Do you want to know the # 1 secret for why some people are successful with diets and why others fail?
Adherence.
It’s really that simple.
If you can’t stick to a diet, you’re less likely to see the results you want. Most people often search for shortcuts because really, all they want is quick results or even worse, they try to follow a rigid plan (I’m talking about cutting out bread, pasta and everything painted as the devil) for more than two weeks and expect to adhere to it for the next 6 months. Then blame themselves when it doesn’t work out because ‘dieting is hard!’. Here’s the thing:
Deprivation only makes a person want something more. When a diet deprives you of food you enjoy you best believe you’ll want that food even more. You’ll romanticize and idealize it until it doesn’t even taste as good as you thought it would be. When the diet ends, what happens then? Do you magically get to eat the food without gaining any weight back or do you just deprive yourself for the rest of your life? Is there a happy middle ground?
Yes, there is. Fret not my friends because there’s hope.
Let’s think of meal plans as 80/20. Now I’m not going to take credit for anything because it’s been around for centuries (okay a bit less than that). But here’s how it works:
You follow your plan to the T 80% of the time then, the remaining 20% is left for you to do ANYTHING you wish (i.e. as long as it doesn’t completely obliterate your plan). It gives you flexibility and freedom to choose food that makes you happiest, with the fewest constraints. The beauty is that, it can be applied to almost anything; from the meals you eat in a day to what your diet looks like over the course of a week to the work you put in at the gym.
Now let’s take this to the next level.
Let’s say you’re at a nice restaurant with a friend. If you followed your meal plan really well for 5 days of the week, what’s to say you can’t eat out during the other 2 days? Now I’m not saying you should outright have a binge-sesh but, what I am saying is to take a look at your week, or even your day, and ask your self with complete honesty,
‘Have I been putting in the work and is it enough to show results?’
If the answer is yes, then you have a bit of room to enjoy a nice meal. And if the answer is no, you still enjoy the nice meal because you’re going to adhere to your diet 20% better tomorrow. You give yourself permission to enjoy the small things in life or else you risk running yourself into the ground day in and day out, simply waiting for the ‘crash’ before you fall back into old habits.
Now, let me preface this by saying that you are 100% accountable for your actions so there is a certain level of trust, honesty and self-discipline that has to be developed in order for you to succeed with this plan.
Seeing the Bigger Picture
Furthermore, whenever the term ‘diet’ is thrown around it is assumed that
1. it’s a miserable, insufferable period of time that has to be endured and
2. everyone has to give up everything they enjoy (which simply isn’t the case). However, I understand that many people, when given the freedom to eat the food they like are unable to moderate the quantity of food they consume.
Alternatively, you could fit a 200 calorie cookie in the grand scheme of things since calorie balance happens over a course of weeks, however a 1000 calorie binge may cause a large step back. Therefore, it really depends how well you can adhere to your current regimen and how well you know yourself to give yourself permission to slip up once in a while.
Many people see dieting as this on and off switch, either they are on a diet or off one. Either they’re restricting or gaining weight. You need to realize how much freedom you have and know when to abuse it and when to abide (this takes a bit of experience and time but it’s always worth it). If you decide that you’re too ‘fluffy’ you can decide to alter minute behaviours almost immediately, such as snacking less or having lean protein in your next meal. Although it won’t show immediate results, it will prepare your mind to make decisions that steer you towards behaviour that will enable you to lose weight.
Alternatively, the idea of ‘I’ll start my diet tomorrow/Monday’ shows diets as controlling the person rather than the person controlling their their behaviour. I urge you to change the way you think about your eating habits and the way you think about dieting. You can still eat what you want and long gone are the days when people’s only choices to lose weight were either juice cleanses or having a salad for every meal. Our calories and our meals are always fluctuating so there’s no point trying to make things more rigid than they once were.
When you realize how easy it is to alter your behaviour and eating habits to get the results you want you can easily bounce back to the body you’re most comfortable with. By this I mean, once you learn your maintenance calories you can eat what you want without gaining weight, you can lose weight when you decide to and you can gain if you want to. It’s a moving target that does require a little effort but I promise you you’ll feel more in control of your body.
Marie
Marie Writes (A Fitness Blog) 