In my articles and ebooks, I often reference scientific findings and show how they may be applied to real-world issues, especially those dealing with health and fitness.
However, sometimes it's necessary to take a step back from the science and look at the larger picture to help individuals get their bearings and see the forest for the trees.
Finding a diet that works most of the time may seem as hard as nuclear physics to most individuals reading this essay. This is not the case, but the variety of diet options available might be overwhelming.
Low-fat or high-fat diet?
Which is better: a diet high in carbohydrates or one without?
How about the protein content?
In addition to the aforementioned diet possibilities, there are many permutations and combinations that further complicate issues. Many folks quit up because they feel like they've tried everything and it just goes on forever. As such, I want to set the record straight in this piece.
Some broad principles, rules of thumb, and perspectives may help you evaluate a diet plan and determine definitively whether or not it will work for you. You won't always agree with me, and you shouldn't think of this as some kind of magic bullet, "drop 100 pounds in 20 days" manual.
But if you're sick and tired of being confused, sick and tired of losing weight just to gain it again, and sick and tired of wondering how to choose a diet that would lead to sustainable weight reduction, then this article might alter your life...
Is "The Test" safe for your diet?
What is the single most important factor in why diets ultimately fail? The most common cause is...wait for it...a failure to maintain compliance over time.
The statistics don't lie: most individuals who successfully lose weight will inevitably put back the pounds they lost, and often more. Didn't you already know that?
But what are you doing to prevent it? Here's another dose of realism: if you choose a diet based on the well-accepted tenet of "burning" more calories than you eat, you will lose weight.
The short-term success of any diet plan, be it Atkins-style, no-carb, low-fat, high-carb, or any other fad diet, is mostly irrelevant.
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If you want to lose weight rapidly, choose one of these plans and stick to it. You will definitely reduce your weight. Over the course of a year, research shows that most of the weight reduction diets on the market may provide similar results.
A recent research, for instance, revealed no significant difference in weight loss success rates between the Atkins' Diet, the Slim-Fast plan, Weight Watchers' Pure Points programme, and the Eat Yourself Slim diet by Rosemary Conley.
Similar results have been seen in research comparing various diets. Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and The Zone Diet, for instance, all performed similarly well in a one-year trial measuring their potential to induce weight loss.
The lack of commitment to the diet plan is the primary cause of their failure, so keep that in mind. This new study's principal investigator said:
When comparing different diets, the degree of adherence was determined to be more important than the kind of food in our study.
Sticking to a diet, rather than the diet itself, was the most significant predictor of successful weight reduction. There will be a few who raise their hands at this point and say, "but Will, surely certain diets must be better than others, right?" Absolutely.
In terms of health benefits, the ability to preserve muscle tissue, and hunger suppression, different diets perform in varying ways. While it's true that the majority of diet plans may help you lose weight, sticking to your eating plan is the single most crucial factor in ensuring your success.
So, what exactly is a diet?
The goal of a diet is to provide temporary results in the form of weight loss. Weight reduction that lasts requires a change in eating and exercise habits. Instead of focusing on a fast cure for weight reduction, we will be discussing methods for maintaining a healthy weight for the rest of your life.
Because it implies temporary measures rather than a permanent shift in eating habits, the word "diet" has never been one of my favourites. Need to shed a lot of pounds quickly? To tell you the truth, I'll tell you right now, and I won't even charge you a dime, exactly what you need to know.
Follow this diet of 12 scrambled egg whites, 1 grapefruit, and 2 gallons of water every day for 90–120 days. Quite a bit of weight will be shed from you. Do you think it's going to be good for you? Nope. When you finish this diet, and have to go back to your "regular" eating habits, will the weight remain off?
Zero chance. In other words, how much of the weight you lose will be fat vs muscle, water, bone, and (fingers crossed) some fat? That being said, before committing to any diet aimed at weight loss, it's important to ask yourself these questions:
"Is this a diet that I can stick to indefinitely?"
My test is whether or not I think I can maintain that diet for the rest of my life. That's right; it doesn't exactly flow off the tongue, but it conveys the meaning.
The takeaway here is that whatever weight loss diet you choose has to be part of a larger lifestyle shift that you can maintain indefinitely. In other words, if it's not a diet plan you can stick to continuously, even after you've reached your goal weight, it's not going to help you maintain your weight loss.
Therefore, you may stop worrying about the various fad diets that are out there and simply dismiss them. Whether or if the diet is sustainable as a way of eating for the rest of one's life is more important than its short-term efficacy.
After reaching your goal weight, switching back to "your" eating habits is a certain way to fail and perpetuate the yo-yo dieting cycle.
In conclusion, there are no easy solutions and no magic bullets for permanent weight loss; only a change in lifestyle will have any impact. Not everyone will be happy to hear it, but that is the truth.
