Always Dieting, Never Losing? Let's Have An Honest Chat.

I’ve written about this before, and I’m sure I’ll write about it again, but sometimes you just need some tough love.

The message is this:

Stop half arsing it!

You’re always stuck in a cycle of sort of dieting but also falling off the wagon, so to speak, and it’s leading to a feeling of constantly dieting.

There should be a time when you sit in a maintenance phase, and even if you’re not tracking calories, all that means is your intake goes back up to what’s considered enough for your current body weight.

This is needed for a few reasons:

Your training will improve, as you’ll now have extra energy.

Leptin, the hormone that controls when we are full, increases = reduced hunger.

Ghrelin, the hormone that controls our hunger, decreases = again reducing hunger but potentially also feeling less food obsessed.

Cortisol, known as the stress hormone, lowers = improved sleep, mood, and recovery.

It’s also a nice mental reset and allows you to focus on your next phase, whatever that may be.

Some may read this and think, ‘I can’t put my calories up because I’m already not losing fat, I don’t want to gain weight’.

That’s exactly my point.

You feel like you’re dieting, like you're in a deficit, and maybe you are for two, three, maybe even four days, but I guarantee you aren’t maintaining that deficit, and I have proof!

You aren’t losing body fat.

You’re not broken by the way, it’s not your metabolism, carbs, or hormones or whatever the latest influencer is trying to tell you. It’s just that dieting is hard, that’s why you may need support from a coach, I can support with this, drop your email here and I’ll be in touch.

However, I understand coaching isn’t affordable for everyone, so here are some actionable steps for you to consider with your dieting phase, and you need to think of it just like that, a phase, let me Google it one sec;

A phase is a distinct period or stage in a series of events

In our case, the series of events is: a deficit (losing fat), maintenance (maintaining that loss), & a surplus (gaining muscle).

Once the calories are worked out (free calculator here), you focus on hitting this target for a prolonged period, let’s say 6 weeks.

On week 7, you weigh yourself and calculate your new calorie amount, based on your new bodyweight, and eat at maintenance for 1-2 weeks.

Bear in mind that as long as you are accurate, you won’t be gaining any body fat in this time, so don’t panic.

If the goal is to continue losing body fat, you put yourself back into a deficit for another 6 weeks and continue this cycle until you reach your desired fat loss goal.

I’ve made that sound super simple, and as I always say the theory is that simple, it’s ensuring life doesn’t get in the way that becomes the challenge, like waking up late, rushing to work and grabbing whatever snacks you canon the way, or having a friends birthday and sinking 10 pints at the weekend.

That’s how maintaining a deficit becomes challenging.

But not impossible.

You don’t want to be dieting forever, make the change today, and fully commit.

Here’s that link again if you’d like some help from me.

Mark