One of the rules I have for my life is NO DIETING.  When I think about when I was at my best and also feeling good, I wasn’t dieting.  I was eating well and exercising but I wasn’t dieting or restricting.

Diets do strange things to people:  Diets make people cranky, depressed, and can contribute to disordered relationships with food.  I’ve been open with my own struggles and I’ve wondered:  Is there a way to lose excess body fat and still keep your sanity?

I’ve discovered that the answer is yes, but that yes comes with some concessions such as:

1) You won’t get the instant gratification of losing body fat that you normally do.  It will take much longer.

2) It can be extremely frustrating and you won’t think it’s working.

3) You have to be extremely self aware and not latch on to your old ways of losing “weight”.  The old, “eat extremely low calorie and over exercise”  and extremely low carbohydrate diets do not work for sustainable fat loss.

4) You have to be able to listen to your body and trust the actual process which I will be discussing next week.

1) No Instant Gratification

We all love the diets and plans where we lose 5 pounds the first week and keep dropping, dropping dropping until we hit our goal or a plateau.  Unfortunately we’re not just losing FAT when you we this.  We’re losing water, glycogen aka muscle fuel, (esp if you’re low carb), and the longer you keep going the body doesn’t just lose fat…it starts to feed off of muscle mass for extra energy.

Who cares as long as the scale is going down right? It’s all good UNTIL the dreaded plateau. We’re still on the same plans but the body stops responding.  The body is on to the game and has adapted to what we’re.  It’s not giving up any more energy because it thinks you may be in starvation mode.

So we either decide to go to the extreme and cut calories way down OR we give up and go back to eating the way we were before.

Congrats you hit your goal?

What if you don’t plateau but you actually hit your goal!  CONGRATS!  Now you’re in maintenance mode.

If you’ve done the eat low calories/do a ton of exercise or let’s just say you ate low calories.  With eating a low calorie diet, you not only lost fat but you also lost muscle mass which is the most metabolically active tissue.

As a result you burn less calories. Remember  you also now burn less calories at rest at your lower weight.  (The heavier you are, the more fuel you need to keep running)

So you may find yourself hungrier but you can’t eat any more or you will gain weight. Your metabolism has adapted and turned down SO You’ll have to keep eating low calories.

Most people don’t do this and end up gaining all the weight they lost PLUS some.  It’s called rebounding and it’s extremely common.  Anybody lost weight and then regained it back plus some??  (Yep. 20 pounds heavier over here!)

It won’t be fast but you’ll be sane

You won’t get instant results and you may even gain weight at first as your body tries to adapt to what’s going on but in the long term, you can turn your body into a fat burning machine with a healthy metabolism.

The goal of any fat loss plan is to be able to eat as much as you can without gaining fat.  You do this by eating a high quality diet, not starving, and staying active with an emphasis on resistance training and total body conditioning.

The results won’t be instant.  You must commit to a Six Month Program to see any results.  For most women, the first 3 months are a reset of  the metabolism from too many years of under eating and dieting.

I will be sharing with my weekly e-mail list explanations simple equations you can use to determine to get a rough estimate of how many calories you should be eating on a daily basis.  (If you’re interested, then You can sign up on the main page.  Just enter Name and E-mail)

2) It’s Frustrating and you won’t think it’s working

Losing Fat in a Sane Manner will be frustrating and you won’t think it’s working because you won’t see the numbers drop as fast as you would like them too or like with a quick fix diet.

You have to play the tape out until the end.  The #1 Mindset adjustment you have to make with Sane Fat Loss is that you must believe it will work.  Otherwise if you don’t, then you will be continually frustrated and give up because the process is much slower.

3) You have to be extremely self aware and not latch on to your old ways of losing “weight”.  The old, “eat extremely low calorie and over exercise”  and extremely low carbohydrate diets do not work for sustainable fat loss.

The temptation will be to go back to the old fitness industry logic of eating low calories, cutting out all carbs and doing excessive exercise.  It is especially tempting to do this when it feels like you’re gaining weight and the Fat Loss Program is not working.

Remember the Long Term success rate for this paradigm of “weight loss” is 5%.  I’ve shared before that studies have shown that one of the main predictors of weight gain is whether or not someone had been on a diet.

Coach Scott Abel says that the people who tend to gain the most weight in adulthood are the people who have been on the most diets!  It’s true.  Dieting on low calories and excessive exercise (especially low intensity long bouts of cardio) wreaks havoc on the metabolism and doesn’t lead to sustainable results.

Your goals with a Sane Fat Loss Program are to:

  • Maximize Metabolism
  • Build Lean Body Tissue and Improve Conditioning
  • Develop Good Habits, Routines and Strategies to sustain your results

4) You have to be able to listen to your body and trust the actual process which I will be discussing next week.

Above I listed the 3 Goals of a SANE Fat Loss program.  I believe that there should be autonomy with each individual because everyone’s lifestyles, biochemistry, genetics, and metabolic profile is different.  You can start with general equations and then adjust to how YOUR body is responding.

I think it can be very helpful to use coaches and trainers but they should be giving you guidelines so you can figure out strategies and routines that work for you.  If this is going to be a lifestyle, then it needs to work for YOU.

What about a meal plan and diet?

I don’t believe in giving out rigid meal plans.  Guidelines?  Yes but rigid meal plans?  No.  Most clients need to address their relationship with food and giving you a meal plan is just putting a band aid on a gunshot wound.

Why do you endlessly snack?  What are you hungry for?  Why do you eat the whole cupboard at night? (General answer:  You don’t eat enough during the day)  Why do you constantly crave sugar? (Could be not sleeping or not eating enough protein)

There’s always more to the story and you need to be able to figure it out so that you can let it go.  Being successful is not about the success but figuring out why you are NOT.  For most people it’s never about the food but something deeper.

Next week I will be discussing what the actual process of sane Fat Loss involves.  Feel free to e-mail me with questions, sign up for our newsletter, or follow me on social media!