If you’re trying to lose the extra fat from your body, then keeping any weight gain habits will only mean that you’re working against yourself. That said, breaking habits is easier said than done, particularly when you don’t recognize what they are.

The first step to being able to break free of weight gain habits is to identify them for what they are. This step, alone, places you in the driver’s seat. It gives you the ability to make the right choices, where you wouldn’t have been able to do that before you recognized where the problems were.

Consider the following most common weight gain habits and whether or not you’ve been trapped by any of them:

Mindless eating

Do you open a bag of chips, bring it to the couch and start munching while you watch your favorite TV show? One moment, you’re popping that first chip into your mouth and the next moment the majority of the bag is gone. It’s because you’re not paying the slightest bit of attention to how much you’re eating or whether or not you’ve had enough. You’re just eating for the sake of it.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a snack while you relax in the evening, but it is vital that you pay attention to the right portion size. Instead of bringing the whole chip bag with you, measure an appropriate portion into a bowl and eat that amount, instead.

Not getting enough sleep

We live in a culture that runs on a minimum amount of sleep. More often than not, we’re surrounded by people who are sleep deprived to one degree or another, and we can hardly exclude ourselves from them. We just don’t give sleep a big enough priority. This is very unfortunate as it is our health that suffers, including our weight.

When we’re fatigued, we are more likely to crave sweet, salty or fatty foods, our bodies aren’t equipped to burn as many calories and we’re more likely to store calories as fat. Start setting a solid sleep routine and stick to the same bedtime and waking time as much as possible, including on weekends. Reduce screen time at least thirty minutes before going to bed and sleep in a thoroughly darkened room. When you get the rest you need, you’re less likely to pack on unnecessary pounds.

You shop while hungry

If your stomach growls even once while you’re at the supermarket, your shopping list is doomed. Eat before you go grocery shopping to make sure you’re thinking with your head and not with your hunger.

You’ve never tracked your food

Food tracking sounds like a nuisance.  However, it is well worth the effort, even if you do it for only a short time.  The key is to be consistent about it and track the way you’re really eating, not how you’re eating exclusively because you know you’re tracking yourself.

Track your food for at least one month.  This is one of the most powerful ways to identify your weight gain habits. It can help you to identify your eating trends and spot issues you didn’t even know where there.  This can be very powerful because it can allow you to discover ways to tweak your current lifestyle to help to stop it from causing weight gain.

You’re not thinking long-term

It’s all well and good to make healthy lifestyle changes.  However, if you’re not making changes that you can continue over the long term, you may be setting yourself up for disaster later on.  Every time you make a major change to your eating habits, it has an impact on your metabolism.

Making the wrong changes or altering things only temporarily can cause your metabolic rate to slow down.  This not only makes it harder to achieve weight loss, but it also harms your efforts for weight maintenance.  As a result, you can unexpectedly send yourself on the path to weight gain despite your best intentions. Always remember to think about all your diet changes as something you’ll be adopting over the long term, not for a short period of time.

You aren’t physically active

Even though the best weight gain habits to correct have to do with what you eat, if you’re not physically active, you’re missing a vital step.  Regular exercise is exceptionally important to your good health.  Furthermore, it helps to support any weight loss efforts you’re making in terms of what you’re eating and so on.

However, where it is very important avoid weight gain habits regarding physical activity is in terms of the pounds you’ve already lost.  Diet may be king for weight loss, but exercise is the ruler to stop the fat from returning.