After two weeks of rigorous dieting, your weight loss suddenly stops, your cravings
shoot through the roof, and bam, you’re done trying.
It seems like things just didn’t go your “weigh”, heh.
But the sudden stop might not be your fault. Instead, the weight loss plan you’re following
might just, to put it bluntly… it kinda sucks.
So in this video, we’re gonna look at four reasons why your diet might suck and hopefully
provide you with some ways to fix it.
First reason why your diet plan is no good: It does not account for portions and/or calories.
Even with much debate, we have plenty of data to suggest that calories are the overarching
measurement of weight management. Calorie intake versus calorie expenditure.
For weight loss, that means achieving a calorie deficit, ie eat fewer calories than you burn.
But even with this understanding, many diets don’t actually adhere to it, a lot of times
ignoring calories entirely, let alone managing food portions.
Rather, they like to overly overemphasize eating as much so-called “healthy” foods
as you like when they’re not actually all that great for weight loss.
A good example would be fruit smoothies, something heavily promoted by our wonderful fitness
IG influencers to this day. As great as fruits might be in its whole form,
mushing it all together into a goo-like green baby food turns a once fiber-rich satiating
food into a super calorie bomb that doesn’t necessarily make you feel full.
Worse yet, they’re more prone to making you gain weight rather than lose.
An even worse offender are fruit juices. Touted for the same health benefits plus a random
fortification of a handful of vitamins, juices strip fruits entirely of its crucial fiber
and its calories are through the roof, even surpassing soft drinks.
Ultimately, even if you are aiming for healthier food options, best practice is to understand,
not necessarily count, how many calories you’re actually eating and burning.
And if you do go for healthy foods, aim for its whole food forms rather than its liquidy
and processed counterpart. I’ll leave links to a calorie calculator
and some calorie apps in the description below so you can get started with knowing your own
calorie needs.
Number 2 goes for those diets that DO mention calories but fail to adjust it over time.
Yes, staying at a calorie deficit over time will lead to weight loss, but your deficit
doesn’t stay the same forever. Over time, losing weight will naturally lower
the amount of calories you burn. The science for it largely falls on your BMR,
which is the amount of calories you burn at rest, and your NEAT, N E A T, non-exercise
activity thermogenesis, aka activities you do unrelated to actual exercise.
As your BMR and NEAT drop, thus calories burned, your current deficit might no longer be a
deficit, or at least not the magnitude it was before.
And if your diet doesn’t adjust for these changes, then weight loss will likely stop.
Now, how would we adjust it? Well, there are two options:
One, clearly you can adjust the amount and type of food you eat.
You can increase the portions of your protein since protein is energy-costly to digest,
which burns more calories, and protein is much less likely to be stored away as fat.
It also helps you feel fuller. But in general, the option is to eat less
overall to sustain a deficit. But having to eat less and less can open up
a whole new set of issues, like rising hunger levels, lack of essential nutrients, and drops
in energy levels. Luckily, the second, better option can prevent
this, and that is to actively burn more calories. It might dip down your energy levels a bit
but burning more calories will save you from extreme nutrient deficiencies and increased
hunger levels. A popular option here is cardio. Cardio, be
it steady-state or high intensity cardio, tend to burn the most calories compared to
other exercises. Lifting weights is a good option as well,
especially to preserve muscle mass. My top recommendation is to actually do both,
lift weights and cardio. Doing both together have shown to preserve or even build muscle
while burning the most amount of fat possible. Best of both worlds.
Yes, easier said than done of course, but really, weight loss was never intended to
be easy, just that we want to provide the least restrictive path to it.
Proper exercise is definitely part of that path.
If you need more help walking through this, please come join us in our PictureFit discord
community and we’ll be more than happy to help.
Third reason your diet isn’t working is not because it sucks, it might just simply
not be the diet for you. Ever wondered why a diet worked for your friend
but not you? The food choices, the restrictions, the macronutrient
proportions, and so on just might not be for you.
Now, sometimes removing certain foods can help certain people more easily sustain a
calorie deficit. For others, though, it might actually make things harder.
Take low-carb diets for example. Has worked wonders for many, especially in cutting out
excessive amounts of sugars, but that isn’t necessary for everyone. Carbs might actually
be a very important fuel source for you, so restricting might be more problematic than
helpful. Now, what matters most and what has been highlighted
in many long-term research trials, is that one, you gotta sustain that calorie deficit
of course, but two, and relevant here, you gotta choose a diet you can stick to.
Personally, I like the calories and protein appraoch. Works for me, works for a lot of
people, and maybe works for you… or not. So shop around a little bit longer to find
a diet that works for you.
And finally, number four, your diet tries to do too much too quickly.
I’m talking about those diets that promise you’ll lose 20 pounds in just 20 days, or
even a week, whatever it might be. And some do try to push you to the extreme,
ahem Biggest Loser, with no regard for your actual health.
Needless to say, this is dumb and dangerous. Plus, the big question about these diets is
what are you gonna do after your 30-day challenge? Especially if you’re not even half way to
what the diet promised you would lose? Three words: You will quit.
All I can say to this is… patience. It took a while to gain all the unwanted weight
in the first place. It’s gonna take a while to lose it.
Adjusting and figuring out your calorie intake and portions will require patience to resolve.
The amount of calories you burn will drop over time, so it’ll take more effort and
patience to achieve a defict. Choosing the right diet isn’t always easy
and might require a bit of experimenting, so be patient when testing things out.
Patience, we all need more of it. And with that, we now have four new reasons
that might explain why your weight loss diet isn’t working.
If you have other reasons you think some diets don’t work, please feel free to share it
the comments below. If you enjoyed the video, please share it
with your diet loving friends and give it a patient thumbs up.
As always, thank you for watching and GET YOUR PROTEIN!