The formula for long term diet success

Stop associating diet with weight loss: the formula for success

You may have heard of the statistic that roughly 95% of diets fail. By failure, this means that you regain the weight after you have lost it, and must go through an additional phase of weight loss to achieve your desired body composition once again.

With that being said, I think one of the, if not the most predominant, catalyst of weight regain is the association of a diet with losing weight. Let me explain.

When someone says the word diet, such as "I am on a diet," it is almost always automatically assumed that they are trying to lose weight with the diet. It has been so ingrained into our minds that diets are only used when you are trying to lose weight. So, once we no longer want to lose more weight, or we hit the goal we set out for ourselves, we stop the diet. Many people then choose to eat whatever they want, whenever they want, until they get enough weight that they are unhappy with their body composition, and go on the diet again.

So many people say things like "Yeah, the keto diet worked for me."

The reason they say this is because they went on the keto diet, lost the weight they wanted to lose, then stopped because for some reason we only associate diet with weight loss. Once we stop losing weight, we stop the diet. Likely because the diet we choose to lose weight is fsr to restrictive and unmanageable to continue to do for the rest of our lives.

I would say that if our goal is to not just lose weight, but maintain that weight, maybe we should stop associating diet with weight loss, and realize that a diet is simply just a pattern of eating. Maybe we should choose a pattern of eating that allows us to lose weight on an eating pattern that we can stick with for a prolonged period of time.

Then, say after you have lost weight, you have a new goal of putting on muscle mass. There's no reason for your food selection and choices to automatically become unregulated and random. Simply just eat more of the food you were already eating! Yes, you can now add in cettisn things that you may not have been able to fit into your meals at a lower bodyweight. But for the most part, you should probably be eating the same foods on the way up as you were on the way down, because that indicates your dietary pattern is sustainable and complete!

Staying on the same "diet" will probably unconsciously make you choose more nutrient-dense foods, because most people typically choose more nutritious foods to include in a weight loss diet. Furthermore, it is probably a great strategy to manage hunger, because you finally will feel satisfied with the portions that you are eating if you were not satisfied during the weight loss phase.

Anyone can lose weight, it truly is not that hard. Statistics demonstrate that the hard part is maintaining the same body fat levels over a prolonged period of time.

I guess it comes back to the age old saying, if it ain't broke don't fix it. The same pattern of eating that got you to your goal body fat is likely going to be the one that keeps you there!