With all my clients, we focus on long term weight loss. This means that we want to teach you how to eat better, choose healthy habits and keep the weight off for life.
Sure we can give you a crash diet to get you down a few kilos real fast, but it’s just gonna go back on, so what’s the point?
This doesn’t mean that if you start training with us you won’t have your exercise revved up and your diet changed, because you will. It’s just not gonna be as extreme as 500 calories and only chicken and broccoli.
The Biggest Loser is one of these shows that promote rapid and extreme weight loss and it’s just not sustainable, especially when you factor in training 5 hours a day and barely eating anything.
So how do you lose weight and keep it off using a moderation approach, where good enough is good enough?
First, you have to figure out what moderation is and if you actually stick to it.
I hear about moderation all the time and then see ‘not moderation’ on a weekend or dinner out.
If you stuff up moderation when you have a cheat meal, you can sabotage your weight loss efforts for the entire week in one meal.
True story, and it’s the most common reason people don’t lose weight or keep it off.
We encourage a 90% rule where you eat well 90% of the time and cheat only 10% of the time.
This also means that 90% of the food you eat should be healthy stuff and only 10% should be unhealthy or cheat foods.
It’s 90% of your calories for the week and 10% of the calories for the week.
While I may sound like I’m saying the same thing, it’s also common to see people have one night out and consume several days’ calories in the evening alone.
That will cause weight gain, impede on your food budget, and leave you very frustrated and looking for someone to blame.
Who is pouring your drinks and are they actually a standard drink or a generous serving and you are just telling yourself its ok, reasoning your way through it?
This may happen more than once a week too. Maybe you do the same thing with food the next night. I don’t know.
If you eat out or have a few drinks out, stick to moderation if fat loss is your goal and you are actually serious about it.
Second, the ‘good enough’ approach when it comes to eating is much easier than ‘everything needs to be perfect.’
If you got to a restaurant with friends and the menu isn’t quite as fat loss friendly as you’d like it to be, choose the best thing you can find.
Don’t just decide that it’s not perfect so I’ll just treat myself with a burger and fries and maybe that ice cream sundae for dessert.
Choose something that’s pretty good, still gives you ample nutrition and isn’t too processed. There’s always something.
Good enough is good enough.
Precision Nutrition wrote a great article about weekend binge eating and strategies to work around it and through the problem.
I recommend everyone read it. The points are brilliant and the action steps to work through it are clear as day.
Check it out here: www.precisionnutrition.com/
If you can keep building supportive eating habits, your relationship with food will change.
Only you can decide if that’s what you really want.
Is the sacrifice worth the reward?
This doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice the foods you love, but maybe it means you sacrifice the over indulgence.
It’s up to you.
