If you’re referring to fad diets like juice cleanses or aggressive intermittent fasting, then no. A “diet” in reality is just the types of foods that encompass what you eat on a daily basis, as part of your lifestyle.
The key to making long-term changes in your diet is building good habits that will do more harm than good. So focus more on eating mostly good stuff (fruits and vegetables, legumes, whole grains) and mindfully, moderate amounts of the other “good” stuff.
Drink plenty of water as it revitalizes the body, inside and out. Also allows you to be less hungry, because sometimes our minds tricks us into think we’re hungry, but really your body may just be thirsty.
Because diets do work. And people don’t fail with diets – people fail to maintain a diet for the long-term.
And the biggest reason why is because they fall for nonsense like juice cleanses, or adding butter to coffee because apparently butter is a fucking health food now – spoiler: it’s not. Or any of the smorgasbord of weird and wacky dumbfuckery that’s rampant in the diet world.
If you’re wanting to be successful with your fat loss, find a diet you enjoy and can stick to.
Here are some considerations that will help you do just that.
After much thought and deliberation on the topic, I’ve noted two things that every good diet should have: Enjoyability and healthiness.
Quadrant 1. Enjoyable but not healthy: This is the prototypical Standard Western Diet – high fat, high carb, high calorie, high everything. It’s highly enjoyable but about as healthy as bungee jumping without the bungee into a pit of fire breathing great white sharks.
- Quadrant 2. Healthy but not enjoyable: This is when you eat in a way you don’t enjoy but think it’s the only way and is the direct opposite of the above. It doesn’t matter how healthy a diet is if you don’t enjoy it.
• Quadrant 3. Not enjoyable and not healthy: This is the mystical realm of what I like to call “Dumb Fucking Shit”. And it’s where things like a juice cleanse and coffee enemas (no, really, this is a thing) reside. Like Mufasa told Simba: Stay the fuck away from there.
• Quadrant 4. Healthy and enjoyable: This is where you want to be. You’re eating a diet that provides you with a wide range of whole, nutrient-rich foods while allowing you to eat in a way you enjoy.
Understanding Healthiness and Enjoyability
It’s important to understand what I mean when I use the terms ‘healthiness’ and ‘enjoyability’.
– Enjoyability
• Taste preference: Does your diet support your personal taste preference? If you enjoy fattier foods then your diet should account for that. If you enjoy carb-based foods, then you probably shouldn’t be using a ketogenic diet.
• Quirks: I didn’t really know what to call this, so we’re going with quirks. Do you enjoy cheat meals or higher calorie days? Or maybe having fasting days? Then your diet should account for this.
• Autonomy/choice: The overall enjoyability of the diet will be predicated on whether it was your choice. (Refer back to quadrant 2 of the How Dumb Is Your Diet Graph).
– Healthiness
We can break healthiness down to psychological and physiological health.
– Psychological
• Restrictiveness: The biggest psychological factor here is how restrictive your diet is. Now, just to be clear, a restriction is a necessity at times – a calorie deficit, for example, is a form of restriction – and you need to understand that to be successful in changing your body composition there will be times when you’re going to need to be disciplined and restrict certain foods. But, this should only be for a short period of time and not how you should be eating all the time.
• Personality Type? This sounds complicated, but it’s not. Simply put, your personal idiosyncrasies play an important role in how you set up your diet. I’ve noted that people generally fall into two categories:
– Moderators: Moderators are people who can moderate food intake. These are the people who can have a few bites and stop. These types of dieters do well with a much less rigid and more flexible approach. They thrive on the “IIFYM” based diets. They don’t have any trigger foods and can eat everything in moderation.
– Restrictors: restrictors are the polar opposite. They need a lot more structure and rules (and certain restrictions). These are the people who do well with removing certain foods if they cause bingeing or overeating.
• “Must Haves”: ‘Must haves’ are things that you absolutely must have in your diet or it’s a no-go. Now, don’t get me wrong, chances are that there will be some things you’ll have to remove if they’re going to impede your progress (like trigger foods); but generally, these will only amount to a small number of things, whereas the must-haves will be the overarching things, like certain foods, macros, etc.
Must haves will also include your work and life circumstances – do you travel? Are you sedentary / seated for large parts of the day? Does your job have odd work hours, like working night shifts?
– Physiological
• Calorie controlled: Of course calorie control will be king because even a healthful diet won’t save you from the ill-effects of carrying excess body fat.
• Food quality: As I mentioned here, food quality does matter and plays a powerful role in health and longevity.
• Body Fat %: Simply, your body fat levels will dictate what sort of macro composition you should be using. Due to things like insulin resistance, people with higher a body fat % tend to fare better on a lower carb diet. And conversely, someone with a lower body fat % tends to fare better with a carb-focused diet – there are, of course, exceptions. But this holds true for most.
I just want to point out that it’s not necessary for people with a high level of body fat to go low carb, and as long as there is a calorie deficit in place, you will lose fat. However, from experience, people with high levels of body fat (20%+) tend to fare much better restricting carbohydrates initially. Their energy levels tend to stabilize, they feel less lethargic, cravings subside, and due to the water loss from going low carb, it acts as a motivator as they see results from the get-go.
• Injuries and Medical History: Pretty straightforward – any injury or medical history that may affect your training and diet should be factored in. Even if you think you’re perfectly healthy, it doesn’t hurt to get a check-up before starting a new diet and training program.
All of this is important to understand because while the basics of changing your body composition are simple –energy balance– each person’s personal psychology and physiology will differ.
Someone who’s never exercised before and has a lot of fat to lose will have different physiological and psychological requirements than someone who stopped training for a while and gained some body fat in the interim; conversely, a lean beginner is going to be in a different place than an overweight beginner.