10 Morning Habits That Prevent Weight Loss

Check out my client Stephanie’s transformation where she lost a whole bunch of fat.

If you’re trying to lose weight the last thing you want to do is mess it up first thing in the morning. And unfortunately, there’s no shortage of wrong information out there on a range of morning topics

like what to eat to speed up your metabolism, or whether a mandatory breakfast is required, or if you should workout on an empty stomach every morning.

With that said it’s easy to understand why you’re probably making at least a couple mistakes every morning that may be stopping you from losing weight.

So today I want to give you a definitive list of 10-morning habits that are preventing weight loss. By learning what these are

and by making some easy changes to your morning routine you can lose weight faster with fewer road bumps along your way.

And I want to start with one of the most obvious that many of you probably already know..eating traditional breakfast foods in the morning is a sure fire way to gain weight instead of losing it.

These foods are all very high in either refined flour, sugar, or both. Not only is a diet high in refined flour and sugar linked to obesity it’s also linked to insulin resistance and diabetes.

When you spike your blood sugar and insulin levels every morning with foods like this you make weight loss virtually impossible.

Now I’m not saying you can’t eat carbs for breakfast. You can definitely do that but stick to carb sources that are not processed and come from single ingredient foods.

Things like oatmeal, Ezekiel bread, and fruit will serve you much better. You’ll get fuller faster from the high fiber content of these real foods, you won’t have such a dramatic spike in insulin levels, and you won’t feel the desire to eat more.

And that actually leads right to another morning habit that prevents weight loss. I’m talking about impulse eating and this is a habit that’s linked directly to eating processed and refined foods.

These artificial flavors and excessive amounts of sugar get your taste buds used to a crazy amount of stimulation.

And then with real food like fruit and cinnamon flavored oatmeal, it becomes impossible to match the dopamine release you get from the unnatural sources that are full of added sugar.

Also like I already said these processed foods will spike your blood sugar temporarily only to be followed by a crash.

When your blood sugar comes crashing back down you’re going to feel really hungry for more of the same bad foods that got you into trouble, to begin with.

This vicious cycle creates a full day of impulse eating led by the reward center of your brain seeking its fix…ultimately making you even more hooked on junk and processed foods.

Luckily you can reset your palate by staying away from these addicting ingredients for a consistent period of time.

Start by concentrating on staying away from these foods for 3 days. Just after 3 days, you will appreciate real healthy food much more and after a few weeks, your desire for bad food will diminish significantly.

The next morning habit that you want to avoid is force feeding yourself breakfast. It seems like most trainers, nutritionists,

and most people, in general, believe that one of the worst things you can do for weight loss is skipping breakfast.

This is based on the idea that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and without it, you delay “starting your metabolism”

and you potentially risk entering the dreaded “starvation mode” Some people believe so strongly in this “you must eat breakfast philosophy”

that they would rather have you eat something bad like a bagel or a muffin rather than not eating anything at all.

This is completely wrong. First of all your body works off of totals, it doesn’t matter when you get those totals in for the day.

There is no such thing as “starting your metabolism.” Your metabolism continues running all night at a slower pace while you sleep because you’re lying still doing nothing while you sleep.

As soon as you wake up, get out of bed, and start moving around your metabolism already increases. It is true that having breakfast will temporarily increase your metabolism, but that’s simply due to the energy costs of digesting food.

And finally “the starvation mode” that we’ve been taught to fear is known as adaptive thermogenesis, and it is your body’s response to a decreased total daily intake of calories.

Again this means that no matter what you do if you cut calories to lose weight you will also slow your metabolism, breakfast has no impact one way or the other.

So here’s the bottom line If you simply don’t like breakfast there is no point of forcing down calories that are just going to take away from the total amount of food you can eat for the day when you are actually feeling hungry.

Or let’s say if one day you don’t feel like eating breakfast then don’t. If this leads you to pig out for lunchtime or for dinner then maybe you should incorporate breakfast,

but there is no set rule that having breakfast will somehow help everyone lose weight, in fact, a lot of people can lose more weight by skipping breakfast.

Let’s move on to a breakfast favorite…coffee. Now coffee itself is harmless for weight loss and it can even help you lose a couple extra pounds.

