12 Weight Loss Traps

11. You’re Not Addressing Your Stress

Chronic tension alters hormones, like adrenaline, corticotropin, and cortisol, that can increase your appetite and make you store more fat. Normally, cortisol peaks in the morning, then decreases throughout the day. But a multicenter study found that women facing stresses at home often fail to show a drop in cortisol in the evening. That’s when you’re likely to turn to high-carb, high-calorie snacks for the soothing serotonin they trigger. Better, when stress is getting to you, listen to your favorite music or go outside for some “eco-therapy” (a.k.a. a walk), advises Kathleen Hall, Ph.D., founder of the Stress Institute in Atlanta. What may be most effective of all: concentrating on something you’re grateful for. “It’s physiologically impossible to be grateful and stressed at the same time because the two emotional states release different types of hormones,” says Hall.

12. You Don’t Keep Track

You may think you’re eating right, “but we’re not as consistent as we think, and our memories are selective,” says Fernstrom. The solution is to write it down. In a landmark Kaiser Permanente study of more than 2,000 dieters, keeping a food diary turned out to be the best predictor (even better than exercise habits) of whether people would lose weight. In other research, those who weighed themselves regularly after losing weight kept pounds off most successfully over the course of a year; while they regained slightly (two to four pounds), people who stepped on the scale less frequently put on an average of nine pounds. Buy a pretty journal or find an online weight-and-exercise tracker — whichever motivates you best.

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