There are a million and one different diet plans out there today. From fasting, to keto, to low carb, to high carb, to paleo, and everything in between there are a lot different plans touted on social media, TV, the internet, and any other form of advertisement imaginable. As obesity rates continue to rise, helping people lose weight becomes a bigger and bigger business. In this article I want to help you wade through all of the information overload and show you why the best diet for you to follow is one you can sustain for the long term.
If you open up Instagram and follow even a few health and fitness accounts you will probably see at least a few posts about weight loss. It can be so easy to listen to the siren's song of fast weight loss. I lost 20 pounds in 2 weeks and so can you! Follow this program and lose 10 pounds FAST. You get the idea-we all see these advertisements all the time. My question for each one of these is simple. Ok-then what? What are you gonna do when it's over? Maybe you decide to eat 800 calories a day for a month. This will take tremendous discipline. You will probably lose a lot of weight. But what is going to happen when it's over? You are going to reward yourself by eating what you have been depriving yourself of. This will probably go on for a few days, maybe longer. What happens after that? You probably put on a decent amount of weight that you lost. Let's say, for example, that you lose 10 pounds in a month with a super restrictive diet. Congrats! Now after you have let yourself go for the weekend you get on the scale on Monday, however, and you put 5 back on. This might seem extreme but it is very common. Your body is going to hold on to everything you put in once you get out of starvation mode because it needs fuel. So after all of that work for a month you are only down 5 pounds. You have also probably slowed your metabolism down to a crawl so that you won't be able to burn calories as fast as you could before. You can see how this can end poorly.
Let's look at another example. Maybe you decide to give up all sugar, all alcohol, and work out twice a day for an extended period of time. Maybe you sign up for an extreme challenge or something like this. You commit to train like a CrossFit Games athlete and exercise superhuman self control. At the end of the challenge you have lost a ton of weight and feel great. What happens next? This amount of dieting and working out is not sustainable. You can't keep going like this and so you take some time off and let yourself go. After a week off you have already put on half of the weight you lost. Keep going like this for a few more weeks and you are right back where you started. Even worse is that you have told your body that it has to go to these extremes to make progress. Our body is incredibly adaptable, sometimes to our detriment. When we tell our body that we have to train for hours and hours every day to make progress it stops adapting when we train less. It's a sad fact that many people end up worse off down the road after one of these challenges.
So what should you do? You want to lose a lot of weight fast. You are motivated. How should you decide the proper way to go? I always like to choose the conservative route. Think about your current diet and exercise plan. Is this something that you can do for 6 months? A year? Five years? If not then you need to do less. I'm not saying to avoid self discipline. I think it's very important that you choose a plan that is hard. Our class workouts are hard. It's hard to cut down on sweets and alcohol during the week. But if you give yourself a reward each weekend then it's not impossible. You can go a week without a sweet if you know you're going to have your favorite dessert on Saturday night (fitting it into your macros). You can go 5 days without a drink if you know you're going to go out for a few drinks Saturday night. This is sustainable. You can workout out for an hour a day four days a week.This is something that you can do for an extended period of time. This is sustainable. You are trading fast progress in a short period of time for slower progress over a much longer period of time. Would you rather lose 10 pounds a month only to add 10 or more pounds the next month, or lose 5 pounds a month for 6 straight months? If you can look at the big picture you will take slow, sustainable progress all day.
Look around at the fittest people that you know. What do they have in common? They all have the same thing in common-consistency. They have been living a fit and healthy lifestyle for YEARS. It's not something they achieved in 6 or 8 or 12 weeks. They have found a way to live that allows them to continue to make progress over a long period of time. This is something I encourage each of our members to think about. Is what you are doing sustainable? It should be hard but not TOO hard. Some days you push yourself. Some days you back off and just show up. Most days you eat very clean. Some days you have a cheat or two. But you don't strive for perfection each day. You strive for consistency. You strive for sustainability.
I challenge you to think about your current health and exercise routine. Are you making consistent progress? If so then keep doing what you are doing. Don't get caught up in thinking you should be making faster progress. If you are making progress then keep doing what you are doing. If you feel like you are making progress but are approaching burn out then really think about what you are doing. Can you keep this up for another year? If not then back off. Make the trade of fast progress for long term progress. Because life is not a sprint-it's a marathon. Health is fitness over a lifetime. It's not elite fitness over a short period of time and obesity over a long period of time. Always keep that question in mind. Is this sustainable? If so then keep doing what you are doing (as long as you are progressing). If not then it's time to make some changes.