Ten Things You Should Never Do to Lose Weight

Dieting has been a hot topic since the world began, and that means starting with Adam and Eve. Let's face it, they were in a garden, so their choices were only raw fruits and vegetables. We are no longer surrounded by raw fruits and vegetables only, so what do we do? How do we combat the borage of Twix bars, McDonald's hamburgers, pizza and my all time favorite, M&M's? The answer is not so simple, but there are at least ten things that you should never do to put yourself on a path to worse resistance.

Ten Worst Ways to Lose Weight

1. Starving yourself. Making a decision not to eat anything is not going to help you lose weight. After about three or four days of not eating, you will see that you have lost weight but in addition to that you will feel weak and tired. Fasting is extremely beneficial for good health but there is right and a wrong way to do it. Fasting is altogether a different concept than starvation. Fasting is a time set aside to focus on spiritual matters, or in most cases limiting different types of foods you may have. For example, one might decide to follow the "Daniel Diet", a diet comprised of fruits and vegetables only with water.

When I was in college, I decided that it would be a good idea to starve myself because I had gained a sum total of ten pounds. Ah, the freshman ten! It wasn't unusual for anyone as a freshman to gain weight while getting adjusted to college life. Eventually, it was noticeable to my roommate and friends who encouraged me to get help or a phone call would be made to my parents. With the fear of being taken away from my new found friends, I decided to turn myself in. I did get some counseling and nutritional guidance, but I did find that trying to go back into my regular diet plan just made me gain back more weight, and a lot faster. My personal attempt at anorexia was foiled, and I realized in the end it was not a successful way to diet.

2. Eating salad three times a day. Eating salad three times a day may help you lose weight in the beginning, but only because you will find yourself in the restroom twenty times a day! Salad is a good, healthy option but only when it's made properly. Sure, loads of salad dressing and croutons aren't helpful on your calorie count, but the more colorful your salad is the better it is for you. Try adding different types of peppers, mixing up your lettuce, tomatoes and adding low calorie Soynuts or Sunflower seeds. You can also get creative with salad dressings by making your own. Just pick up a copy of "The Maker's Diet", by Dr. Jordin Rubin, and you will find some organic combinations that you can make yourself with what you might have already in your kitchen cabinets.

A great resource to determine how to balance out your veggies and proteins, is a table in the "The Body Sculpting Bible Swimsuit Workout", by James Villepigue. This book will give you a breakdown of a diet plan you can follow in addition to helping you figure out your daily caloric intake. Some of us want to lose weight, while others are now ready to maintain their weight.

3. Jogging Seven Days a Week. Don't get me wrong, jogging is great in the right weather but it's hard on the joints. I had trouble with shin splints growing up because I played sports year round. My legs were constantly pounding on something, so I was told don't ever jog on concrete it's hard on your knees and joints. I noticed the more I would jog my legs would hurt worse. So, I found alternative ways to get in shape. Swimming, weight-training and step aerobics helped change up the routine to so I wasn't pounding on that hard concrete. The variety of your workouts will keep you interested too. Doing the same thing all the time gets old, and discourages a lot of people from exercising.

4. Cybergenics Diet Fad. Did anyone do Cybergenics back in the 90's besides me? I was a serious weight trainer at an early age, and I was exposed to various training and diet methods at the most critical years of my teenage life. However, Cybergenics is not for the faint of heart. I decided to try it since it was GNC, and man was it hard! I felt great after I finished the four week program, but it really is designed for jump start purposes only. This is not a plan you are meant to follow long term, as it would wear you out pretty quick and divert your attention to a cheeseburger in a matter of days. You work out three times a day with this program which was fine for me during the summer, but once I went back to college it was a little more challenging eating in the cafeteria! I lost a total of forty pounds in one summer, but I have to admit is a lot of work and the average person who isn't bodybuilding for a living simply won't be able to do this program at all.

5. The Grapefruit Diet. Grapefruits are great for you, but only in moderation. Grapefruit is a great fat burner, but not everyone can have grapefruit. Beware of certain medications as they may interact with the enzyme that's in the grapefruit, so check with your doctor or pharmacist before you gorge on the Ruby Reds. The other thing you want to watch out for, is if your sensitive to acid content. If you generally get heartburn, or you find yourself taking Prilosec everyday, you may want to be cautious of how many grapefruits you eat. They are citrus fruit, so they have citric acid which is hard on the stomach lining. I personally have never eaten just grapefruits all day long, but because of the fat burning capabilities I used to eat one with every meal, and two at night after dinner.

6. The use of laxatives. I know what your thinking! Man, what a crappy solution! But, in reality it has worked for many young women battling weight gain. While it is true that cleansing the system is a great way to jump start your weight loss, using laxatives is not beneficial at all. Laxatives should only be used when absolutely necessary because they will irritate the lining of your bowels when used repeatedly. They were never intended by anyone to be used for weight loss. Eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables will help your system regulate itself properly, and when necessary you can always increase your fiber intake. When someone uses laxatives repeatedly, they often become dependent on them.

7. Sauna Suits. Sauna suits have helped many a wrestler lose those few extra pounds to weigh in before a match, but they certainly will get you dehydrated too. The idea of the sauna suit is to help someone shed extra water weight, but unless you are really retaining water then it won't do you much good. I dated a wrestler four years ago, and he was telling me about the trials of a weigh in before a match. I heard the horror stories of how he was so overheated once from wearing it under his clothing everywhere he went that he passed out and was rushed to the hospital only to discover he was suffering from a heat stroke. Sauna suits might help you lose some excess water, but it's unhealthy to lose water your body needs to keep you well hydrated, especially in summer.

8. Hypnotics. Hypnotics is a lot of fun when it isn't me being led around by a dog leash on stage, but I don't believe it helps anyone lose weight. When I first started college, I was studying Psychology and I was most fascinated by what the mind could do on its own. If you want to, you can certainly convince yourself that anything is true, but thinking that someone else can do this for you is not the way to go. For one, believing that someone else is going to talk you into losing weight while you are unaware of it is nonsense. If you know that you want to lose the weight, then you decide for yourself that you are just going to get off your duff and do it!

9. Visualization. Do you have to see results first in order to believe them? If you live life this way, then visualizing your weight loss won't work for you. I practice visualization heavily from a business stand point, but seeing yourself thin is not what is going to get you there. Visualization is a great tool, and yes you should incorporate them into your daily schedule, but again the end result is that you have to exercise and eat right. Visualizing yourself eating oranges and apples isn't the same as actually eating oranges and apples. Make sense?

10. Deciding to let yourself go. In the end, we can only choose and decide for ourselves what we will do and how we will live our lives. No one else can do it for us. That is powerful! Just think, whatever you decide you can have, you can have. I am reading a great book by Brian Tracey, and he says that if you have goals and you want something bad enough in your life, then determine what price you have to pay and get busy paying that price. That is a strong statement. But, if you just say to yourself, well I guess I will never lose weight and I will always be heavy like my family, then you have determined to let yourself go. That just means you don't care. If you want to lose weight, then decide how you will do it. Set goals. Not setting a goal to lose weight, is definitely the worst way to not lose weight!