Exercise is absolutely necessary for everyone – it helps boosts physical as well as mental health irrespective of whether you are trying to lose weight or not. For people who are trying to get lean and fit, regular exercise can revv metabolism up and burn excess calories. Additionally, exercise (even brisk walking), can bring down stress levels, and as we all know, chronic stress not only prevents weight loss, it leads to weight gain as well. There is absolutely no doubt that “diet” plays a larger and more important role to get you into a calorie deficit, exercise does actually help torch down significant calories. However, even with regular workout and hitting the gym every single day, if you are stuck at the same weight, these are 9 surprising reasons why exercise is not working in your favour, so that you can weed them out asap.

1. Not Moving Throughout The Day: One of the key factors to keep burning fat kicking is to keep the muscles in an active state. Working out for just 30 minutes or 1 hour in a day and then spending rest of the day on the couch or sitting for long hours at the work desk will switch off major fat-burning enzymes, bring the metabolism down, and make muscles inactive. With all these factors adding up, there will be a dip in fat metabolism and it would be difficult to drop any significant weight. The solution is to keep moving through the day, try to be on your feet as much as possible, walk at every given opportunity, and say “no” to sedentary lifestyle.

2. Not on a Nutritious Diet: We did say that calorie deficit is key to losing weight, but crash dieting or following fad diets will not only leave you with little to no energy for heavy workouts, the lack of essential nutrients like protein, complex carbs, minerals, etc., will lead to muscle wasting because there wouldn’t be enough nutrients to support tissue repair and fat burning. In fact, you should follow a good diet such as Rati Beauty diet to lose weight and look lean because it takes care of all your body’s nutritious needs while still keeping one in a calorie deficit.

3. No Warm Up Before Workout: People often tend to skip “warm up” before hitting a strenuous routine. A good warm up session actually helps to get the heart rate up and activate muscles so that you can hit them and burn more calories. Without proper warmup, you would not get desired outcome with exercise, so do give due importance to warmup and cool down routines.

4. No Variation in Workout Routine: Our bodies are smart enough to adapt to exercise routine and burn fewer calories when you do them over and over again. It’s important to challenge your body to avoid adaptation, so switch up the routine and try a variety of exercises. Cardio, yoga, weights, HIIT – all these exercise routines help challenge the body to change.

5. Exercise working up a Ravenous Appetite: Strenuous exercise may sometimes work up your appetite, leaving you hungry right after workout. It’s important to keep a diet on the calorie count and opt for nutritious post-workout meals that would keep you fuller for longer and help burn fat, and boost energy, and help with tissue repair as well and NOT pick sugar-laden energy drinks and food with refined carbs that will make you hungry quickly again.

6. No Rest Days: The body needs rest to repair tissues and muscles, so that you can burn more calories. In the enthusiasm to lose weight quickly, it’s wrong to work every single day. Working out just 4 to 5 days a week is just about enough to get fit and lean.

7. Miscalculating the number of calories burnt in the gym: A lot of people tend to adjust their calorie intake based on the “calories burn” numbers on the exercise machines. Do not rely blindly on the equipment at the gym to count the number of calories burnt. For example, you can only burn around 150 calories by pedalling away for half an hour on a stationary bike, and that’s not too much. Always keep a tabs on your diet and do not adjust the calories based on the readings that your treadmill shows you.

8. Treating yourself to Treats and Food after Exercise/Workout: This is called as “compensation effect.” Protein bars, sports drinks, chips, fried food, chocolates, ice creams with high number of calories are a few examples of stuff that most people consider as appropriate treats after a sweaty exercise session, but then they don’t realize they are adding so many calories back into their body, undoing their efforts in the gym. Most people falter here – after an hour of rigorous workout in the gym, we assume that we have burnt off significant calories and are entitled to high-calorie food. So, stop treating yourself with unhealthy food after a workout session.

9. Not Getting Good Sleep at Night: You can diet and you can exercise every single day, but without good sleep, and that too for no less than 7 hours, the extra pounds are not going anywhere. Make sure you get 6-8 hours of sleep every day. This will help to give body proper rest, keep the metabolism higher, and help you burn more and more calories.

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