If you’re looking to lose weight or have already started your weight loss journey, the reality is, it won’t be easy. It is, however, easy to get frustrated when all your hard work seems to get wasted when you aren’t seeing results.

Diet and exercise are the two key components to losing weight – at least if you want to lose weight safely. There are plenty of diet and weight loss pills out there promoting rapid weight loss without doing anything, but you only need to watch one commercial listing the potential side-effects to know they can’t be good for you.

Here are a few bad things to do when trying to lose weight. Avoid these.

Calorie Restricting

Choosing to starve yourself is dangerous and should be avoided at all costs. Sure, depriving your body of food will lead to weight loss, but you’ll also lose muscle mass and your metabolism will take a hard hit.

Professionals say you need a daily caloric intake of at least 1,200 to keep your body functioning properly. You need the nutrients in food to fuel your body and keep your hunger satiated.

What you eat is more important than how much you eat. Instead of restricting calories and starving yourself, make sure the foods you eat are healthy and actually good for you. Not sure which foods are best? The Salvation Diet can help.

Cleanses And Detoxes

In general, most popular cleanses cause weight loss due to a loss of water and stool. While this might seem fine in your eyes, this can also lead to health problems including electrolyte imbalances and dehydration.

Many doctors suggest detoxes and cleanses are actually unnecessary, since your body is designed to detoxify itself regularly. If you do excessive cleanses or go on fad detox diets, you can interfere with your body’s natural system for eliminating toxins.

Drinking plenty of water and eating high-fiber foods can help you cleanse and lose weight naturally without resorting to weird detox regimens.

Magic Weight Loss Pills

Many diet pills and supplements promise to help you lose weight without requiring any effort on your part. Simply swallow a pill and “BAM!” the weight comes off. Sound too good to be true? That’s because it is.

Many “magical” weight loss pills are actually quite dangerous and aren’t regulated the same way prescription drugs are. Even if they are touted as “all natural”, they can still have harmful ingredients. Read up on products from reputable sources and make sure to talk to your doctor before taking pills or starting a new supplement.

Filling Up On Liquids

Everyone knows it’s important to stay hydrated – and it is. Water is your friend if you want to lose weight.

The problem is many people attempt to lose weight without considering the liquids they drink. Many of these liquids (like soda, fruit juices, energy drinks, etc.) contribute to weight gain instead of weight loss, so this ends up on the list of bad things to do when trying to lose weight.

We can also look at it from another perspective…

Liquids biologically satisfy thirst, not hunger. Therefore, when you drink liquids you add calories, but you remain hungry.

So what do you do? You EAT!

And now you’ve added a bunch of extra calories from the beverages you consume without even realizing it. On average, most Americans use about 21 percent of their caloric intake on beverages, which can be pretty significant to your weight loss efforts.

Lastly, a couple other bad things to do when trying to lose weight are purging your food and extreme exercising. Avoid these. They aren’t helping you.