Last Updated on May 5, 2022 by Local Trainer

The number one weight gain habit we see all the time as trainers.

There are so many bad habits we can fall into when it comes to weight gain but, they pale in comparison to this one habit I see over and over with so many clients.

We all fall into this habit to a certain extent and the key is to start to learn about it, create some awareness around it and figure out ways to break the pattern so we diminish its impact.

The Weight Gain Habit

The habit I’m going to talk about is our short and medium-term eating and exercise patterns.

Here are a few examples:

  • These are the patterns where we might order more takeout because we’re focused on other things.
  • We might find ourselves consistently grabbing a very unhealthy snack during the week over a month or two because we don’t really think it will add up.
  • Another scenario might be that we’re stressed out and we’re using that reason to let our eating go a little bit awry at dinner for a bunch of weeks over the winter.
  • We twisted an ankle and as a result, haven’t worked out in 13 weeks.

These are all habits that last for longer periods of time versus having a treat Saturday night or a tasty snack on a Thursday afternoon. These are the kind of habits we need to spot and break so that they don’t add up.

They’re big enough and long enough to have a big impact on our overall health. They can go also on long enough that they make it hard to get back on track.

The Weight Gain

These are the kind of weight gain habits that can add 10, 15, 20 or even 30 lbs to our frame if our awareness slips. Then one day, we turn around and realize we’ve gotten all this excess weight gain mostly from just not keeping track of these sneaky habits.

Do you Yo-Yo?

This is common among clients that have yo-yo issues with their weight as well. They’ll get into a healthy couple of months and then they’ll go into an unhealthy couple of months. My goal has never been to be that concerned with the healthy months but, I’m very concerned with ways to bust up the unhealthy months so that they don’t have the same amount of impact.

If you can slow down the unhealthy months, that’s a huge success in my book.

Covid was a perfect example of a longer-term, almost forced bad habit situation of a sedentary, stressful and inconvenient lifestyle being forced on all of us. Now that we’re starting to see some hope in this area, we likely have a few bad habits that need to be removed that we picked up during this challenging time.

How to Break The Habit

First, do an inventory of your eating habits for one week. See where the common ongoing unhealthy choices occur. You’ll need to assess whether that meal it’s causing the unhealthy eating habit or if the meal before it is causing it.

It’s very common to have a late lunch that causes you to crash and overeat at dinner.

You may also find that skipping breakfast in the morning leaves you flat most of the day.

Take a look at where you’re more likely to order a pizza or skip the dishes. is this happening more than twice a week? When you order a pizza, do you add four big slices of cucumber with it? It’s much easier to eat a whole pizza than it is to eat half a pizza with some cucumbers. You can cucumbers have a bunch of water and fibre in them Not to mention no calories. Balancing out your pizza intake vegetables would be a great start.

Second, do an inventory on your exercise. Lots of us get into an exercise routine and then we take long breaks from it. We’re doing great for five months and then things change and we stop for three months or in some cases, 2 years.

A simple way to avoid these long stops is to set a minimum base of exercise per week. It should be a minimum of one genuine exercise session per week. That’s a great amount to start with. this way, no matter what your mind stays connected with exercise and it has an influence on you. Without creating some form of structure, we end up lost in inaction.

having a minimum is a great way to avoid this an active State.

Third, add some healthier long-term habits. The main problem with diets is that they are transitory. We do them for awhile and then, we stop. The trick here to improving your life long-term is to actually make a few permanent changes.

For example, the other day I was talking to a client about the two eggs that they were eating at breakfast. I asked if they ate both of the yolks in the eggs. They stated that they often do and I mentioned that there wasn’t really a need for more fat in their diet so why not get rid of one or both of the egg yolks.

Since the client was hard boiling the eggs, it was easy to pop out the egg yolks and throw them out. Though some healthy fats are important in our diet, in most cases we’re getting more than enough. Odds are this will be a lasting long-term habit that we’ve changed in the client’s diet. These are the kind of habits we want to instill to help people stay healthy and have better patterns to follow just like this one.

Take a look at your eating end exercise short and medium-term habits and see if you’re falling into any bad habits. Once you start spotting them, try breaking them up so they don’t last as long and have such major impacts on your health and fitness.

Also be sure to add in a few good ones to take the place of the bad ones.

Best of health,

Local Trainer