4 Weight Loss Mistakes I Will Never Make Again That “Kept Me Fat”

Are you struggling to lose weight, even though you think you are doing everything right? Juliana Crispo is a mom of 2 kids 3 and under, a Lifetime Natural Pro Bikini Champion in 2 Federations, and a former successful Silicon Valley-based tech executive and entrepreneur. For much of her life, she struggled with yo-yo dieting and weight loss before finally figuring it all out. In one viral video, she shares a few “weight loss mistakes that kept me from losing the weight,” she says. “Whether you have five or a hundred pounds to lose, stick around at the very end because you're gonna wanna make sure you're not making any of the mistakes I made that could be keeping you from getting the body and lifestyle you've always wanted.”

Mistake 1: Thinking You Can Hate Yourself Into a Body You Love

She starts off by pointing out that “you cannot hate yourself into a body you love. Weight loss does not equal happiness,” she says in her video. And, she has learned that the hard way as a “former yo-yo dieter” and “somebody that has always struggled with getting lean and staying lean because I just love food so damn much.”

Mistake 2: Not Figuring Out How to Meal Prep for Herself Personally

Her next mistake was “not figuring out how to make meal prep work for me and my personality,” she says in her video. “We all know that meal prepping is essential to weight loss because restaurants tend to put a lot of additional calories in their food to keep you coming back because calories just taste so good.”

Don’t Overcomplicate Meal Prep

She points out in the video that most people overcomplicate meal prep and end up getting exasperated and quitting. She would end up getting “really bored of whatever it is that I meal prepped and I'd find myself going back to my old ways” or she would “just forgo meal prepping altogether because it was just too overwhelmed and intimidated by the process to begin with.”

She Preps with Just Two Containers

Instead of “trying to lean into a meal prep process” that involved lots of Tupperware containers with several compartments, “clearly not designed for someone like me, I found a version that works for me, and it involves prepping just two Tupperware containers, maybe just one sometimes. And this has been the extent of my meal prep process for years,” she says.

The First is Filled with Protein

“In the first container is typically a source of protein that's ready to eat immediately when I'm hungry and I just wanna reach for the Oreos or the peanut butter. This could be boneless, skinless chicken breasts, chicken thighs, lentils,” she says in her video. She will make “a large batch of protein two to three times per week and “add tons of spices to make things taste good and be interesting.”

RELATED:I’m a Nutritionist, and This Protein-Packed Breakfast Helps Me Shed Pounds and Boost My Metabolism

Why Protein Is Key for Meal Prep

She explains that prepping protein is so important because it “is usually the hardest to meal prep. It's pretty easy to grab some carbs or fats really quickly, but protein usually takes a little bit more time to actually cook,” she says. And “including some protein in your meals helps you stay fuller longer, and when you're full, you're less likely to snack on random stuff that's not gonna do much for your fitness goals.” Protein is also great for the thermic effect, which means your body will burn more calories when you eat it.

She Fills the Second Container with Veggies

The second container will be filled with a “large portion of spiced-up vegetables,” she says in her video. “Even if you are emotionally allergic to vegetables, there is always a way to make them taste good for low calories.” She notes that they are important because “they're super low in calories., so you can eat a ton of them, they're super high in fiber, so it makes you feel full and like you're gonna poop so well.”

Mistake 3: Not Understanding How Harmful Yo-Yo Dieting Is

Her next mistake? “I did not understand how harmful yo-yo dieting is,” she says in her video. “No one thinks they're gonna be that guy or gal that gains back all the weight,” she points out. “I would always hear yo-yo dieting is bad for you. It hurts your body.” But she wouldn’t listen because she was desperate to lose weight fast. “But here's a fact: Yo-yo dieting is a surefire way to make you fatter.” This is because you lose water, weight, and muscle tone on these types of diets, which negatively impacts your metabolism. And, you end up developing “a horrible relationship with food that might traumatize you for the rest of your life,” she says. She also points to research finding that even with twins, the one who diets more ends up “the fatter twin.”