The problem is what you’re adding to your coffee every morning that could potentially hurt your weight loss efforts.

People will also many times get frappuccinos, mochas, and coolattas that can knock the calorie count of one coffee all the way up to 800 calories.

Compare that to the tiny 10 to 20 calories you would get from 32 ounces of black iced coffee. It’s understandable that a lot of people don’t want to drink black coffee

so use cinnamon, stevia, and vanilla extract to increase the sweetness and taste without increasing calories.

The next bad morning habit is hitting the snooze button when you’ve already planned a workout and you know you should get out of bed, put your sneakers on, and go exercise.

Now make no mistake it’s not required that you workout first thing in the morning, but for many people exercising first thing in the morning is the only way to ensure that it gets done.

Not only do distractions come up later on in the day, but you’re also usually more tired and you begin to procrastinate.

By working out first thing in the morning a couple of things happen. Number one you get your workout done and out of the way before you’ve had the chance to procrastinate.

2 you feel more energized and motivated to take on the rest of your day. And 3 you’re creating forward momentum, and encourage a positive mindset because you did what you said you were going to do.

Every morning that you refuse to workout and push it off until later makes it that much easier to do the same thing again later.

If you have a good nighttime routine that you can stick to then keep doing that, but if you’re like most people that dread exercising after a long day then make it a habit to ensure that you get your workout done first thing in the morning.

The next bad morning habit is not planning ahead and not preparing your own food for breakfast and for lunch.

Once you leave the house you will be bombarded by a bunch of terrible food choices. And if you get hungry you may find yourself at a drive-thru ordering some so-called “healthy” option.

Even if you choose healthy food at a high-quality restaurant you have to remember the way these places stay in business is by stimulating your taste buds in a way that brings you back.

Another bad morning habit is the impulse to weigh yourself on the scale every single day. When you weigh yourself every single day it becomes an obsession that’s based on an inaccurate system of measurement.

What I mean is that your weight will fluctuate from day to day so even though you may have lost some body fat the scale

may show that you’re heavier because on that day you happen to be holding some extra water weight.

The flip side that’s equally as bad is never weighing yourself at all because then you’re never measuring your progress at all.

I recommend weighing yourself once a week on the same day at the same time of the day. And even with this, you have to keep an open mind to the fact that your weight will fluctuate,

which is why you should also be checking your progress in the mirror and based on how your clothes are fitting.

The next morning mistake is not sleeping in long enough, and it turns out it’s just as bad to oversleep.

When you don’t sleep enough studies show that your impulse control goes down, your hunger hormones go up, and you’ll find yourself grazing throughout the day just to stay awake.

After a couple nights of not sleeping enough your fat burning and muscle building hormones will also be negatively affected.

On the other hand, studies have shown that sleeping more than 10 hours a night upped the risk of having a higher BMI.

Researchers seem to agree that the sweet spot you want to aim for is 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night.

Another morning habit that prevents a lot of people from losing weight is drinking anything other than water and low-calorie coffee.

If you’re not drinking coffee or tea you should be drinking water because water is going to help fill you up and it has no calories.

These drinks will add hundreds of calories of pretty much pure sugar and will make you crave more sweet drinks throughout the day.

The worst part is that none of them quench your thirst the way that water would so you wind up feeling thirsty leading you to drink more.

The last bad morning habit that I want to go over is stress. A lot of people spend their entire morning stressing about what’s going to happen throughout their day.

And the truth is that a lot of these worries never come true in reality so you wind up wasting energy on thoughts and ideas that aren’t even real.

Stress causes cortisol levels to go up in your body and cortisol can make it harder to build muscle, it can slow your metabolism, increase your food cravings,

and when you’re in a constant state of stress it becomes much more difficult to lose unwanted pounds.

To lower stress try to first identify the trigger and if possible eliminate that trigger. If that’s not possible then you can use methods

like only focusing your attention on things that are actually in your control, short meditation sessions, and breathing exercises throughout the day to help lower stress.

Getting enough sleep as I talked about earlier can greatly help with stress reduction as well.

That’s it guys I really hope this tip has helped you out and if you’re looking to lose the pounds fast with a guaranteed approach that’s proven to work try my 6-week challenge where on average my clients are losing 20 pounds or 5 percent of their body fat in just 6 weeks.

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