8 Macro Tracking Mistakes Sabotaging Your Weight Loss

Are you trying to lose weight but aren’t really getting anywhere? According to experts, you might be going about your weight loss journey the wrong way. In fact, even some of the top diet and fitness experts have made weight loss mistakes themselves. Body Network spoke to a few trainers and nutritionists and asked them about the biggest missteps they took on their fitness journeys.

1. Going Overboard with Calorie Counting

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While it is good to keep tabs on your food consumption, Risa Sheppard, Master Pilates trainer, creator of The Sheppard Method, advises not to go overboard. “Counting every calorie of every piece of food,” is one of the mistakes she made. “It became time consuming and frustrating.”

Related: I Lost Belly Fat & 17 Pounds With These 6 Simple Hacks

2. Starving Your Body of Carbs

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Mr. America Jason Kozma, a personal trainer in Los Angeles, reveals the biggest mistake he made while preparing for a bodybuilding competition. “I had gotten too heavy bulking up to add more muscle mass,” he explains. He spent four months dieting for a spring show “and still didn’t get in shape.” After a short break he reset his goal to a fall show and dove headlong into his diet. “I was using an extremely low carb approach as I felt I had too much fat yet to burn. What I actually did was I starved my muscles of carbohydrates for so long that at the end my body couldn’t assimilate carbohydrates and I couldn’t ‘pump u’ for the show,” he continues. “My body fat measured lower than ever for this show but I didn’t look as good as I had a year and a half prior at a higher body fat level. The net result was that I lost muscle using this approach: I was actually smaller and lighter than I was before the ‘bulk up.’” Note: He still won the show!

3. Doing Too Much Cardio

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Diet and fitness expert Adita Yrizarry-Lang, ISCA, NASM, ACE, AFAA, reveals that one of the biggest mistakes she made was doing too much cardio. “When I first started in fitness, this was the prescription…do a lot of cardio. The reality is that you burn more calories when you have muscle on your body, combining weights with cardio is the right way to do it,” she says.

4. Not Looking at Serving Size on Packages

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Yrizarry-Lang claims that another mistake is only looking at calories on a package, and not the serving size. “We were mesmerized by the lo-cal labeling on a package,” she says. “Unfortunately, we never looked at the serving size and then came to realize we were ingesting too many calories at a time.”

5. Falling Victim to Low Fat, Highly Processed Foods

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Just because something is low-fat doesn’t make it healthy. Yrizarry-Lang says that some people consume “too many processed carbs, because they are low fat.” While this might be okay for runners, going for 10 to 20 mile runs, “those carbs convert to fat,” for most of us.

Related: Alexia Clark Flaunts Chiseled Midsection and Reveals 3 Ab Mistakes You Are Making

6. Daily Weigh-Ins

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Weighing oneself every single day is another mistake, says Sheppard. “It can be discouraging,” she explains. “Try to weigh yourself less and pay more attention to how your clothes are fitting. Remember muscle weighs more fat so if you are on an intense exercise regime the muscle you gain will trim in less but may not show on the scale.”

7. Crash Diets

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If a diet seems too good to be true, it probably is. “The all-time worst” mistake people make is going on crash diets. Why? You might “lose weight at the moment” but you will “gain it back with a few extra pounds,” says Yrizarry-Lang. “This slows down the metabolism and makes it even harder to lose weight at a later date.”

8. Focusing on Exercise for Weight Loss

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One of the biggest mistakes people make is “thinking more exercise will cause them to lose weight,” says Sheppard. “80 percent is dieting and 20 percent is exercise,” she reminds.

9. Falling Victim to “Get Thin Fast” Scams

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Sheppard strongly advises against any products or diet that claim to help with rapid weight loss. “Do not succumb to quick weight loss scams or dangerous pills. Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is weight loss,” she says.

Related: 15 Foods That Fight Fat

10. Comparing Yourself to Others

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Remember that your fitness journey is your own and “comparing yourself to other people” will “only add to your stress and discouragement,” says Sheppard. “We are all built differently with different bone structure and hereditary genes. Love who you are inside and it will reflect on your outside.”

💪🔥Body Booster: Beware of low-fat, processed foods. Unless you run for 20 miles a day, you should probably pass on a highly processed energy bar – those carbs might convert to fat unless you are working them off.

Struggling with stubborn belly fat that just won't budge, especially after 40? Functional medicine dietitianMay Tom, RD understands your frustration. "This is a particular pain point that drives a lot of my clients to finally come and work with me," says May. Through her practice, she's helped countless clients break free from the cycle of stubborn belly fat using science-based strategies rather than extreme dieting. Keep reading to discover the most common belly fat mistakes you might be making – and learn exactly how to fix them.

Mistake 1: Not Understanding How Belly Fat Works

"Belly fat, also known as visceral adipose tissue, has a unique relationship with insulin resistance," May explains in her post. She describes it as a vicious cycle: "When you're insulin resistant, you put on more weight around your organs. When you have more weight around your organs, they send out signals called adipokines that cause you to become more insulin resistant."

The Cleveland Clinic adds that "visceral fat surrounds your organs and can put you at risk for conditions like diabetes, heart disease, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and more."

Mistake 2: Waiting Too Long to Address the Problem

"By losing 5% to 10% of your body weight, you can improve blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol levels, mobility, sexual function and more," states Dr. David Creel from the Cleveland Clinic. This aligns with May's observation that addressing belly fat early can prevent long-term health issues.

Mistake 3: Not Tracking Your Blood Sugar

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"Diabetes is 10 years in the making, and belly fat is a sign you're on that path," May warns. She recommends using a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) for real-time feedback. "This is real data about you," she emphasizes. "It's a total eye-opener."

Mistake 4: Relying on Artificial Sweeteners

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"Being diabetic doesn't mean converting everything to sugar-free, including Diet Coke," May cautions. The Cleveland Clinic supports this, noting that "we're still learning about the long-term effects of different low-calorie sweeteners on things like taste preferences, cravings, gut bacteria and insulin resistance."

Mistake 5: Avoiding Strategic Fasting

May's "Nourishing Fast" approach, based on the Fasting Mimicking Diet, has shown impressive results. "Recent research with 100 participants showed significant drops in A1C, fasting glucose, insulin resistance, visceral fat, total body fat, and BMI," she reports.

Mistake 6: Doing the Wrong Type of Exercise

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The Cleveland Clinic recommends "150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity cardio exercise" for best results. May adds that "one meta-analysis of 32 studies found that HIIT and moderate-intensity aerobic exercise was more beneficial to lowering visceral adipose tissue than resistance training."

Mistake 7: Focusing Only on Ab Exercises

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"When you do sit-ups and other core-strengthening exercises, you're strengthening muscles in the abdomen, but that doesn't specifically target the fat," May explains. The Cleveland Clinic adds that "strength training helps build muscle — or at least maintain muscle as you lose fat. And muscle burns calories."

Mistake 8: Ignoring Your Saturated Fat Intake

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"Certain genes predispose you to being sensitive to saturated fat where it really adds to your waistline very quickly," May explains, recommending limiting saturated fat to 10% of daily calories.

Mistake 9: Not Activating Your AMPK

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May describes AMPK as "something that senses fuel availability in the body, and when it doesn't sense enough fuel, it activates and helps to mobilize fat." She points to dark chocolate as a natural AMPK activator.

Mistake 10: Overlooking Temperature's Impact on Fat Loss

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"One study found that whole body cryotherapy for three minutes each session reduced abdominal adiposity in menopausal women," May reports.

Mistake 11: Skimping on Fiber

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The Cleveland Clinic emphasizes that "foods that contain a high amount of soluble fiber can slow down the passage of food from your stomach to your intestine by forming a gummy gel. That means they help you feel fuller for longer."

RELATED: She Lost 49 Pounds in her 40s When She Stopped Dieting and Started Doing This One Thing

Mistake 12: Not Timing Your Protein Right

"It's not that you need to be on a high-protein diet as much as you should focus on getting adequate protein that's spread throughout the day," May advises. The Cleveland Clinic adds that "protein helps keep you feeling satiated, lowers hunger hormone levels and may even help you eat less at your next meal."

Mistake 13: Underestimating the Impact of Poor Sleep

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The Cleveland Clinic explains that "when we don't sleep well or we're sleep-deprived, it can impact hunger hormones. There's actually a biochemical response to sleep deprivation that makes us want to eat more."

Mistake 14: Neglecting Your Gut Health

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"When you're eating, think I'm not just eating for me, I'm eating for 10 billion," May emphasizes, referring to gut bacteria. She warns that restrictive dieting can harm your gut microbiome: "Take care of them, they're going to take care of you." And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.

Do you want to lose weight by ditching a few bad habits? Cori Lefkowith started a company, Redefining Strength, to help people achieve their diet and fitness goals. In a recent viral video, she throws down some serious wisdom on ways you might be preventing weight loss. “I've made all the mistakes when it comes to trying to lose fat, gain muscle, and create that sustainable lifestyle balance. But I like to think that all of my interesting experiments work for nothing because I've made so many mistakes,” she says. “That's why I wanna share seven bad habits that kept me from losing fat for the longest time, and I'll be honest, most sabotaged my success because they were simply unsustainable and created a mindset of restriction and deprivation because while achieving our goals does mean making sacrifices at times, we also have to learn to create a balance meeting ourselves where we're at.”