Mistake 4: Not Implementing Diet Breaks

The next mistake? “Not implementing diet breaks when I needed them,” she says. “A diet break is kind of like it sounds: you're not gaining weight, but you're not losing weight either. You're just maintaining at your new weight by eating at your new maintenance calories,” she says in her video. “I work that in a little bit every day for as long as I need to mentally prepare myself to go back into the diet, finish the diet, do what I need to do. Don't be freaked out by a little bit of water weight in the first three days. If the scale keeps climbing, you might be eating above your maintenance calories,” she says.

RELATED:Eat More, Weigh Less: 8 Surprising Reverse Diet Tips

With the Extra Calories, She Can Exercise Harder

“With this newfound energy I'm getting from this little bit of additional calories and a little bit more food freedom, I'll be able to go a little bit harder with my workouts, maybe focus on building a little bit more muscle while losing fat in the process,” she says in her video. “A great way to build muscle and lose fat is just to eat your maintenance calories and lift heavy weights.” And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.

Are you trying to lose weight but not finding much success? It’s possible you are making a common mistake. Juliana Crispo is a mom of 2 kids 3 and under, a Lifetime Natural Pro Bikini Champion in 2 Federations, and a former successful Silicon Valley-based tech executive and entrepreneur.
”Today, we're talking about weight loss myths. I'm someone that has made every single one of these mistakes,” she says. “These are mistakes that I made for years on my fitness journey.”

Mistake 1: Only Exercising

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“Mistake number one, I thought for the longest time that exercise was the key to fat loss,” she says. “What I would do is I would go to the gym, I'd get on a cardio machine, I'd screw around with some weights, and then I'd go home, and I would just eat like I normally did, but I would also overcompensate because I was hungry from all that cardio. Cardio just makes me ravenous.”

She Walks

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Now, she avoids intense cardio. “This is why now my main source of cardio is just walking 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day because it doesn't make me very hungry,” she explains.

Mistake 2: Not Getting Into a Calorie Deficit

“Also, when I'm just getting into a new weight loss phase, I prioritize getting my calorie deficit down first,” she says. “I'll take one, up to two weeks just to master my calorie deficit before I even touch exercise. The reality is you don't even need exercise to lose fat. Just eat in a calorie deficit.”

Also, Make Sure to Strength Train

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Don’t Overlook Strength Training. Cardio activity is just a tool to make it go faster, and strength training is what gives your body shape so you don't get skinny fat.

RELATED:12-3-30 Walking Method: 20 Proven Tips to Lose Weight Faster

Mistake 3: Relying on Intuitive Eating

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Her third mistake? “I believed intuitive eating would work for me,” she says. “Intuitive eating is a way of eating popularized by this book, and it took off in the height of diet culture because so many people have had horrible experiences with dieting.” She explains that in the boo, there are ten principles of intuitive eating, “but the general gist is to be mindful and eat when you're hungry and stop when you're full.”

Lots of Influencers Rely on Intuitive Eating

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“Many fitness influencers to this day talk about intuitive eating as a good approach to weight loss. For example, one of the first fitness influencers I ever followed was Buff Bunny, and she posted a video called This Diet Worked for Me. In this video, she talks about how she used intuitive eating to lose weight because you don't have to track anything.”

RELATED: This Plan Is How to Lose 5 Percent Body Fat In 2 Weeks

It’s Not Great for Fat Loss

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However, there is a “flip side,” she points out. And that is, many people maintain intuitive eating, which isn’t great for fat loss. “For the longest period of time, I felt like something was wrong with me because I couldn't just listen to my body. It wasn't until I started tracking and weighing my food that I really started to learn putting a meal together with enough protein, carbs, and fats really makes me feel full, and then I'm able to do other things besides focus on food for a solid three to four hours. It was great.”

