By Most people revert back to old habits because they believe that it’s too overwhelming and hard in sticking with the initial plan.
It’s also about how big your ‘why’ is to achieve whatever goals you set. Most people don’t sit down and try to understand why they want to pursue certain goals or prepare well enough, which leaves them open to giving up down the track.
If we want to achieve something, and most of these things are usually challenging, then a set plan is needed as we move along each stage. Weight loss is tough, as it requires some baseline knowledge of nutrition and exercise. In saying that, committed and intentional people always make progress because they do what it takes to seek answers to their challenges.
A lot of the time, diets can leave us depleted and worse than we started. Thirty days is a good time to see some process, but depending on what the person has been eating and the activity undertaken will determine the results they’ve achieved. I know this isn’t enough time to see results for me, and I have to keep going towards the second month patiently. Below are reasons diets can fail, finishing with a strategy that works.
Six reasons why people revert to their old ways when trying to lose weight
One: They find it hard to stick with a restricted diet.
Restricted diets are not fun and don’t make life worth living. Having a certain nutritional plan during the week is realistic, leaving a bit of leverage over the weekend. This is a good outcome when losing weight or maintaining your set point. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out this easy for people, and once they stop getting results, dieting becomes much harder. Lower calories, more restricted eating, increasing cardio to burn fat. This leads us into an exhausted heap of a mess – leading us to binge eat and give it all up. This is the wrong way to lose weight, but it’s a conditioned response from years of being fed the wrong information.
Two: They don’t know what or how much to eat daily.
Did you know that not eating enough can harm your weight loss goals? We must eat the right food within the acceptable portion range to achieve our goals. This can be somewhat confusing to a lot of people. At first, it will take some time to determine how many macros you need based on your body type and the range of activity you do. We can and do grossly overestimate how much food we require daily. The opposite is also true. The best way to understand this is to listen to your body and give it time. Many people give up before the body has had time to kick in and start catching up with their changes.
Three: They are on a low-calorie diet that leaves them hungry.
I’m sure you know this feeling. Being hungry constantly, the overwhelming cravings and your inability to stop eating when you can. This is all part and parcel of the body reacting to insufficient nutrients, and it can lead to overconsumption of calories and putting on substantial amounts of body fat.
Four: They aren’t doing enough activity daily.
Diet is the most important factor when it comes to weight loss. In saying that, exercise is needed as an added benefit to reshape and tone your body. It’s also a great way to increase your heart health and longevity. We must become more active and eliminate sitting in an office chair all day. You will be surprised at how much incidental exercise can help you lose weight on top of your daily routine. Thinking of creative ways to increase your activity is very easy and a lot of fun. Why not walk to and from work, or ditch your car indefinitely?
Five: Impatience is a goal killer.
Many think their bodies will automatically lose weight if they constantly eat 1000 calories daily. There are a lot of factors that determine how many calories you can consume, how the body reacts to this and activity. It’s not a one-day, one-month or 3-month activity, this is a lifetime of constant effort with your nutrition and exercise. We must accept that it does take time and will take effort. Because of the work and time needed, many people give up way too soon.
Six: Using shakes and pills that may work initially but are not long-term effective.
There is no point in using shakes and pills. Sure, they may get you a bit of short-term weight loss, but replacing meals with shakes and pills is not fun, and it’s not healthy either. We can’t put our lives in the hands of lotions and potions, and we must control what we eat and how much activity we do. This is the only way to sustain long-term weight loss and increase our chances of a healthy life. Taking something that mucks up your health is not worth it, even for the initial help it can provide. Always think long-term and from a health perspective.
Now, I’ve highlighted some aspects of dieting which make it very hard to sustain long-term, but let me touch on something profound that can help.
Intermittent fasting
I’ve written many articles on this, believing it to be a very easy way to lose body fat and even gain muscle. I did not believe it myself until I started seeing results. This didn’t happen overnight, and not with just food alone. The food is extremely important for me, but so is the weight training. Lifting weights and eating well magnify my results. You won’t believe how miraculously your body changes and how much more developed your metabolism becomes.
There are many ways to fast, but I get the best results from fasting every day and doing long-duration fasts regularly, from 17–20 hours. These give me the most results, but shorter timeframes also work. You will have to do some of your experimentation to see what’s suitable.
Dieting is tough, but I’ve found restricted periodic eating to be the most realistic, beneficial and easiest way to lead my life and achieve my body composition goals. I highly recommend you try this and see what it can do.
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