1. Mistake 1: Eating Too Clean

Cori explains that the first bad habit is one that lots of people have had to “sabotage our success,” and that is eating too clean. “I literally ended up curled up on the bathroom floor of a hotel in San Diego. I was pasty white in a cold sweat and looked like death, all because I'd eaten only chicken and broccoli and extremely clean, one-ingredient foods for weeks before the vacation. One spicy sangria and a couple of appetizers later, I was sick. It's because I had created these extreme limitations on myself that had not only left me miserable for weeks while not seeing better results faster, but they led me to be sick from the first deviation from my clean eating plan.”

2. It Can Lead to Many Things

“Too often, we try to make ourselves feel guilty for not hitting some arbitrary standard of clean, but this mindset of good and bad foods not only assigns moral value to foods that don't have any, leading to guilt. When we wanna eat one thing we aren't supposed to, but it can also sabotage our results and long-term consistency,” she says. “This extremely restrictive, clean mindset can lead to an obsession with food. It can also lead to us creating nutrient deficiencies, and it can lead to us ultimately feeling so miserable and deprived. We give up, and then we feel like reaching our goals is impossible, and we just don't have the willpower. We start to even dread the idea of making dietary changes because we're trying to force something unsustainable.”

3. Focus Instead on Making Healthier Food Swaps

“Instead of focusing on eating clean, focus on small swaps to foods and ingredients based on what you're currently eating. Realize that whole natural foods are key, but you can and should include foods that you enjoy and love,” she recommends.

RELATED: 19 Bad Habits I Gave Up to Lose 100 Pounds

4. Mistake 2: Too Much Food Diversity

Bad habit number two, “including too much food diversity after attempting to cut out all unclean foods,” she says. “I thought it was a great idea to include things to keep my meals interesting and get micronutrients from a diversity of sources.”

5. Over Diversifying Can Be Overwhleming

“While we do wanna include a diversity of foods for optimal health to get vitamins and minerals in different forms, trying to include too much diversity can be overwhelming and lead to actually more cravings,” she points out. “The more we give ourselves, the less of a routine and habit we get into, and the more we actually want. It becomes then a slippery slope of more and more foods creeping in, and the less nutrient-dense they are and the more processed they are, the easier it becomes to overeat and feel hungry, even when we've eaten enough calories. Not to mention, it can be grocery shopping, meal prepping, and hitting those macros that are more overwhelming.”

6. Instead, Keep It Simple

Instead, simplify and focus on a set grocery list and meal plan with a few key ingredients each week, which “can help us stay consistent and not be overwhelmed as we make changes,” she says. “Studies have even shown that we're less likely to overeat when eating the same things repeatedly. It can make it easier to maintain our macros and calorie deficit. It leads to fewer cravings and a better shock mechanism when we consume what we need.”

7. Mistake 3: Going Too Hard

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The third bad habit? “When we want better results faster, it's always going hard and never cycling intensity. Sometimes less is more, and sometimes if we back off when we aren't motivated or proactively give ourselves a break, we actually stay more consistent,” she says.

RELATED:Top 14 Superfoods You Should Eat Every Day to Sleep Better

8. You Might Lose Steam

“Overall. If you've been dieting and in a deficit for a while, you might both mentally and physically start to feel the impact of the lower calories your body wants to fight. The weight loss process as weight loss is seen as a threat to its survival, so you will find that cravings go up even as you get leaner and your mind fights against what you know you should be doing. You may even feel demotivated to train the way you know you should.”

9. It’s Okay to Take a Dieting Break

This is where potentially a deload week or a dieting break might come in handy, she says. “The key is doing these things strategically and with a plan, not just eating everything in sight while you lay on the couch for a couple weeks doing nothing, but giving your body a break from the calorie deficit, maybe even including a couple of foods that you wanted but haven't included,” she continues. “Just be strategic and give yourself guidelines to eat at maintenance level and give yourself easier macro breakdowns. Don't let this become a free-for-all. And then you might find that you're more motivated to train with the increase in fuel or that a deload week allows your body a break to repair and rebuild while also giving you a mental break from the strain of constantly pushing that progression. But be proactive. If you've been dieting for a while and give yourself that strategic break, you might be surprised by how much it even helps you break a plateau.”

10. Mistake 4: Using the Scale to Measure Progress

“The next bad habit is one that many of us fall prey to, which can prevent us from sticking with the habits we need to see the body recomp that we want, and it's only using the scale to measure progress,” she says.

