FAT to FIT Season 2: Part 13
Most Important Part
Consistency and dietary commitment are by far the most important factors in losing weight and keeping it off.
The research data is extremely clear; if you cannot sustain the methods you used to lose weight, then the question is not “if” but “how rapidly” you’ll put back on the weight after you lose it.
This goes for any method.
one of my clients lost 20 kgs on a ketogenic diet, then added back 25 kgs because he couldn’t sustain the diet for more than four months.
Once he went back to eating “normally,” he rapidly packed the weight back on because of the state of his metabolism.
Remember the self-defense system?
Now, some people lose weight on a ketogenic diet and keep it off, but they typically don’t view it as a “diet” with a beginning and an end.
Instead, they view it as a “lifestyle” that they must continue forever to maintain their weight loss.
This is like people who follow a particular religion, some go super hard on religious ethics and rituals and abandon everything normal to general social life.
It’s a kind of mindset that very few people have, and just like everything else, if you do something for a long time blindly, yes it will produce certain results and has its consequences.
This goes for any dietary intervention style.
Your absolute caloric intake may change (I’ll talk about this later in my blog dealing with the diet after the diet), but whatever method you used to create an energy deficit, you must be able to maintain that long-term.
For some people (myself included), a strategy like “flexible dieting” works wonders.
It relieves the burden of feeling like there are “good” and “bad” foods and allows you the freedom to consume whatever food you want as long as you hit your Nutritional targets.
This involves tracking your protein, carbs, and fats (which I highly recommend) to give you that flexibility.
I will explain in the coming blogs why your calorie and macronutrient intake is far more important than individual food choices.
Suffice it to say, this is a great strategy for many people to create a sustainable lifestyle since they can consume anything they like to hit their “macros” but still make progress towards their goals.
Like all great things, it’s probably not for everyone.
Some people have extreme anxiety about tracking their intake.
For these individuals, tracking their macros may not be the best method to create sustainability.
Another example is time-restricted eating, which is also called “intermittent fasting.”
I will touch on intermittent fasting in more depth later, but this is one method of restricting calories that doesn’t make sense to me, personally.
It doesn’t create greater weight or fat loss when you equate calories between non-time-restricted eating, so, why would you want to not eat for 16+ hours of the day?
However, for some people, time-restricted eating is just a strategy that allows them to be more committed to their diet.
For example, many people aren’t hungry upon waking and can go several hours before they feel the need to consume food.
Because they didn’t eat for several hours after waking, these people can have more calories in a shorter period during their “feeding hours.”
Some people find dieting more tolerable if they know that they can have a big meal or two—simply because they didn’t eat for a good chunk of the day.
Some people, on the other hand, don’t do well with this method.
They get extremely hungry during the “fasting” hours and then end up overeating during the “feeding” hours because they were so restricted previously.
Further, some people use time-restricted eating to justify over-eating.
They fast for long periods so they can go crazy for a few hours. This isn’t healthy or productive.
Something like intermittent fasting needs not to exist in a vacuum, either.
You can track your macronutrients and eat within a certain window for a variety of reasons.
For instance, I often employ intermittent fasting. Not because of any dietary magic, but because it allows me to accomplish other things in my day-to-day life.
So, on a given day during writing this blog, I know I have certain deadlines to meet.
I’ll wake up, look in the mirror, and say, “You don’t eat until you put out, you son of a gun.” Then I get to writing.
No dietary magic, just a way to incentivize doing what I know I need to do based on years of my behavior.
Or, maybe you just want to sleep in and not get up to make food.
Whatever you decide, make sure it doesn’t suppress your progress and make sure you can sustain it.
I am trying to highlight that what makes a diet sustainable to you is very individual. It’s probably important to try different behaviors and strategies to see what works for you.
One of the big reasons we don’t see differences in adherence between most diets in the meta-analysis is that adherence and sustainability aren’t just about physiology. (all diets have terrible adherence)
It’s also about psychology and sociology, which are different for each person.
The sustainability of different diets isn’t predicated on the feeling of satiety.
That is, diets must also accommodate your social life and provide psychological and emotional well-being, while still progressing toward your goals.
Some people love low-carb diets, while others hate them.
Some people love low-fat diets, while others hate them.
Copy for many other dietary strategies.
If you try to force someone who hates eating low-carb into a low-carb lifestyle, their commitment is probably going to be pretty terrible—and thus, unsustainable.
I am not saying that losing weight and keeping it off should be easy.
It may be at some points, but it will be monumentally difficult, as well.
It requires discipline, dedication, and willpower.
All the above it’s about building habits and accountability to reach & maintain certain goals.
However, I want to use a eating strategy and engage behaviors that require the minimal amount of willpower needed e
to stick to the strategy.
Why?
In the words of Dr. Kori Propst, “self-control is fatiguing.”
That is, any type of weight loss plan will require some form of sacrifice and self-control, but this isn’t the only area of your life where you’ll need to exercise self-control.
You also need self-control for your career, your family, your personal life, your spouse, etc.
In isolation, these things may not be that “fatiguing,” but putting them all together, throwing some stress into the mix, and maintaining your diet can become difficult.
People don’t typically blow their weight loss diets when things are going smoothly.
They blow their diets when work stress is high, their kids are screaming at them, their boss has them in a time crunch, they aren’t getting enough sleep…you get the point.
If you’re just sitting in your comfy home by yourself and all you have to worry about is eating correctly and exercising, it’s actually not that difficult to stick to a weight loss plan.
This is why it’s so important to find the easiest dietary strategy for you.
Don’t pick a plan that requires maximum willpower right from the beginning; that’s going to fail 100% of the time.
Your weight loss strategy should feel “easy” when stress is low and the other areas of your life are going well.
This way, when stress is high (I’m just being real, shit happens) hopefully your dietary strategy isn’t working to compound it significantly.
By now, you’re probably wanting me to give you more concrete ideas of “what works” rather than telling you, “It’s individual and try it out for yourself.”
I get it, but since there’s no one size fits all, I want to frame the conversation appropriately before I start discussing specific strategies in behaviors.
That said, there are some clear strategies and behaviors that emerge as commonalities among people who successfully lose weight and keep it off.
Again, this is all based on the habits we build over time.