Tips to Lose Weight Faster

6 Ways You’re Sabotaging Weight Loss

If you're having trouble losing weight, some of your everyday choices could be to blame. Find out why your scale is stalled, and what you can do about it
By Emily G. W. Chau fitbie
 

You Eat Frozen Meals

Frozen dinners save time and money, but you may be trading convenience for some extra pounds. These meals are often high in calories and fat, but the bigger issue may be their salt content. Prepackaged meals regularly carry more than 40 percent of your daily recommended value of sodium—even some of the so-called “healthy” choices are salt bombs.

Salt itself doesn’t have any calories, but it does make you hungry and thirsty, so you’re more likely to overeat on other foods, says Lyssie Lakatos, RD, and Tammy Lakatos Shames, RD, authors of The Secret to Skinny: How Salt Makes You Fat. Science backs this up. According to a 2007 study in the journal Obesity, rats that were fed a high sodium diet ate more food, lost more lean muscle, and developed more fat than those that noshed on less salty fare.

Sodium can be hidden in the most unlikely foods (bread, cottage cheese), so be sure to check the nutrition labels and chose low-sodium options. Three more good rules of thumb to help avoid salt: Pick fresh meats instead of deli meats, fresh and frozen vegetables instead of canned; limit your use of ketchup and mustard.

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