Mistake 4: Fear of Tracking Calories

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Her next mistake? “I was afraid of tracking calories and weighing my food,” she says. For example, chicken and broccoli can help you gain weight, but if you eat too much of it, you will gain weight. You can benchmark your progress with this useful Lean Body Mass Calculator.

You Can Gain Weight From Healthy Food

“I got chubbier from eating chicken and broccoli because I felt so deprived of the foods I really loved,” she says. “While trying to eat clean with this chicken and broccoli diet, I would binge on foods I actually craved late at night.”

Portion Size Matters

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“However, had I invested time upfront in just learning from tracking and weighing my food, I could have learned that there's no such thing as unhealthy or bad foods,” she says. The important thing is focusing on “healthy portion sizes, and so I could still enjoy all the things I love in moderation on my weight loss journey without creating these fear foods of anything that fell outside of my chicken and broccoli meal plan,” she says.

RELATED: Lose 10 Pounds in 30 Days Over 50 on Simple Animal Protein and Fruit Diet

You Won’t Have to Track and Weigh Food Forever

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“You don't have to track and weigh your food forever. Even a lot of fitness influencers say they'll go from periods of intuitive eating where they just listen to their body a little bit, and then when they start to get a little bit more fluffy, they'll bring it in, they'll start tracking and weighing their food. Again, it's not about being married to your food scale or MyFitnessPal. It's about learning and then unlearning along your journey.”

Mistake 5: Not Understanding Macros

Mistake 5? “I didn't understand how to allocate macros when I was in my dieting phase,” she says. “Many of you know macros are just protein, carbs, and fats. They serve different purposes to nourish your body. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is being in a calorie deficit.”

Make Sure to Fill Up

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“However, the key to sustaining a calorie deficit is just don't get hungry. That's the name of the game. Don't get hungry. As soon as you get hungry, all bets are off. The little hangry monster comes out, and it's just, it's just bad.”

Pay Attention to Your Macro Breakdown

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“Having a general idea of the macronutrient distribution you're consuming is very important to make sure that you stay feeling full, and if you stay full, you're more likely to adhere to your calorie deficit,” she says. “A macro breakdown that works for me to keep staying full, feeling satiated, and adhering to my calorie deficit is having about 30% of my calorie deficit coming from protein, 30% coming from fat, and about 40% coming from carbohydrates.”

RELATED: 4 Meals I Ate to Lose 30 Pounds in 12 Weeks

If You Don’t, You Could End Up Binging

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“What happens if I'm not in the ballpark generally of hitting these macros over a period of a few days is on like day three, I'll start to get really hungry, and then all of a sudden I find myself like wandering into a seven 11 and just buying donuts and eating them, and I don't know what happened.”

Mistake 6: Overcompensating

The next mistake is “huge,” she says. “I would try to overcompensate when I had one of my 7-Eleven freakouts. This was mainly more so in my bikini competitor days because you had to be so black and white about your diet. What would happen is when I messed up somehow, I just like ate a donut or three, I would try and overcompensate the next day by doing more cardio or trying to eat fewer carbs and fats, and this was just a recipe for this horrible cycle of binging and over-exercising and feeling horrible, and that's just no way to live.”

Don’t Fall Into the “Binge and Restrict” Cycle

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“Now, if that happens and I overeat on my diet for the day, I just stick to what I would normally eat on my daily diet, almost as if that 7-Eleven incident never happened. I just learn from it, and I move on. So whatever you do, if you ever have a mess up in your diet, don't ever, ever, ever try and overcompensate by doing more cardio or eating less. Just eat as if you would normally eat so that you don't fall into any binge and restrict cycle,” she suggests.

Mistake 7: Fear of Building Muscle

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Her next mistake? “I was afraid of building muscle,” she says. She explains that building muscle is great because “the more mass and the more muscle that I have, the more I weigh, the more I can eat and not gain too much fat,” she says.

