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How to Sabotage Your Weight Loss Success

By Linda Copeland

People often come to me as a personal trainer because they want to lose weight. Most of the time, clients know what they should be doing… they just don’t know how to make themselves do it. I’ve spent many years telling people what they should do to lose weight. This article takes a different approach. Do you want to mess up your weight loss results?

Well, folks, here’s how you can blow it!

In my experience with clients, these are the sticking points, the critical choices that separate the people who lose weight from the people who don’t. That’s right, these are CHOICES. YOU make them. When you come to the fork in the road, the one where Path A leads to a high-fat restaurant meal and Path B leads to a sandwich and an apple you brought from home, only you choose which path to follow. No trainer, physician, or weight loss counselor makes these choices. You do.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”--Wendell Phillips

Remember this. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty from excessive eating, spending, anger, or any other self-control issue. Once you’ve established good habits and are confident you can make them stick, then you can relax. Not before.

Would you rather just go through the motions and pretend you’re trying to lose weight? Here are some effective ways to sabotage yourself.

Sabotage Strategy #1: Refuse to Keep Track of What You Eat & Drink

Does this sound like you? “I don’t know why I should keep a food diary. I know I don’t overeat. I hardly eat at all!” How about this? “I don’t know why I can’t lose weight. I eat healthy foods, just chicken, no beef or pork. It’s not fair!”

If you’re serious about losing weight and keeping it off, you better get serious about this task, and I mean serious. You need to own your eating behavior before you can correct it, and the only way to know is to keep track. Maybe you starve yourself all day and then binge on a big dinner. Maybe you drink too many double mocha lattes (yes, beverages count), to the tune of 700 calories each. Maybe you eat a 100 calorie salad covered in 500 calories worth of croutons, cheese, and dressing. I don’t know. Do you?

Sabotage Strategy #1A: (Corollary) Do a Half-@$$ed Job of Keeping Track

“For dinner, all I had was chicken, broccoli, and some potato salad. And some pudding, and a roll.”

This is what separates the weight loss wannabes from the weight loss elite. The weight loss elite know that “some” is not a measurable quantity. They know they had 3 ounces of baked boneless, skinless chicken breast, plus 1 cup of steamed broccoli, plus ½ cup of potato salad prepared with lowfat mayo, plus 1 Pepperidge Farm Harvest Roll without butter, plus ½ cup of Swiss Miss Chocolate Pudding.

This is where you “forget” to include certain items that you “wish” you hadn’t eaten, or where you refuse to measure anything, or don’t read labels thoroughly enough to know that, yes, that bag of chips = 2.5 servings, not one, and you’re consuming 500 calories, not 200, when you eat the whole bag.

Sabotage Strategy #2: Eat Restaurant and Fast-Food Fare

“I don’t have time to make my lunch, so I have to stop at McDonald’s/Arby’s/Wendy’s/fill in the blank.” “I have to eat out! My firm entertains clients at some of the finest restaurants in town.”

I’m terribly sorry to tell you this, and it’s going to sound harsh, and many restaurant owners will hate me for saying it. But… if you’re seriously trying to lose weight, you have no business eating food from most restaurants or fast-food places. This is just a simple, uncomfortable fact. Restaurant portion sizes are out of control. One high-fat, high-calorie restaurant meal can blow an entire week’s weight loss. Save the restaurant outings for later, once your weight and eating habits are under control.

If a restaurant meal is unavoidable, study the menu beforehand, ask questions, and order a low-calorie meal. Some socially-responsible chains, such as Panera, do publish calorie counts of their food items, so if you have to eat out, do some research first. Check the restaurant’s web site— just know that nutrition information is often buried in the “customer service” section, if they publish it at all. Along with restaurant web sites, my favorite sources of this information are the Calorie King web site (www.calorieking.com), their annual printed “Calorie, Fat, & Carbohydrate Counter” books, and the book “Restaurant Confidential” by Jacobson & Hurley at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Bet you didn’t know this: a turkey club sandwich (“It’s turkey, so it must be healthy!”) can have as many as 740 calories. How about a chicken chopped salad (“It’s a salad, it must be healthy!”) at 1,330 calories? A coconut shrimp appetizer (“seafood, must be healthy…?”) at 690 calories? It pays to do your research; it just might scare you onto the straight-and-narrow!

