Trying to figure out why you’re still not losing weight? In this article, I break down the biggest diet mistakes keeping you overweight and how to fix them.

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Jumping into a weight loss program is intimidating and downright confusing. It’s not your fault. The big money marketing machine of the health industry is designed to spit out a ton of misinformation, tricking you into buying unnecessary crap.

As a result, you’ve likely spent too much time following some whack job on the TV morning shows that said “Drink this superfood smoothie.”

Or perhaps you signed up for those HIIT classes that have you feeling absolutely washed in the name of a great bootcamp “sweat sesh.”

Or maybe the store aisles convinced you that the packaged and heavily-processed item is not all that processed after all (that’s a lie) and is loaded with protein-packed goodness (another lie).

Then there are the influencers on Instagram and other social channels that toss a bunch of random products at you in hopes that you’ll purchase some juice cleanse.

Again, it’s not your fault. But, unfortunately it is your responsibility to make nutrition and your health a priority.

And that’s okay, because I’m here to help you out. I’m here to be your navigator through the misinformation and useless fitness industry junk.

In this article, I’m going to breakdown the biggest diet mistakes keeping you overweight and how to make the right adjustments to start losing weight for good.

Let’s get into it.

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The Biggest Diet Mistakes Keeping You Overweight

The little things add up. That’s the theme of this entire article.

Too often, you’ve probably jumped into a diet program, saw immediate results and thanked the weight loss Gods for the fantastic progress. Until that progress stalled.

That’s where the hard part kicked in. This is the part where you’ve likely hopped off of the plan and jumped into another unsustainable program.

Or perhaps you just gave up altogether.

In reality, staying the course, identifying some of the following diet mistakes keeping you overweight, and making small tweaks to correct those errors is the path forward for long-term success.

I. Not counting sauces and BLTs

I’ve talked about the dreaded calorie creep before and how harmless little bites, licks, and tastes (I call them BLTs) can actually take your well-earned calorie deficit and turn it into a surplus.

This is equally important for things like dressings and sauces. You must count those things if you are tracking macros and/or calories. If not, just note that those calories do add up. Quickly.

Save room in your calorie budget for sauces. Be sure to track every single bite or taste of food that hits your mouth.

One of the best ways to ensure this happens is to log your foods and meals before your day even begins. Yes. Plan out your entire day of eating … before you start eating. 

Create a roadmap for your daily diet. It’s a fantastic way to hold yourself accountable and avoid jumping off-plan.

II. Adding back in “activity calories burned” to your diet

Ugh. This one really turns me into an online rage monster ready to Hulk smash an entire city block of fitness industry nonsense.

MyFitnessPal and most of the other food tracking smartphone apps are tossing out a ton of detrimental information. They provide a look at how many calories they’ve estimated that you’ve burned throughout the day. Then they convince you to add those calories back into your day.

Do not do that. 

I repeat: Do not eat back the “calories burned” in your day to day eating. 

For one, those calories burned estimates are highly inaccurate. You did not burn 1,000 calories in your HIIT or Bootcamp class this morning (more on that later). 

By eating those calories back into your day, you are once again taking your deficit and turning it into a surplus. 

III. Focusing too much on cardio

Let’s just make this simple: Cardio is not as effective at weight loss as you’ve been led to believe.

You burn fewer calories than you think, while working a ton to do it. It increases your hunger cues, making it more difficult to stay on plan with your nutrition. And it can lead to overuse injuries if you aren’t careful.

Instead, you should let calories be the driver of your fat loss journey. And strength training should be the primary driver of your fitness approach. Building strength over time increases metabolism, improves bone health and provides an endless array of health benefits.

If you are just getting started on a strength program, I’ll show you how to set that up here with my beginner’s guide to the best fat loss workout program.

Make no mistake about it, nailing your calorie deficit, securing adequate protein and lifting heavy stuff a few times per week are the three major keys to developing a complete body transformation. 

Cardio is just a secondary tool and in most cases, is not really necessary. 

IV. Too many HIIT training and cardio-focused classes 

I want to be clear with this one: there is a time and a place for the high intensity interval training stuff. In fact, I created an entire eBook full of metabolic conditioning workouts that are short on time and provide fantastic results.

But, you must understand that when you take those classes like OrangeTheory and even some CrossFit WODs, you are not burning nearly the amount of calories that are advertised. Sure, when you get out of a 40-minute session of sweat and shame, you might feel like you just ran an entire marathon in just 20 minutes, but you didn’t.

Those bootcamps, HIIT sessions, and spin classes pump up their stats to make it sound like you burned 1,000 calories. The truth is that you probably only burned about 200-300 calories total. This is about the same amount of calories burned in a traditional strength-focused program anyway.

The big difference is what those high intensity sessions do to your hunger.

Chances are, after feeling like you lifted an elephant 16 times in 20 minutes, you are hungry enough to eat an entire elephant shortly thereafter.

On top of that, because you feel so washed after that workout, it can lead to being sedentary the rest of your day, reducing the total amount of calories burned throughout your day.

So you’re inclined to eat more and move less. That’s a recipe for a surefire calorie surplus.

The solution: ease up on the HIIT classes in favor of a more traditional strength training approach and see if that keeps hunger and snacking at bay.

V. Not moving enough throughout your day

Calorie deficits are created by eating fewer calories than you burn. This is typically manipulated by managing your eating. But, movement still plays a big factor.

It’s just not the type of movement that you’re likely thinking of: like cranking out endless hours of cardio and/or performing those crazy intense HIIT classes and bootcamps (see the previous point).