RELATED: What Would Happen to Your Body if You Only Ate Eggs for 30 Days

You Can Reshape Your Body with Exercise and Nutrition

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“It took me years of focused effort in the gym and being methodical about my nutrition to put on the muscle mass I was able to achieve here. The cool thing I've learned through bodybuilding is that you can use training to emphasize certain parts of your body and de-emphasize others,” she says. “You can literally reshape your body with the right training and nutrition, and that's what I love so much about lifting weights.”

Mistake 8: Not Stacking Habits

“If I were to stack priorities when it comes to actually losing fat, it would go like this. Very foundational sleep. Get your sleep in order. Second thing, get your calorie deficit in order. Third thing, do some strength training. Focus on maintaining as much muscle mass as you have, and then maybe consider adding in some cardio,” she concludes. And if you enjoyed this article, take advantage of these 15 Quick Ways to Lose Body Fat Percentage in a Week.

Are you struggling to lose weight? Make this year your weight loss success story by avoiding some diet and fitness strategies that may be backfiring. Tameika Gentles is a fitness coach and weight loss warrior who dropped a whopping 100 pounds sustainably. In a new post, she reveals a few of the things she avoided doing that enabled her to lose a lot of weight. “5 controversial things I DO NOT recommend if you’re trying to lose 50 pounds or more (and I’ve lost 100 lbs…),” she writes across the Instagram video.

She’s Lost 100 Pounds and Kept It Off After Failing Over and Over Again

“I’ve been there—tried it all and failed HARD. But after losing 100 lbs and keeping it off, here’s what I’ve learned,” she continues in the post. “And what I’m sharing isn’t about what’s good or bad—it’s about what’s NOT necessary for long-term success.”

You “Don’t Need to Do” These 5 Things to Lose Weight

“No shame to those who choose these methods—do what works for YOU! This message is for the people who feel like they have to follow these trends to succeed. I’m here to tell you: you don’t. If you’re kicking off your weight loss journey in 2025, here are five things you don’t need to do,” she says.

RELATED: Nutritionist Lost 80 Pounds With These 5 Daily Habits

1. Fasting

Fasting is the first thing you don’t need to do in order to lose weight. “Fasting can work for some, but it’s not a must for results. Skipping meals often leads to overeating later, slows your metabolism, and can mess with your hormones. Sustainable weight loss is about finding balance, not extremes,” she writes.

2. Low Carb Diet

The second thing you don’t need to do? Go on low-carb diets. “Cutting carbs might lead to quick results, but is it realistic for life? Carbs fuel your body and mind—they’re not the enemy. You don’t need to cut out entire food groups to see progress,” she says.

3. Excessive Exercise

The third thing you don’t need to do? Excessive exercise. “More isn’t always better. It’s about consistency. 30 minutes of daily movement for a year beats an intense 3-week overhaul that leads to burnout and months of inactivity,” she writes.

RELATED: This Coach Lost 110 Pounds by Walking More and These 4 Simple Changes

4. Detoxes

Number four? Detoxes. “Save your money. Your liver and kidneys are built-in detox powerhouses. Most detoxes are unnecessary (and some are even harmful). Focus on real, nourishing food instead,” she says.

5. Weight Loss Pills/Supplements

Weight loss pills and supplements are also not needed. “They’re often unregulated, unsustainable, and don’t address the behaviors that lead to lasting change. I lost 100 lbs without them, and my clients succeed without them, too. You don’t need them,” she says.

RELATED: Top Nutrition MD Reveals 5 Signs You're Eating Too Much Protein

Instead, Focus on Balance, Consistency, and What Works for You

“The key to sustainable weight loss isn’t doing what’s trendy—it’s finding what works for YOU. Starting your 2025 journey? Remember, you don’t need to follow extreme trends to see real, lasting progress. Focus on balance, consistency, and what fits your life,” she concludes. And if you enjoyed this article, don't missI’m a Nutritionist and Here Are 25 Weight Loss Truths You Need to Hear.

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

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"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

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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

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"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.