loss by reducing appetite, making you feel full for longer, increasing your overall metabolism and helping you maintain muscle mass. A 2013 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that people whose diet consisted of about 30% protein ended up eating almost 600 fewer calories on a given day as people whose diet contained less or no protein.

Not eating fiber.

When you eat fiber (the kind you get from vegetables and fruits, not grains), it turns into a gelatinous substance in your digestive system when combined with water. This stuff moves slowly through your digestive system, helping to clear out waste AND making you feel fuller. It helps you lose weight on two fronts—one by having you eat less overall, and two by clearing out built-up waste.

Snacking

Some weight loss gurus say you should eat several small meals throughout the day to avoid that feeling of hunger, which then helps you avoid binge eating junk food when your will breaks down. It’s understandable advice, but not effective. It sort of gets the opposite effect. You never feel full, so you end up snacking all day and eating too much anyway.

As far as WHEN to eat, the best policy is an intermittent fasting protocol in which you skip breakfast, eat lunch and dinner, then stop eating about 8pm. It allows your metabolism to reset, gives your liver time to clear the sugar and toxins without getting a new shipment every morning and results in less food overall.
(Just think about what you’re really missing anyway. Most people eat cereal and toast and pancakes and waffles and oatmeal and things like this for breakfast. It’s all sugar!)

Winging it

The only way to achieve anything is to track your progress. You don’t just wing it at your job, right? You know how many widgets you sold last month and the month before that. You know how much it costs to make a widget. You need data to understand where you’ve been, where you are and have a clear vision of where you’re going.

If you’re trying to lose weight, start tracking everything. Keep a food log and look for patterns (include every snack and dessert and little thing “here and there” that you eat). You might be surprised at where and when all these little snacks add up.

Ignoring what you drink.

Still think Gatorade is healthy? A single bottle has 56g of sugar—which alone is more than the FDA’s daily-recommended maximum of sugar per day for adults. That’s one Gatorade. Fruit juice is just as bad. Soda is the worst. Drink water.
Eating processed foods

When you get your dinner from a box or bag, you get a whole lot more than food. You get coloring, preservatives, pesticides, soy, sugar, antibiotics and other crazy things. A recent study of chicken farms in the Midwest found that 60% of farm-raised chickens are even being fed things like antidepressants and allergy medications.

Yes, that’s gross and disturbing, but that’s not the purpose of this article. These things sabotage weight loss efforts. Medications, additives and pesticides actually tear tiny holes in your intestines, which allows for particles of what you eat to enter the bloodstream. This is called leaky gut. In terms of fat, your body tried to defend against these invading particles coming from the gut in several ways. One of those way is by packing fat around the area. That’s when you see people who have relatively skinny arms, legs, faces, etc., but big bellies.
The best way to eat is to keep it clean: organic fruits and vegetables (limit the fruits when trying to lose weight because of the sugar), grassfed, free-range and wild caught proteins.

Also, eat single-ingredient meals. For example, rather than having a casserole, or a lasagna, or a stew from the can, eat one ingredient at a time. For example, a piece of salmon (one ingredient) with a side of black beans (one ingredient) and a salad composed of single-ingredients (like lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, nuts, olive oil, etc.) You know what you’re eating and you can control the additives and everything else that you have NO power over when you eat at a restaurant or out of a box.

Buck the weight loss myths. What you just read is what actually works.