#1 Dieting Mistake

If you haven’t personally experienced this I can promise you know someone who has. You know, the person who is always losing and gaining, losing and gaining. Here’s how it goes:You dive headfirst into the hardest workout you can do and do it as many days of the week as you can squeeze in. You cut out all the ‘bad’ things, promise to swear off soda and all things carbs. You pick a 1200-1500 caloric range because that’s what everyone and google says.It sucks. You hate life but the scale is finally moving. People are noticing. Your clothes are getting loose. You tell yourself it’s worth it and you keep going until…you can’t. Or until the scale stops moving, you’re starving, restricted and flabby and can’t possibly workout harder than you already are. So now, you’re stuck. Why isn’t this working anymore?Because you went too hard too fast. You created too big of a deficit from the get go. You set the bar so high with your workouts and caloric deficit, there is no where else to go. And if you want to KEEP losing, you have do even more than when you started.

Instead of working harder than you need to and setting yourself up for failure or a plateau (which WILL happen), ask yourself BEFORE you start a new regime:

Can I maintain this new normal (level of activity, caloric range and any other parameters you’ve put in place)? Can I eat this range of calories, happily and healthfully for a lifetime? What happens when I’m in social situations, on vacation, get sick, have a major life event, get stuck at work or at the ball fields or dance studio all weekend; will this new regime allow for that?

THAT is why you get stuck in that vicious lose/gain/lose/gain cycle. It is NOT maintainable long term.

Let’s look at another example. For simplicity, let’s say you currently eat about 2,000 calories a day. You decide to drop your calories to 1,300 because obviously, less is better, right? Wrong.

You WILL see weight loss quicker in the beginning, but here’s the problem. The second you start going over those 1300 calories, the weight will come back. Can you maintain 1300 calories a day forever? What about all those reasons mentioned above? Are you going to skip holidays and social events? Or will you tell yourself you’ll just do an extra hour of cardio to make up for it? Because that doesn’t work either.

I have clients who tell me they want to lose 20 lbs in a month. That would be awesome, right? Are they prepared to go all Biggest Loser style and workout for 12 hours a day, eat at a crazy deficient and deal with constant injury? Oh no, that’s right, they have an actual job and family and a life. Once again, NOT sustainable.

What I tell them is that they need to be doing the LEAST amount of work to illicit the MOST results. Meaning, work smarter, not harder. Baby steps. Slow and steady wins the race. Positive changes, small tweaks to instill new habits or course correct some that aren’t serving you well anymore. It’s all doable. It might not be as fast as you want, but if you do it the right way the first time, it will be the last time you do it.