Does this sound familiar? You’re following your new diet plan to a tee! You’re exercising, you’re watching what you eat. You’re meal planning and prepping. You’re turning down the yummy desserts and alcohol. You’re being SO GOOD! WHY CAN’T YOU LOSE THE WEIGHT?? You’re so frustrated! What the hell?

We’ve all been there, right? I know I have! I remember feeling like there was something wrong with me. Like I was a failure.

What finally opened my eyes and led me down a weight loss path that actually works? I realized I believed in some common weight loss myths. Let me share them here.

Myth #1. If you eat less and exercise more, you'll lose weight. It’s been our solution forever, right? Raise your hand if you've tried to cut calories and exercise more. It works for a little while, but then you can’t stick with it.

This has been my struggle for over nine years. Ever since I started trying to lose weight, I thought, “It's just math. If I eat less food and burn off more calories, I’m gonna lose weight.” But guess what? It doesn't work. It's a myth.

You know it doesn't work because you are here, reading this right now. If it worked, if all we had to do was eat less and move more, we would not be in the obesity crisis that we’re in today. It doesn't work.

Myth #2. If you eat five to six small meals a day, you will increase your metabolism, and this will help you lose weight. I can't even remember, now, why they even told me to do this. As soon as I learned it, though, I did it for years. Basically, all I did was make my little meals and eat them all day long. And I was starving on top of it! It was not sustainable, and it did not help me lose weight.

If you're tired of making all the little, tiny meals throughout the day, and then feeling like, “Oh, crap! I was working on the ranch today, and I couldn't get my snacks in. I'm gonna screw up my metabolism because I'm not eating constantly....”. Not to worry. It's a myth.

Myth #3. If you don’t eat breakfast as soon as you wake up, you’ll crash your metabolism. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You need to get out of bed and get something in your belly, so you don't crash your metabolism. The reason why you’re fat is because you skip breakfast. It’s a myth! It’s not true.

Eating breakfast will not help you lose weight. If you eat breakfast first thing, even an hour after you get out of bed, it has nothing to do with losing weight.

Myth #4. Skipping meals is bad. I used to get mad at people when I would hear, “Oh, I skipped lunch…”, “Oh, I skipped breakfast…”, “Oh, I didn't eat all day…”. And I'm like, “Oh! You can't do that! You're gonna wreck your metabolism. You gotta eat five or six meals a day. If you skip a meal, it's terrible! You won't be able to burn any calories, and you’re gonna stay fat...” But it’s not true.

You can totally skip meals. Skipping meals will not inhibit your weight loss.

Myth #5. Eating fat makes you fat. I did some interesting research in the last few months on how eating fat got such a bad rap. There is actually no proof, whatsoever, that eating fat makes you fat.

So how, in the tarnation, did we get so obsessed with all these low-fat diets? Most mainstream weight-loss-eating-healthy-nutrition plans base their methods around low-fat diets. The mainstream people, the nutritionists, the dietitians, even the doctors... they say you need to watch your fat intake.

Sadly, it has way more to do with politics than it does with facts and scientific data. Historically, they needed a scapegoat for why everyone was putting on the pounds and why they were not able to lose weight. Guess what got it? Fat. Fat got it because they could convince people to eat less and move more. It just made more sense. You could do the math. You could see it all laid out. It should work.

The professionals promoted exercising more, eating less, counting calories, eating low-fat diets, eating more vegetables, eating these little tiny meals, never skipping breakfast, that skipping any kind of meal was bad. They packaged it all up so beautifully. And we all drank the kool-aid. Yes, we did.

Where’s the proof?

But let me tell you -- all of this is not the way that it really is. There are valid studies and proof to show you why. But the way I'm going to convince you is not with all of my professional, scientific talk that I’m not good at... Because I actually got a “D” in college chemistry. So that's not my forte!

I can tell you, what I’m sharing here are myths because I proved it to myself. What I’m doing now is completely opposite, and it’s working. What I’m doing now is not some funky deal that I'm going to fail.

I'm going to eat like I’m eating now, for the rest of my life. I never worry about losing the weight and wondering how I will keep it off.

I actually shifted my metabolism, so none of the old myths even pertains to me anymore.

You can prove to yourself that the dieting rules you learned are myths. You’ve followed them. If you still have issues with weight, then none of that old stuff is working. Right there is proof enough, without any scientific mumbo-jumbo. There is nothing wrong with you. You simply believed what everyone was saying. They were very convincing.

If you’ve followed my story, you’ve heard me talk about the color-coded containers from Beachbody and the 21 Day Fix, how reluctant I was to come out of the closet and say, “Hey, I'm a Beachbody Coach, and these containers suck, big time! I cannot make these things work for me. I'm tired of trying harder. I've tried as hard as I can, and they don't work.”

So, my friends, the problem is not you. The problem is we've believed things that are not true.

Want to get control of your eating and jumpstart your weight loss?

Today’s blog post is an excerpt from Module 2 of the Cowgirl Up Diet. You can get a sneak peek of the Cowgirl Up Diet by watching this video: