The diet industry can be a confusing landscape. A simple google search will yield dozens of researched backed articles telling you which diet is the best and worst for you. While you probably already believe me or are aware of this fact for yourself, to humor my theory, let’s make a short list of just a few of the ‘diet buzz-words’ that come to mind when I type in ‘what’s the best diet’ on any search engine.
Keto
Paleo
Vegan
Vegetarian
Pescatarian
Fruitarian
Flexible Dieter
Carb Cycler
Calorie Cycler
Mediterranean Diet
Plant-Based Diet
Carnivore Diet
Low-carb Diet
Raw Vegan
Whole30
Gluten-Free
Intermittent Fasting
Wow, that’s a long list, and it’s not even comprehensive. In a list so large, how could one singular diet possibly be the best or the worst? Short answer, they can’t. The truth of the matter is that any one of the diets listed above, if executed well, can be effective towards weight loss and building lean muscle mass. This brings me to my point, the diet is not the problem, adhering to it is.
How many friends do you have who have said something to the effect of “I’m starting the **insert diet from list above** diet on Monday, my goal is to lose 20 pounds in 2 months”. This statement is always made with very good intentions. But the story almost always unfolds with that same person adhering to the new diet for a few days or maybe a few weeks and then ultimately going back to old habits, at least until they pick the next diet on the list to try. The reason for this is simple… the diet industry sells you these diets as quick fixes and counts on your need for instant gratification to keep you on the diet hamster wheel. Then the same proctors of these diets encourage you to rely on pure will-power to adhere to them all while providing no long term exit strategy from the diet choice listed above. I don’t care how driven a person you are, eventually will-power runs dry. And when that moment comes so does the weekend binge. Adherence is your issue, not the diet.
But there’s got to be a better way, right? You know I don’t write an article without bringing some advice for improvement to the table.
Ease into It
If you’ve ever been to the gym, I’m guessing you didn’t drop 350 pounds on the barbell and rep out 5 bench press reps. If you’d taken that approach, you’d either be choked to death by the bar, or best case have a massive shoulder injury (embarrassingly enough, I speak from experience). On the contrary, you probably started with a weight load that you could handle and worked your way up to more weight as you grew stronger. So, if we aren’t willing to risk it all on the bench press, then why on earth are we doing it with our nutrition or diet plan?
The first thing that I’d encourage anyone looking to try a new diet tactic to do, is to make a minimum commitment of time it will take to transition into that diet. The key thing to unpack from this statement is that you should ditch the ‘all or nothing’ mentality to dieting… it’s ok to ease into something until you get it right. Perhaps instead of ‘going keto on Monday’ you can pick one day a week to eat Keto and see how that goes. Or instead of becoming vegetarian overnight, try replacing 2 meals a week with vegetarian based meals and see if that works for you. Ultimately starting small will allow you to experience small wins so that you can gain momentum over time.
Minimum Commitment
I generally encourage at least a 3-month commitment. This is because even when strictly adhered to, any nutritional weight loss programming will take at least 8–12 weeks to show its efficacy. If it takes at least 3 months of strict adherence to know for sure that a diet is working for you, then wouldn’t it stand to reason that going all in on day one and setting yourself up for a will-power based diet that will likely only last a couple of weeks is a recipe for disappointment? Give yourself 8 to 12 weeks of minimum personal commitment to ease into the diet before you determine if you feel like it is something you can stick with long term.
Don’t diet Monday through Friday Only to Binge all Weekend Long
Any weight loss plan (and I literally mean any of them) will only work if you’re eating in an overall caloric deficit. This means you need to burn more caloric energy than you consume in order to lose weight. There are a variety of arguments about metabolism and hormonal balance that would argue the simplicity of this statement, but the fact is that when it comes to weight loss: energy balance is king. If you’re not losing weight, it’s because you’re not burning more energy than you eat.
That being said, many like to think that sticking to a diet 5 days a week is justification to go totally off the rails the remaining 2 days. I could bust out some calorie math for you here, but that’s not what this article is about. The bottom line is that you can easily put yourself into a caloric surplus with a few over the top take out dinners and some weekend snacks on Saturday and Sunday.
I like to follow what I call the 80/20 rule of nutrition: 80% of the time, try to adhere to your plan and eat nutrient dense food, the other 20% enjoy some indulgences. During either of these divisions, eating the amount you need and not the amount you want does matter if your goal is weight loss, regardless of which diet you choose.
The Reality
When we take the reality of the above suggestions into mind, it becomes easier to understand that a restrictive diet plan simply is not going to yield the best results. Rather, long term adherence to a healthy diet of your choice is what’s going to earn you the lean physique you’re working towards. Any of the above diets could work but will take months to give results. And that would be if you were fully adherent to the plan, and let’s face it, you wouldn’t be. I don’t say this as an insult. I say it as a general truth: most of us have fast paced lives, do not live in an organic and gourmet cookbook, and have to make compromises to get through our day to day lives. To think that you could go full paleo or keto from one night to the next is simply an unrealistic expectation.
The next time you hear someone say that they are starting diet plan X on Monday, do them a favor… suggest that they ease into it and consider the long-term goal over the short term expected gratification. The long game is not always as sexy as the quick fix, but I promise you it’s what will earn you the result you want and allow for you to make the true lifestyle changes that are needed to maintain it.
Joey Szolowicz is a Nutrition and Health Blogger and Vlogger. For weekly tips join, his community here.
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Previously Published on Medium
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