Bottom Line: If you don’t have time to make your lunch or cook for yourself, then make time, or stop pretending that weight loss is a priority! Need to break an addiction to fast food? Rent the movie “Supersize Me,” or read “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser. There is a downside to our fast-food culture, and being informed will help you make healthier choices for your body (and our planet).

Sabotage Strategy #3: Drink Your Calories

Are you one of those people who “never” eats? That means you consume zero calories, right? So you should be losing weight. Look at all those people on Survivor, where food is truly scarce. Boy, do they lose a lot of weight in 39 days! They lose a lot of muscle and look pretty gaunt by the end of the show.

If you “never” eat, and gauntness is not your problem, perhaps you are living on fattening and/or caffeinated beverages to get through your day. Grande Strawberries & Crème Frappucino, anyone? 455 calories. Whipped cream? Add another 115. Coca-Cola Super Big Gulp? 410 calories. 20 oz. bottle of green tea? 220 calories. Water? 0.

Beverages count!

Sabotage Strategy #3A: (Corollary) Drink Alcohol

No, no, no, no, NO. There is NO good reason for you to drink alcoholic beverages of any kind while you are trying to lose weight. Have you ever heard the phrase “empty calories”? You can just as easily socialize with a fizzy water in your hand as a cocktail or glass of wine. Fizzy water = 0 calories. 12 oz. Michelob = 155 calories. 6 oz. wine = 135 calories. Mojito = 160 calories. Gin & tonic = 220 calories. Long Island Iced Tea = 290 calories. Oh, and are you having just one? Do the math!

Sabotage Strategy #4: Be Willing to Do Whatever it Takes… EXCEPT…

“I just want to take this weight off, I’ll do anything!”
“OK, will you give up your long commute and desk job to become a (choose one) landscaper/ UPS driver/farmer/fisherman/dock worker/soldier/aerobics instructor?”

“Uhhhh, no, I can’t afford to quit my job. But I’ll do anything!”

Don’t say you’re willing to do whatever it takes, unless you really mean it. Maybe you will find time to work in exercise around the desk job and long commute. Maybe you won’t. But don’t say you “can’t”.

We all have 24 hours in a day, and you choose how to use your 24. If losing weight and getting fit and healthy are truly your priority, you’ll make time for these things. If your job is killing you, you will change jobs for the sake of your health. If you refuse to do so, let’s be clear, you are just paying lip service to social conventions.

Are you a people pleaser? Will you do whatever it takes to get fit and healthy, EXCEPT say no to other people? If “they” want you to go out to the ice cream parlor, will you go, even though you know you’ll order something you shouldn’t? If “they” want you to babysit and it means you’ll miss your exercise class, will you miss the class? Will you even attempt to work out a solution that serves both your needs?

Helping people is wonderful, and it makes the world go ‘round, but be sure your helping isn’t all one-sided. Compulsively helping other people, at your own expense, conveniently gives you somebody to blame when you don’t meet your goals, yes? And we’ve already established that you make your own choices. So choose the actions that are best for you.

I hope you’ve found this article enlightening. Maybe you’ve seen that one or more of these strategies is your “sabotage of choice”. I’d love to see you make better choices that bring you weight loss success.

Remember, you don’t have to log your food intake forever! You don’t have to stay out of restaurants for the rest of your life! You just need to do these things long enough to establish healthier habits. Once you’ve corrected your sabotaging behaviors, you can enjoy all things in moderation, and make course corrections when needed. I wish you the best of luck on your weight loss journey.

About the Author:

Linda Copeland is an ACE Certified Personal Trainer and Clinical Exercise Specialist. She owns Breakthrough Fitness, a personal training studio located in Upper Marlboro, MD. For more information, visit her website at http://www.breakthroughfitness.com or