The numbers don't deceive; losing weight is the easy part; keeping it off is the challenge. If you apply my aforementioned criteria to the various popular fad/commercial diets on the market, you will likely discover that you no longer find any allure in them. This reminds me of a case study that helps illustrate the point further:
How do you choose between Diet A, which will result in the most rapid weight loss, but is unhealthy and difficult to stick to over the long term, and Diet B, which will result in a slower weight loss rate but is easier to stick to, balanced, and healthy, and something you can comply with year after year?
Which diet is better, one that helps you lose 30 pounds in 30 days but causes you to gain it all back by the end of the following year, or one that helps you lose 20 pounds in the next three months and another 20 pounds three months after that but causes no weight gain whatsoever?
If you can't answer those questions, you've missed the meaning of this essay and the lesson it's attempting to teach you. Read this section again...Diet B wins automatically.
If you want to feed a guy, teach him to fish.
Give a guy a fish, and you'll feed him for a day, as the Chinese proverb goes. You may provide for a man's needs for the rest of his life just by teaching him how to fish.
This idiom is particularly pertinent to the next critical stage in determining the optimal diet for long-term weight loss.
Ask yourself whether the diet plan you're thinking about will help you learn healthy eating habits for life, or if it will just feed them to you. Will you be eating their pre-made dishes, snacks, smoothies, and supplements for the diet?
Let's compare diet A to diet B once again. Diet A will provide you with their meal, along with their special drink or bars to consume, and instruct you on when to eat them. In two months, you may expect to drop, let's say, 30 pounds.
Diet B will work to educate you on the kind of foods you should consume, the recommended daily caloric intake, and the rationale behind these requirements so that you may make nutritional choices that are best for you as part of a comprehensive lifestyle shift.
By teaching you how to eat healthily, Diet B leads to a gradual weight reduction of 8-10 pounds each month for the following six months.
Keep in mind the old Chinese saying. You can lose weight following any eating plan. However, only one eating plan will prepare you to thrive independently after your trial period is complete. Obviously, Diet A is the simpler option, and it leads to weight reduction more quickly, while Diet B takes longer and needs more effort on your side.
But after diet A is done, you're back at square one with no fishing abilities to speak of. Diet firms don't generate money by helping you learn how to fish; they make money by giving you a fish and expecting you to continue to depend on them permanently or return to them when you regain the weight.
So, diet B is better since it teaches you how to succeed where previous diets failed in the long run. Eliminate from consideration any diet plan that tries to feed you a diet without teaching you how to eat without their assistance and/or reliance on their drinks, bars, cookies, or pre-made items.
Diet plans of the "drink our product for numerous meals and then have a reasonable supper" sort, "eat our special cookies for most meals and then follow our pre-planned menu," and similar variations are all examples of the "diet A" category.
Simple to implement, they ultimately lead to failure.
Unless you really believe you can live on cookies and shakes forever, none of these options pass the "Can I eat that way for the rest of my life?" test.
The bottom line is that if the book, class, clinic, or e-book you're using to lose weight nutritionally does not educate you how to eat, it's not going to help you in the long run.
The key to permanent weight reduction
We'removing on to a non-nutritional exam that will help you choose a diet plan that will work in the long run. When it comes to losing weight and keeping it off, exercise is the missing piece. If you want to keep the weight off for good, exercise is a must.
When it comes to long-term success in the fight against obesity, many popular diet plans fail miserably because they fail to include any kind of physical activity.
You may as well purchase a vehicle without tyres or an aircraft without wings if you invest in a weight reduction programme that doesn't also include a detailed fitness schedule.
Studies of individuals who have lost weight and kept it off consistently reveal that these people were consistent with their diet and exercise routines, suggesting that regular exercise is a key component of long-term weight loss success.
I won't bore you with a laundry list of exercise's many advantages, but I will say that it speeds up your metabolism, makes it possible to consume more calories while still being in a calorie deficit, and aids in the maintenance of your healthful and metabolically-important lean body mass (LBM).
Exercise has several positive effects on health, but I won't list them all here. The takeaway here is that (a) regular exercise must be a vital element of the weight reduction strategy if one is to get the most out of their aim of reducing weight and (b) is to keep the weight off in the long run
It follows that you should ditch any weight reduction programme (book, e-book, clinic, etc.) that doesn't provide guidance and assistance with this crucial aspect of long-term weight management.
As a side point, regarding physical activity:
Getting any kind of physical activity is preferable than none at all. Like diet regimens, not all forms of exercise are equal, and many individuals make the incorrect choice of exercise while trying to shed extra pounds. As an instance, they may focus only on aerobics while ignoring strength training.
Building muscle is crucial to your metabolism, increasing your 24 hour energy expenditure, and providing additional health advantages beyond those of aerobic exercise, all of which make resistance training a vital component of fat reduction.
I want the reader to take notice that I referred to fat loss, not weight loss. The word "weight loss" will be used throughout this essay, but that's only because it's a catch-all phrase that most readers will be acquainted with. A well-designed diet and activity programme should prioritise fat reduction over weight loss.
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A emphasis on weight reduction, which may lead to loss of important muscle, water, and even bone in addition to fat, is the incorrect strategy. The approach for losing fat while maintaining lean body mass (LBM) is beyond the scope of this article but may be found in my ebook(s) on the subject.