11. The Scale “Doesn’t Show Us the Full Picture”

While the scale is “a great tool,” it “doesn't show us the full picture,” she says. “It can make you feel like you're actually even losing ground when results are truly building. And that's because the scale only shows you your weight at that moment on that day. It doesn't tell you if you've gained weight because you've gained muscle as you've lost fat or that you've lost weight because you've lost muscle while you've been gaining fat. Seeking to lose as fast as possible on the scale can actually sabotage your results and your long-term maintenance. But the faster that we seek to see results on the scale, the more we end up losing muscle mass and not just fat.”

RELATED: 20 Habits Blocking You From Losing Weight

12. Instead, Take Body Measurements and Progress Photos

“If you wanna focus on truly losing fat to look leaner, you need to track your progress by taking body measurements and progress pictures, especially progress pictures of areas you don't even care about changing,” she says. “Often, the places we wanna lose from the most are the last to go. So by taking multiple angles in areas, we can see fat loss occurring in other places and know how to stay on course.”

13. Mistake 5: Trying to Out Exercise Your Diet

The next bad habit, one of the “most challenging to break,” is trying to out-exercise your diet. “Many of us fall into this habit because it actually does work, at least to start. But this is also what keeps us stuck in that yo-yo dieting cycle, struggling more and more to lose the weight.”

14. It Will Work for a While, But Your Body Will Adapt

“As we get older, it works because most of us are more comfortable being uncomfortable in our training than we are with making nutritional changes. We can also create that calorie deficit to start by doing more in our workouts, and it makes us feel really in control to push hard. We feel good about our hard work, but working hard doesn't mean we're working hard in a direction that moves us forward,” she says. “And over time, our body adapts to the training stimulus, which means we aren't creating the calorie deficit we once were. So at that point, either our diet needs to change, or we need to train longer and harder. At some point, though, trying to do more in our workouts is going to burn us out, or it will lead to injury or even metabolic adaptations. Those metabolic adaptations then can make it harder and harder for us to lose as we get older.”

15. Instead, Your Nutrition Should Match Your Goals

“The simple fact is our nutrition has to match our goals, and by adjusting our diet, we can see our performance in the gym even improve. As we see that amazing body recomp happening, we will truly see the hard work and sweat we're putting in during our workouts pay off. And I think it's key that we really recognize that at times, we won't feel like our hard work is paying off. We won't see linear progress towards our fat loss goals,” she says.

RELATED: Lose 20 Pounds in 80 Days with a Vegetarian Diet

16. Mistake 6: Viewing Exercise as a Means to Lose Weight

Her next bad habit is “treating your workouts only as a means to lose weight,” she says. “While we do wanna design our workouts and our diet to work towards a singular goal, I think it is also key we set complimentary goals that further motivate us to do the habits we need to see results. And that's why I found a secret to consistency and success in seeing results was setting performance goals.”

17. Focus on Specific Performance Goals

“I stopped seeing my workouts as just a chance to burn more calories by focusing on specific performance goals, like improving my pushups, conquering a scale, lifting more weight in a specific lift, addressing an imbalance or even training for a competition. I helped keep myself more motivated to train hard. I have more purpose for each workout, and then I have something to track in the gym to see my hard work,” she says.

18. Shifting Your Goals Will Help You Lose Fat Anyway

“Building towards this ultimately also helped me lose fat because it kept me doing the habits I needed to. I wanted to eat to fuel and feel my best, which resulted in better body comp. I wanted to do the recovery. I needed to be able to train hard by setting complementary goals like performance goals for our workouts; we better help ourselves stay motivated to do the habits we need. Even when fat loss results are slow, or we've hit a plateau, it allows us to celebrate wins to keep moving forward,” she maintains.

19. Mistake 7: Don’t Feel Like You Are Starting Over

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The final bad habit that “sabotaged” her for years was “starting over every January,” she says. Every holiday season, she would make excuses and “pack on the pounds.”

20. She Realized the “Power of 1% Improvements”

“That's when I realized the power of 1% improvements. Just being a little more consistent, focusing on doing a minimum could help me move forward even during a time I didn't care as much or have the motivation and focus,” she says. “Too often, we rely on a perfect 21 days or six weeks, but doing the ideal only during those times doesn't allow for true habit changes or results to snowball. So it's key.”

RELATED: 12 Signs You're Eating Too Much Fat

21. It Doesn’t Have to Be “All or Nothing”

“Stop the all-or-nothing habit changes and realize that sometimes something is better than nothing. Embracing doing the minimum at times,” she recommends. And if you enjoyed this article, don't miss 20 Incredible Ozempic Success Stories of All Time.