Written by Jeff Behar, MS, MBA and Lynn Glenn

Many people want to lose weight but they often stumble along the way. Extra weight can lead to serious health issues, like diabetes, metaboli c syndrome, stroke, hypertension (high blood weight loss mistakes pressure), cardiovascular disease, sexual health issues, joint problems, several types of cancer and many other life shortening disease and conditions.

The following are some of the most common dieting mistakes, or "weight loss blunders' that keep people from reaching their weight loss goals:

Attitude Blunders

Having the wrong attitude about exercise. The wrong attitude about exercise is when it's viewed as a punishment, something that cancels out your previous days of over eating. Solution: Exercise should be viewed as a reward not a punishment. Being active is the reward your body deserves for working so hard each day, something that will make you feel good now and will add to your quality of life for years to come.
Having unrealistic expectations. Having expectations of the perfect set of abs, thin thighs and a perfect sculpted body, for most of us, is unrealistic and just not going to happen. This could be due to genetics, body type or some other factor we can't control. Solution: Have realistic expectations that mean something--losing weight to be healthier and stronger so you can play with your kids, or strengthening your back so you can have a strong core and good posture. Give up on the unrealistic idea of trying to look like someone else. Not everyone can have six-pack abs, and honestly, visible abs have no function other than to look great in bathing suits.
Expecting immediate weight loss. You are expecting immediate weight loss after a few days of exercise and healthy eating ,but when the scale doesn't move frustration often sets in. Solution: Focus on the immediate benefits of exercise and how you feel while you're working out, instead of focusing on weight loss. Some of these benefits will include feeling more energetic, alert, sleeping better, your body feels stronger and you're less stressed out.
Not setting realistic deadlines. By not setting realistic deadlines you will not have any measurable time frame in order to measure your weight loss progress. If you don't set realistic deadlines you will have no way to hold yourself accountable and will be doomed to failure. Solution: Set a few realistic deadlines to measure your weight loss progress, but make sure the time line is realistic, as this is critical to achievement. By setting dates in which to measure your weight loss progress, you are making a way to hold yourself accountable. Most people hate deadlines, you may start to dread this one as well, however you will be doing yourself a favor in the long run. Setting deadlines will make sure that you don't start to get lazy and push your weight loss off until 'tomorrow,' but instead make you more likely to keep persisting and going after your dreams.
Not setting measurable weight loss goals. Not setting reasonable measurable weight loss goals you will fail to lose the weight or get in the shape that you desire. If you don't have a definitive weight loss plan or a way to objectively measure your progress you'll never know whether you've actually reached your goals or not. Solution: Find useful tools that you can use to measure your gains towards your set weight loss goals. The mirror is definitely a useful tool, you can monitor the changes and ultimately see the end result. See how your clothes fit, if your dresses are loose fitting or you have more room around the waste band of your pants, you are making measurable gains. A scale can be a useful tool except if you gain muscle while losing fat the scale may show zero progress, when in fact you are making great progress. The ideal method to measure your progress is body composition testing which can determine how much lean muscle mass you have and your ratio of fat gained and lost.