Movement in this bullet point comes from the easiest and most available form of exercise we have … walking. You need to get up off your ass and walk around more.

Related: I talked about the role of NEAT calories and why walking was a great way to get that metabolism revved up and burning calories again.

Get up and get moving and remember that all movement counts. It can be walking, fidgeting, stretching, dancing, playing a sport, or just playing horizontal hokey pokey with your partner (heh, heh). 

If you’re tied down to a desk for most of your day, that’s still not an excuse. You can absolutely make this work for you. 

A simple hack I encourage all of my sedentary online coaching clients to do is set a timer for 50-55 minutes. When it goes off, you get up and get moving to round out the hour. 

• Walk around the office or the block. 
• Walk to the bathroom. 
• Do some push-ups and squats (micro-workouts can be a really effective addition to your fitness plan).  
• Just move.

It’ll go a long way towards preventing injury, improving posture, and pushing progress back in gear.

VI. Not making protein a priority 

Protein is the most filling macro. It also burns the most calories in digestion. In other words, it takes energy to digest your food, and protein requires more energy for your digestive system to process than carbs or fats. 

As a result, on many occasions, simply increasing protein intake while keeping calories the same is still enough of a stimulus to warrant a change back to positive fat loss progress.

The bro-focused magazines might have you terrified over the perceived amount of protein you need to eat in a day. Don’t fall for that nonsense.

Sure, you’ll likely need to eat more protein than what you’re used to, but you most certainly do not need to devour an entire chicken and 27 egg whites each day. In this article, I wrote about how to calculate your protein needs and just how much you need for a fat loss diet.

Protein not only provides the most bang for your buck in terms of energy consumption through digestion, but it’s the major macro associated with preserving lean muscle tissue when calories are low.

That’s just fancy speak for: when you are dieting, you want to eat enough protein so you lose fat and not muscle. Keeping that hard-earned muscle is how you reveal a lean and toned physique at the end of your fat loss phase. 

When we talk about our desire to “lose weight,” in most cases, we are referring to losing fat (not muscle). Eating enough protein every day is how to make sure you do just that.

VII. Not tracking accurately 

Are you tracking your calories and macros? 

Are you tracking them accurately? 

Are you absolutely sure?

One of the biggest diet mistakes keeping you overweight is simple. You are not nailing down the calorie deficit consistently. 

It’s a big reason why I recommend everyone track their calories for at least a short timeframe. It’s an eye-opening experience that reveals just how many calories you’re taking in on a daily basis. 

In addition, this is a big reason why I also encourage everyone to break out the measuring cups and even a food scale. It might be time to weigh your food to get the most accurate accounting of the foods you are eating.

Break out a tablespoon and scoop out what you think is a serving size of peanut butter. Then break out the food scale and compare your serving to an actual measured portion of peanut butter. At almost 100 calories per measured tablespoon, you can see how underestimating your total calories can add up quickly.

Screwing up your tracking is so common, that I even take a few months out of the year to track every single bite of food and weigh everything just to make sure I’m on point. I encourage you to do the same.

VIII. You’re not eating enough (for too long)

I want to be super clear on this one before we dive in: Starvation mode is not a thing. If you stay in a calorie deficit consistently, over time you will continue to see results.

The problem is that dieting sucks. You restrict foods. You stay hungry. Your energy levels are lower. Sleep quality eventually starts to tank. And your hormones take a beating. 

In addition, your metabolism adapts to the new normal of lower calories. This is not your metabolism breaking. This does not mean you have a slow metabolism. It just means your body has become more efficient at utilizing the lower calorie intake for performing the day to day functions. This is fantastic for your body, but not so great for weight loss.

The solution involves giving yourself a break.

Every 8-12 weeks is a nice place to start. Even if it is just for 2-3 weeks at a time. 

It gives you a much-needed rest, both physically and mentally, from the rigors of dieting. It gives you a carrot to chase to keep you on point for the dieting phase. And you can pair this diet break with social events like weddings, birthdays, and vacations so you can enjoy a little more food without the guilt of trying to maintain a deficit.

It’s important to understand this is really more about the mental break and not necessarily the physical aspect. Sure, metabolism can adapt over time to a lower calorie intake and bumping your eating back to a maintenance setting can help overcome that periodic (and temporary) slowdown.

But more realistically, what I’ve seen happen over my years in coaching is that when you’ve been in a deficit for too long, it’s easier to start sneaking little BLTs and other foods back into your routine. You think you’ve been maintaining your deficit, but in reality, you’ve been slowly walking your calories back up with the calorie creep and screwing up your progress altogether.

The diet break takes a more official approach to increasing calories so you can manage things properly. It lets you take a rest and you can get back to work when you’re ready to resume the diet. 

Look, even football players take a halftime break. You can and should do the same with your diet.

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There you have it. If you’ve been struggling to see meaningful progress, despite “doing everything right,” you might actually be committing one of these diet mistakes keeping you overweight. 

This isn’t an exhaustive list, there are still some other mistakes that you could be making. But these are by far the most common that I’ve noticed as a coach.

In most cases, if you can commit to cleaning up these errors, you’ll be well on your way to seeing that progress get right back on track.

Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay 

Let me help you learn how to avoid the biggest diet mistakes keeping you overweight … 

I’m here to help you out. 

If you have any questions, reach out. I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “Diet mistakes keeping you overweight” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Or you can hit me up anytime on the socialz on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

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