When I worked as a nutritionist/health coach, I sometimes wanted to shake people and say Of course you're not losing weight, you silly goose! You're doing X Y Z. It was a real irritant to me. The detrimental things that they were doing were so obvious to me, but not to them. It was only once I uncovered the true impact of the habit that they were motivated to change it. And once they changed the habit? We were off to the races. The weight almost seamlessly dropped off.

I was reflecting on this the other day when I went for coffee with a friend who told me she just cannot, for the life of her, lose weight. She did this as she sipped her (daily) venti iced mocha. A Starbucks drink that packs around 500 calories and 35g of sugar. Oh, and this was the first thing she ate all day, and it was 2pm.

I again wanted to shake her. (I'm not a health coach anymore, probably for the best.)

If you're unable to see the issue with her daily habits, or perhaps your own, you're going to want to read this.

4 Profoundly Detrimental Habits That Are Preventing You From Losing Weight

1. Sugary drinks

The average American consumes about 17 teaspoons (71 grams) of added sugar every day, according to the CDC — that's roughly 270 calories of pure sugar.

No, you heard that correctly.

The majority of this comes from sugar-sweetened beverages like sodas, energy drinks, sweetened coffees, and juices.

You may think, "Well, I drink diet soda!" — sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but diet soda still isn't great if you're doing it every day.

Research shows that artificial sweeteners can stimulate ghrelin, your hunger hormone, and in some people, they may trigger insulin release or cravings for sweet foods, confusing your metabolism in a slightly different, but similarly unhelpful way to regular sugar.

The amount of sugar in common drinks

Anyway, back to sugar. You'll be surprised how many common drinks contain a boatload of it. Examples:

• 20 fl oz Coca-Cola — 240 calories, 65 g sugar
• Venti Iced White Chocolate Mocha (Starbucks) — 510 calories, 59 g sugar
• Large bubble tea (24 oz) — around 450–550 calories, 45–60 g sugar
• Large milkshake (fast food) — 700–800 calories, 60–90 g sugar

If you're one of the many people who goes to a coffee drive-through on your way to work every day, you're losing more than your money — you're losing your capacity to lose weight.

Look, if you're slim and getting a venti iced mocha every day, your body is fortunately able to maintain a negative or equal energy balance.

You're safe, for now. That doesn't mean you're not increasing visceral fat (fat stored around your organs, which is far more metabolically dangerous). But hey.

If you're overweight and desperate to lose it, please ditch the sugary drinks. When you drink liquid calories, you're not getting any nutritional benefit — they're empty calories, meaning they provide energy but no satiety. Because liquids don't activate the same fullness signals as solid foods, it's easy to consume hundreds of calories without realizing it.

You can down 600+ calories in three minutes and still feel hungry 20 minutes later. Research has shown this clearly: beverages fail to trigger the physiological satiety mechanisms that solid foods do.

The result? Effortless overconsumption.

It's actually hard to eat 600 calories of anything — even pasta or fruit — but 600 calories of a drink? Easy.

If you're serious about losing weight, start here. The simplest, most powerful fat-loss hack is to stop drinking your calories.

2. Skipping breakfast

Perhaps a contrarian opinion, but it's a hill I'll die on: Skipping breakfast, if your goal is weight loss, is not a good idea. * All the intermittent fasters preparing their fingers for keyboard-warrior war. *

Before you spew anger, hear me out. If you're overweight and unable to lose it, I'd put my money on the fact that you struggle with overeating (it comes with the territory, dare I say). And what's the worst thing for overeating? Starvation.

Why? Because when you go too long without food, your physiology literally changes.

Ghrelin (your hunger hormone) rises, while leptin (your satiety hormone) drops. Cortisol increases too — and high cortisol not only ramps up appetite, but also encourages your body to store fat, particularly around the abdomen.

Your brain becomes laser-focused on one mission: find food, now.

So yes, skipping breakfast cues your brain to search for energy like a New York City rat hunting for a half-eaten slice of pizza. It makes you crave high-calorie, high-fat, high-sugar foods — fast fuel — because your body thinks a famine is coming.

The result? When you finally eat (now completely famished), you "let yourself" eat abundantly, because you've earned it. Recipe for disaster.

When you eat breakfast within 30–60 minutes of rising, you send a powerful signal to your metabolism that it's time to get moving. This helps kickstart digestion, replenishes liver glycogen, and gives your body actual energy to start the day.

Breakfast also anchors your circadian rhythm.

Food timing acts as a zeitgeber (time cue), telling every cell in your body that it's daytime. This synchronization improves metabolism, insulin sensitivity, and hormonal regulation throughout the day.

And when it's time for lunch, you're not ravenous. You're just peckish. This is what you want! This is how you avoid gorging.

It's not just my opinion: Studies show that people who eat breakfast tend to weigh less in general, and have better eating habits. Research also suggests that breakfast eaters lose more weight on weight loss interventions, even when controlling for total caloric intake.

