Even though there is so much information available about weight loss, the same diet mistakes are being made over and over every day. We are not talking here about little slipups where you ate a slice of pie that was not on the plan, but big mistakes that lead to failure to lose the weight that you want to lose. Understanding these errors can help you develop the attitude that will lead to permanent weight loss for you.

1. The All Or Nothing Attitude

All or nothing dieters will often pick out a complicated diet that is almost impossible for them to maintain. Before beginning, they will search the kitchen for anything that does not fit the plan and throw it in the garbage. They are planning to be the perfect dieter, and so they will be, for one day, three days, seven days or even a couple of weeks. Then, inevitably, something happens that means they cannot keep to the diet one time. Immediately the whole thing is ruined in their eyes and the diet is over. They go to the store and buy all the things that went into the garbage last week and proceed to gain back all the weight that they lost, as fast as possible.

If you are this kind of dieter you need to ask yourself some tough questions. Do you really want to lose weight permanently, or just lose a few pounds so that you can enjoy putting them back on again? The way forward is to make small changes to what you eat so that you have a slow but steady weight loss.

2. Exercise Failure

One common problem is that most people think that they have to “work” out for hours in order to achieve results. Thinking that you have to lift hundreds of pounds of weight, jog or do aerobics for hours and hours is a big mistake. That’s because if you think of exercise as “work” then you’re not going to stick with it very long

Don’t think that you have to work out for some kind of minimum amount of time before you’ll achieve results. Any exercise you get is better than nothing, but one of the keywords for exercises Is the word “constant”. Only working out here and there is not going to cut it. You need to do some kind of working out or exercising every day. Even if it’s just a fast 5-10 minute workout in the morning consisting of pushups, crunches, standing squats or static stances as taught in my “Chinesehealthandfitness” video, coupled with some aerobic activity such as walking, biking, swimming or martial arts practice is all you really need to increase metabolism and muscle mass which will help maximize fat loss.

So many people psyche themselves into not working out because they convince themselves that they just don’t have the time. Even if it’s only a few minutes in the morning and evening it can all help to increase caloric burn, build muscle and raise metabolism. This coupled with eating more raw fruits and vegetables, lean chicken and fish all organic as much as possible and doing them on a constant or consistent basis will begin to produce the desired results which causing ‘mental fatigue’. This is what happens when you think of working out as work.

Take your workouts slowly and make them fun. Do them to the point where it stops becoming fun and feels like work, then stop and continue later on in the day or evening. Studies show that a 3 10 minute workouts gives you the same results as one 30 minute workout. But the 3 ten minute workouts are really better because when they’re spread throughout the day the metabolism is raised up more often throughout the day which keeps it in a “fat burning” mode for more hours overall than just doing one 30 minute workout. That’s because your metabolism can remain increased for several hours after a workout. So doing 3 ten minute workouts means your metabolism will stay in the fat burning mode for more hours of the day than just doing one workout per day.

3. The Attitude of Sacrifice

Another common mistake is to view your diet as a period of sacrifice. You do not allow yourself the foods that you enjoy most while you are on your way to your target weight. You may have a great diet plan and be very successful in losing weight, but what happens when you reach your goal? You have not learnt to eat 'bad foods' in moderation so as soon as you start, you are likely to go out of control. It is better to include a little of everything in your diet and learn to enjoy it in small quantities.

If you allow yourself to have your “cheat days” you can help to prevent yourself from mentally craving those foods that may be causing you to fail in your weight loss goals. This is one way to help prevent binging. I often have some ice cream, some chocolate here and there myself. But I have very small portions when doing so, just a bite or two and that’s all. This way I don’t feel deprived and don’t have that temptation to overdo it after a period of weeks or months of disciplining myself and totally ruin all the progress that I’ve made.

One thing I did to help facilitate this is that I went to a local Chinese store and picked up some very small bowls that they use. These bowls are about the size of a small tea cup saucer and only hold about 8oz of liquid. This is a trick that the Chinese have been using for centuries and has to do with portion sizes. By keeping portion sizes small but having a variety of food, the mind is tricked into thinking that you’re eating a lot of food. They might have 5 or 6 of these small bowls out on the table, but since each one is small you’re not really eating that much food. The Chinese also have a mostly vegetable based diet with meat as a side dish, where as in the west this is reversed.

4. Goal Failure

Setting achievable goals is vital in any weight loss plan. Goals should be clear, realistic and set out in writing. While you probably do have an ideal weight in your mind, unless you are only slightly overweight it is probably too distant to be useful. A more useful goal would be to lose two pounds per week for the first five weeks and then one pound per week after that. Some weeks you will lose more and some less, some weeks you may even gain, but if you track your progress on a graph you will see that ups and downs are natural and do not stop you progressing steadily toward your ultimate goal.

If you have been making these mistakes, do not worry. The most important point in dieting as in so many other things is to move on. Learn from your failures as well as your success and do not use a mistake as an excuse for giving up. The only way to achieve your goal permanently is to make a commitment to become a healthier person which the Chinese health and fitness video can surely accomplish. Remember that eating normally includes eating more on some days and less on others. Learn to enjoy food in moderation without attaching any emotional significance to your food and you have every chance of avoiding these common dieting mistakes.