When it comes to losing fat while keeping muscle, the most important factors to consider are the kind of activity, the intensity of that exercise, the duration of time performing that exercise, etc (LBM).
Fundamentals of Weight Loss Psychology
People's inability to maintain their weight reduction for the long term is often attributed to the fact that few diet plans focus on the psychological aspects of the issue. Still, there are a number of research that have investigated this very question. The mental side of losing weight is crucial, yet it is often overlooked.
When those who have lost weight and kept it off are compared to those who have regained it, there are noticeable variations in their mental makeup.
One research, for instance, compared the characteristics of 28 obese women who lost weight but then gained it all back to those of 28 women who lost weight and kept it off for at least a year and 20 women whose weight remained within a healthy range.
- Frequently based one's sense of value on superficial factors like body size and appearance
- Failed to maintain a healthy weight due to a lack of alertness
- Tended toward a binary way of thinking
- Often used food as a coping mechanism while feeling down.
Following their investigation, the researchers determined.
The findings "indicate that psychological reasons may account for why many individuals with obesity regain weight after achieving weight reduction success."
Although this research focused on female participants and so reflects certain gender-specific psychological challenges, it should be noted that male participants also face unique psychological barriers to maintaining a healthy weight.
In addition, research on both sexes have shown that psychological factors including "having unrealistic weight goals, poor coping or problem-solving abilities, and low self-efficacy" are strong predictors of long-term failure with weight reduction.
However, "an internal motivation to lose weight, social support, better coping strategies and ability to handle life stress, self-efficacy, autonomy, assuming responsibility in life, and overall more psychological strength and stability" are common among people who have maintained their weight loss over time.
The purpose of this section is to demonstrate the importance of one's mental attitude toward weight reduction in deciding whether or not they will achieve their weight loss goals. It may be the deciding element in your success or failure if it isn't handled as part of the larger strategy.
However, this is not something that can be fully addressed by most nutrition programmes and thus they should not be expected to. Most good programmes make some effort to aid in areas like motivation, goal-setting, and support, however.
You should seek help from professionals like counsellors and support groups if you recognise yourself in any of the categories above that describe people who were unable to sustain their weight loss over time. Expecting a weight reduction programme to properly address this issue is unrealistic; instead, seek for programmes that aim to provide support, goal setting, and tools that will help you stay on track.
'Someone's going to be taken for a sucker every minute.'
You may wonder why it is so rare to come across such forthright discussion of the practical difficulties of maintaining a slim physique. Let's be real: selling bars, shakes, books, supplements, and courses via honesty is a losing proposition.
Makers of those items may be in serious financial difficulty if everyone who read this post truly implemented its recommendations and sent it to millions of others who also implemented them.
Of course, they also know that "there's a sucker born every minute," so I highly doubt they'll lose any sleep about what impact my presence or this piece would have on their bottom line.
Let's review everything we've covered so far: the fundamental truths behind lasting weight reduction, and the steps you can take to evaluate a weight loss programme and determine whether or not it's right for you.
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o Changing your lifestyle to incorporate more nutritious eating and regular physical activity is the only way to achieve long-term weight reduction.
You should ask yourself, "Can I eat that way for the rest of my life?" before committing to any diet plan.
When it comes down to it, the best weight reduction programme is the one that teaches you how to eat and be independent so you can make healthy decisions about your diet in the long run.
You shouldn't have to rely on processed foods, bars, drinks, supplements, or pre-made meals to sustain your weight reduction efforts.
o A powerful exercise component is essential to the success of any weight reduction program.
A good weight reduction programme should aid with motivation, goal setting, and support, but it can't take the place of professional mental health care.
Conclusion
In this last paragraph, I'd like to provide some further information and clarification. To begin, the aforementioned guidance is not appropriate for everyone. Competing bodybuilders and other athletes who benefit from very drastic modifications in nutrition during 'off season' and 'pre-contest,' and so on, are not the target audience.
Such who have health problems and are following a special diet to cure or control those problems are also not the target audience for this piece. The typical reader who's had it with the Yo-Yo diet merry-go-round will find this essay helpful. Given that this is essentially everyone on the planet, millions of individuals will be protected.
The fact that I recommend people stick to this diet indefinitely should not put them off trying it. That's not to say you'll be on a diet forever and have nothing but hunger to look forward to.
However, this does imply that you will need to figure out how to eat healthily even after you achieve your goal weight, and this new method of eating shouldn't be too different from the way you ate while you were trying to shed pounds.
Once you reach your goal weight (and/or percentage of body fat), you'll enter a maintenance phase when you may eat more of what you want and sometimes indulge in something like pizza.
Unlike the diet that caused the weight gain, the maintenance diet is a natural progression from the diet that led to weight loss.
Applying the aforementioned "big picture" strategy can help you stay on track for sustainable weight reduction regardless of the programme you pick. I'll be at the gym, so see you there!
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