So, while intermittent fasting can work for some people, if you're already prone to overeating or blood sugar crashes, it's the metabolic equivalent of lighting a match near gasoline.

3. Not respecting sleep

Sleep is the solution. Across the board. Tired? Sleep (duh). Grumpy? Sleep. Hormonal? Sleep. Bored? Sleep. Yet, so many of us are sacrificing sleep for screens or snacks. And it's ruining your chances of losing weight.

Here's how sleep helps weight loss: When you don't sleep enough — let's say you get fewer than 6 hours — your body shifts into energy conservation mode. Your brain perceives fatigue as a threat, so it tries to compensate by seeking more energy through food.

Ghrelin, your hunger hormone, spikes. Leptin, your fullness hormone, plummets. And cortisol, your stress hormone, rises. This combination drives appetite, especially for high-carb, high-fat "comfort" foods that give quick energy.

Research shows that sleep-deprived people eat, on average, 300–500 more calories per day than those who are well-rested, usually from snacks.

But it's not just about willpower or hunger hormones.

Sleep affects your metabolism at every level:

• Insulin sensitivity drops by up to 30% after just one night of poor sleep, meaning your cells are less effective at using glucose for energy. This leads to higher blood sugar and greater fat storage.
• Growth hormone and testosterone — both critical for muscle repair and metabolism — are released during deep sleep. Cut your sleep short, and you're literally stunting your body's ability to build and maintain lean tissue.
• Chronically poor sleep also disrupts your circadian rhythm, the internal clock that governs digestion, hunger, and fat metabolism. When your sleep is off, your entire metabolic system runs out of sync.

Yet, according to the CDC, about one in three adults gets less than 7 hours of sleep a night — and those who sleep under 6 hours are far more likely to be overweight or obese.³

Sleep deprivation also makes you more reward-sensitive — your brain's reward centers light up more intensely in response to food cues, while your prefrontal cortex (the decision-making part) goes offline.

Translation: when you're tired, that doughnut looks like salvation.

So if you're serious about losing weight, stop overcomplicating it. Sleep.

4. Drinking alcohol

Alcohol is toxic, sure. But it's also a huge weight gainer. Listen, when you drink alcohol, your body stops metabolising fat, carbohydrates, or protein.

Everything pauses until the alcohol is processed out of your body. That means if you eat a big dinner and then go out for a beverage or seven, all the calories that you want desperately to be used are just sitting there in your body.

Here's why: alcohol is metabolised first because your body recognises it as a toxin. The liver prioritises breaking down ethanol into acetaldehyde, and then into acetate, which can be used for energy.

But while that's happening, fat oxidation — your body's ability to burn fat — drops by up to 70%. So whatever you ate with that drink? Straight to storage.

When you think about how this compounds over time, to put it very simply: you gain a heck ton of fat.

Research shows a clear correlation between alcohol consumption and weight gain — and not just because of lifestyle factors. (Beer belly men, how was the football last weekend?!) Alcohol literally disrupts your physiology and prevents you from successfully losing weight.

Alcohol affects:

• Hormones: Alcohol raises cortisol and estrogen, both of which promote fat storage.
• Sleep: Even one drink can fragment sleep and suppress REM, which impairs recovery and increases cravings the next day.
• Appetite: Alcohol increases ghrelin (your hunger hormone) and decreases leptin (your fullness hormone), making you want greasy, high-calorie foods.
• Metabolism: Chronic drinking impairs mitochondrial function — your cells' ability to produce energy efficiently — slowing metabolic rate over time.

Before you say, "But red wine contains polyphenols!!!" let me explain why that's a complete fallacy. Yes, red wine contains resveratrol, a polyphenol shown in mice to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects.

But to get the equivalent dose used in those studies, you'd have to drink hundreds of glasses of wine — and you'd be dead long before the polyphenols kicked in.

So no, wine isn't a health food. The harms of alcohol vastly outweigh any minimal benefit from its plant compounds.

In conclusion: Drink less, or preferably, not at all. It has a domino effect, too: No Friday night benders = ability to wake up for a Saturday morning gym sesh.

Final Thoughts

Here's the thing: losing weight isn't complicated. It's stuck within a complicated industry, which profits from its being complicated.

You already know you should eat less junk and move your body more, but it's not moving the needle.

That's why I wanted to write this piece, to help shed light on other potentially detrimental habits you may be doing on the daily that are preventing you from reaching the weight loss you want.

Sugary drinks, skipped breakfasts, late nights, and alcohol aren't just "bad habits" — they're physiological roadblocks. Each one hijacks your hormones, appetite, and energy levels in a slightly different way, keeping you stuck in the same loop of frustration.

If you start by fixing these four things, everything else gets easier. Your cravings calm down. Your energy stabilizes. Your metabolism starts working with you instead of against you.

Want to learn the best ways to lose weight? Follow along, that's the next article coming up. Additionally, follow me on Instagram for visual tips.