You lift big. You eat clean. But something doesn’t make sense when you step on the scale. You’ve gained weight, and you’re not trying to. What’s up with that?
Believe it or not, it could be the little things—like how fast you chew—that are hindering your weight loss efforts. These little things that you don’t pay attention to in the short term add up to piled on pounds in the long run.
Here are seven of the most likely reasons why you may be gaining unwanted weight.
Irregular eating throughout the day can contribute not only to fat accumulation around the belly, but to insulin resistance and heightened risk of type II diabetes.
After eating a meal, the body produces glucose, which is transported from the blood into muscle and liver cells. In insulin resistance, the cells don’t respond to insulin, so more sugar builds up in the blood. More sugar in the blood means more fat around the waistline, the same type of fat that contributes to diabetes.
Slow down you move too fast. No, it’s not just the name of a classic Simon and Garfunkel tune. Regardless of how clean you eat, if you move that jaw too fast when you chow down, you’re likely to pack on the pounds.
Hormones in our gut send a signal to our brain to tell us when we are full. Research has shown that people who eat too quickly may have less of these appetite-supressing gut hormones, leading to weight gain.
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Drinking Too Much Protein
There’s a reason why we’re told not to down more than two protein shakes a day. The body does not detect liquid calories the same way it does calories from food.
When you eat, the stomach stretches. Stretch sensations send a message to the brain that the stomach is at capacity. But beverages don’t trigger this signal, and so we don’t feel satiated like we do when we eat.
The result: We keep packing on those liquid calories. Like the name of that popular vitamin brand, limit your protein shakes to one-a-day.
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Staying Away from Fats
Don’t fear the fats. Dropping your fat intake actually increases your BMI.
One of the biggest nutrition myths that has been perpetrated for decades is that dietary fat contributes to obesity. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
If we lower the amount of fat we take in, we often wind up adding more carbs to compensate, and we know that more carbs leads to more fat. But increased consumption of healthy mono-saturated fats, like avocados, nuts, seeds, and olive oil, actually controls weight gain. Bottom line: eat fat, get fit.
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Making Healthy Foods Unhealthy
We know good foods become bad foods when they are poorly prepared: chicken breasts coated in bleached flour, halibut wrapped in deep fried batter, salads slathered in soybean oil. But even the healthiest foods that are calorie-dense like salmon, walnuts, or avocados will pack the pounds on if eaten in excess.
Pay heed to that time-honored rule, “everything in moderation.”
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Choosing the Wrong Snacks
There’s a reason it’s called a “beer belly.” The average beer contains about 150 calories. Drink two and you’ve already tacked on a few hundred calories. But the weightier issue is what we’re munching when we’re pubbing.
We aren’t ordering side dishes of steamed broccoli and wilted kale leaves. It’s the nachos, quesadillas, and Buffalo wings we snack on with our suds that send our bellies ballooning.
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Using Sea Salt
Lastly, one that rarely makes this list—sea salt. However trendy it’s become to use sea salt on our food, it’s not great for the waist. Sea salt lacks iodine, a necessary component of our thyroid gland.
The thyroid is our thermostat, directly controlling our metabolism. Lose the iodine, gain the weight. Instead, ditch the fancy, high priced sea salt. Reach for the cheap trend-free iodized kind.
