There are a few things that can sabotage even the best laid diet plans, leading to frustration and loss of motivation. So while you’re making healthy changes to your diet and activity levels, remember to watch out for these 4 common mistakes that many new dieters make:

Not getting your 7-8 hours every night. Getting enough sleep every night is very important, especially when starting a new program. You need the energy to keep up with your new active lifestyle. Sleep is when your body repairs and rejuvenates itself, so if you deprive it of sleep, you’ll be more likely to wake up sore, un rested and unmotivated. As well, new research is showing that people who don’t get enough sleep every night are more likely to gain weight than their rested counterparts (read the full article).

Doing too much, too fast. You want to start exercising, eating right, stop drinking coffee, cut out all the sugar and drink your 8 glasses of water a day. Great! But a very common mistake for beginners is to try and do everything all at once. The problem with changing all your old habits at the same time is that you’ll find it’s too drastic of a change all at once. The old habits will start sneaking back in slowly, you’ll get frustrated that the weight isn’t just melting off after all the healthy changes you made and your motivation will drop.

Weight loss will not happen overnight – you didn’t gain the weight in one day, so it’s unrealistic to expect that you’ll lose it right away. If you’re serious about making healthy lifelong changes, then the best way to make these new habits stick is to start slowly – baby steps to success. Try making one to three small changes each week. For example, maybe in the first week you start watching your portions, cut out all soda and drink at least 8 glasses of water each day. The next week, continue with watching your portions, no soda and drinking 8 glasses of water, and add something new, such as eating at least 2 fruits and veggies every day. The following week maybe you can increase it to at least 4 fruits and veggies every day and so forth. What you do and how you do it is up to you – what works for one person might not work for another, but you have to be aware that you are trying to change your habits for good and that will take time. But by taking it slowly, you’re increasing your chances of making lasting healthy changes, and losing the weight for good.

Trying to be perfect. No one’s perfect all the time, and you shouldn’t expect yourself to be either. Everyone indulges once in a while; it’s just a matter of learning how to do it in a healthy way – which is in moderation. If you’re at a party and there’s a chocolate cake that you are just dying to try, don’t deny yourself, but just take a very small piece. It will be enough to enjoy it and satisfy your craving, but not enough to set your diet back a week or two. This isn’t to say that you can treat yourself to unhealthy foods everyday as long as it’s a small portion (that will still add up to weight gain), but if it’s only from time to time, you’ll find that your occasional ‘cheat’ will make it much easier to stick to your healthier choices.

Always looking forward, never looking back. You’re on your third week of your healthy life change; you’re sticking to your plan, keeping active and you’ve lost almost 6 pounds – you’re doing great! But then you hit a plateau - the weight isn’t coming off as easily, it’s getting harder not to stop at McDonald’s and get a super-sized meal, in short – you’re losing your motivation. This is an extremely common situation for many people beginning a new diet. One of the best ways to get your motivation back is to keep a weight loss and exercise journal right from the start. That way, when you start to feel your motivation waning and start to question why you should stick with it, all you need to do is look back at the start of your program and see how far you’ve come! Whether you’re able to work out for 15 minutes more than when you started, or maybe you’re drinking 10 glasses of water a day when you could barely get down one before – everything that you’ve accomplished through all you’re hard work is there, on paper. And what better motivation to keep going than to see how far you’ve already come!