Habits sabotage your weight loss efforts.

    Some people eat low fat, skip meals, exercise daily to lose weight but fail.

There are several habits that make your weight loss efforts unsuccessful:

* Eat less fat.

The advice may seem counterintuitive, but stop buying foods that are advertised as low-fat or fat-free. Usually, they only help you cut a few calories. Some even replace harmless fats with fast-absorbing carbs that lead to too much added sugar, which then triggers hunger pangs.

* Exercise every day.

Your daily workout routine is fine, but you need to give your body time to rest and recover.

According to fitness expert and nutritionist Jay Cardiello, being too active can lead to injury, hindering your workout. This coach suggests taking a day or two off each week.

* Sleep too little or too much.

According to researchers, dieters who slept 5 hours or less accumulated 2.5 times more belly fat. The same thing happened to people who slept more than 8 hours a day. An average of 6-7 hours of sleep per night is the optimal solution for weight control.

* Skip meals.

In a survey by the American Council for Calorie Control, 17% of Americans admitted to skipping meals to lose weight. In fact, skipping meals increases your odds of obesity, especially when you don’t eat breakfast.

A study from the American Journal of Epidemiology found that people who skip breakfast are 4.5 times more likely to be obese. Skipping meals slows down your metabolism and increases hunger. That puts your body in fat storage mode and increases your risk of overeating at your next meal.

* Eat too fast.

It takes 20 minutes for the stomach to tell the brain that you have eaten enough food. A study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that slow eaters consumed 66 fewer calories per meal than fast eaters.

If you can cut 66 calories per meal, you can lose up to 9 kg in a year.

* Leave the lights on when you sleep.

Some people’s nightly habits can cause weight gain. A statistic published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that people who slept in the darkest room had a 21% lower risk of obesity than those who slept in the room with the most light.