1. Working out more than necessary

Training every day, counting every calorie, and getting up at 6 am to keep fit does not work. The more pressure you place on yourself, the sooner your enthusiasm will run out.

Just three workouts a week and a balanced diet is all that is needed to maintain an ideal figure.

2. Being your own coach

Fitness is like medicine. If used correctly, it will improve your life and health, if not, it may harm you. So, just as you need a doctor for medical treatment, you also need a coach to keep fit properly. The coach will create a customized training program just for you, teach you how to handle the training apparatus and, most importantly, teach the technique of exercises. Without a coach, you may be training hard and achieving little. Worse, you could hurt your joints, your spine – even get injured.

If you are unable to bring on a coach, study the technique of doing the exercises yourself. Fortunately, the Internet is full of free lessons, and use the camera on your smartphone to critique yourself.

3. Eat anything after a workout – especially if the food is healthy.

They say if a physicist wrote a book about losing weight, there would be only one phrase: consume less energy than you expend. You can even live in the gym and eat the best food in the world, but if you do not follow this rule, you will not lose a gram.

Not only that, if you don’t cut down on foods with a high caloric content, it is impossible.You may lose weight, but how does your body get enough strength for training? You will slow down the metabolism and start burning muscles. You may be thin, but you’ll feel fatigued. Note: Reduce your calorie intake by 20-30% of the norm, not more.

4. Ignore the warm-up

When your body is not ready to pick up heavy loads, it’s impossible to achieve good results. If your body is not warmed up prior to exercising, your muscles are stiff, and the body will go into a little bit of shock from heavy loads.

When you warm-up, you increase the mobility of your joints, accelerate your blood supply, and increase the elasticity of your muscles. Without warming up, your workout will not be effective – not to mention that it is also dangerous to your body.

5. Ignore strength training and only do cardio

During an hour of “fat-loss” training, you will lose 500-800 calories. While this is a lot, to lose 1 kg of pure fat you need to burn 7,700 calories.

I encourage you to find a balance between cardio and strength training. Both are important, however, devote as much or MORE time to strength training to preserve muscle mass and improve your body composition. Everyone has to battle the age-related decline in muscle mass at some point. Strength training is the best way to do that.