The road to hell is paved with good intentions and this cliché is never more true than when it comes to dieting. You seem to be doing everything right and yet, instead of that dreaded needle on the weighing scale inching left, it seems to be stuck in place, or worse, swinging slowly to the right. It can bring the best of us to our knees in frustration. If you've been wondering what's going on, here are four of the most common mistakes dieters tend to make.
You're dip-ping it all wrong
You think you've got the snacking habit under control by switching fried salty crisps with crunchy carrot and celery sticks. That's great, of course. Celery packs in a ton of nutrition with its high potassium and Vitamin A, C and B6 content at a mere 16 calories per 100 grams, while carrots are a treasure trove of Vitamin A at just 41 calories per 100 grams. They're not the problem. The trouble lies in the dips you're most likely using to make the veggies more palatable. Most dips are high on oil, cream, salt and other preservatives, undoing the whole point of munching on vegetables instead of regular snacks. And yes, even if you're eating only a few tablespoons, consider this: a 100 extra calories a day works out to 36,500 extra calories a year which means over 5 kilos a year (one kilo is about 7,000 calories). You decide, is the dip worth that much?
Too much of a good thing is a bad thing
By now, we all know that there are good fats and bad fats, and the key to healthy eating is not in eliminating fats altogether from your diet, but limiting the amount of bad fats. Enter extra virgin olive oil, with its heart-healthy monounsaturated fats. While it's true that using olive can lower your LDL cholesterol, reducing the risk of heart diseases, too much of it can, and is, a bad thing for your health. To begin with, it's still fat, so it's high on calories-about 885 calories per 100 grams. Second, has a low smoking point-160 to 190 degrees Celsius-so it's not ideal for frying. It also breaks down and loses its structural integrity on high temperatures, reducing its nutritive value. So as great as olive oil is, it's best to use it only to drizzle onto salads and for lightly cooked dishes.
Salads are great, the toppings not so much
Much like covering veggies with high-calorie dips, another common dieting mistake most of us make is dousing salads with high-calorie toppings such as nuts, cheeses, fried croutons and high-fat sugary dressings. While ideally you should be holding the dressing altogether, in reality, you do have to make some concessions for your taste buds. A happy go-between is maintaining this ratio in salads: 3/4ths of it should be fresh fruits and veggies, 1/4th for a combination of lean proteins like chicken or pulses and a quarter for complex carbs like black rice or quinoa. To this, you can add a maximum of two tablespoons of dressing or good fats that are high in calories, such as walnuts, peanuts, etc.
Weekend binges are bringing you down
You quietly eat all your veggies and drink your soups through the week in anticipation of the weekend when you go all out on the dessert cart. The problem with this formula is that you invariably end up over-indulging on the weekend, erasing all the work you've put into your diet through the week. Also, if you're living for your weekend binges through the week, you're obviously not feeling fulfilled with your diet, and how long before you fall off the cart completely? Instead of depriving your body all week and going crazy on the weekend, allow yourself small portions of the food you find irresistible through the week so that your mind and body stops looking at your work week as punishment time and weekends as rewards. It's quite an exhausting way to live, really.
