3 Reasons your diet is not working

  1. You’re not in a calorie deficit.
  2. You’re not in a calorie deficit.
  3. You’re not in a calorie deficit.

So, that wasn’t particularly helpful. But for 99% of people it’s true. I’ve heard 101 excuses.

“but I have a slow metab….” shhh you’re not in a deficit.

“but I don’t eat that much”

Enough that you’re not in a deficit, sounds harsh but it’s as simple as that. If you’re struggling to shift the timber you need to do 1 of 2 things, increase energy output or decrease input.

The truth is that not many people can consistently maintain a calorie deficit and it’s not necessarily anyone’s fault. We live in a day and age of highly palatable high calorie foods everywhere. Couple that with the amount of miss-information and it is a recipe for disaster.

So here are my 3 favourite dieting methods.

  1. Flexible dieting

Flexible dieting involves counting calories. These days this is easy with apps like MyFitnessPal where you can scan anything you eat and the database has pretty any food on it. Treat yourself to a set of scales and it isn’t that much of a hardship to weigh out your cornflakes in the morning and pop it in to your app.

 Pros

  • Doesn’t exclude any foods.
  • You can still eat out and not avoid social situations and track with decent accuracy.
  • You can borrow calories from one day to accommodate for higher calorie days.

 

Cons

  • If you’re prone to obsessive behaviour it can lead to an unhealthy obsession

2. Intermittent fasting. Basically, you fast intermittently throughout the day. The most common approach to this is the ‘lean gains’ approach.

You pick an 8-hour window to eat and don’t eat for the other 16, example eat 12-8

Pros

  • It’s extremely simple.
  • Doesn’t need you to change your habits to much which helps adherence.
  • It’s much harder to over eat within an 8-hour period.

 

Cons

  • Your body can be very good at ruining your weight loss, increases in hunger hormones can wreak havoc and since you are not tracking you could easily eat a little more to make up your deficit without realising.
  • Can be difficult to eat all your food in an 8 hour window if you live a busy life

 

3) Portion control

A good way to simply control portions is as follows:

For men:

Protein/meat and fish – use two palm size portions,

Veggies – use two fist size portions,

Carbs – use two cupped hand size portions,

Fats – use two thumbs size portions for each meal.

For women:

Half of the above.

Pros

  • Decrease food portion will lead to eating less.
  • Again, it’s simple to stick to
  • Great place to start before tracking. To get you used to controlling intake

 

Cons

  • Not all foods are the same – a handful of chocolate, crisps, pastries J are going to have a hell of a lot more calories than rice or potatoes and rice and potatoes will have more than berries and most fruits.

If you have any questions regarding this or would like examples of how to use these methods then give me a shout.

Darren Holness

Better Body Group, Sevenoaks