I recently lost fifteen pounds and I did it by cutting down on the quantity of food that I was eating. I was, however, rather hungry throughout the entire process, which reminded me of a fact that I think we all forget—when you are losing weight, you’re eating too little. That means that, by default, it can’t last forever.
Weight Loss Is Caloric Deficit
When you eat more calories than your body needs, you gain weight. When you eat just the right amount, you maintain. When you are losing weight, you are eating fewer than you need. Thanks for the list, Captain Obvious, you’re thinking, but here is my point: I think we forget that last one. It’s one of the reasons that we are always talking about whether or not diets are ‘sustainable’. Once we go on a diet and begin losing weight, we start thinking that this is how we have to eat—forever.
You Have To Come Back Out Of Caloric Deficit
While you might like losing weight, your body doesn’t. It’s not a good strategy for long term survival. Your body dislikes it so much in fact, that it is equipped with the ability to lower your metabolism in order to slow down the process and stave off starvation. (This may be the reason we have such trouble with yo-yo dieting.) What that means, essentially, is that every caloric deficit must end. It’s simply a matter of how.
So, the question is, how do we handle the transition?
Plan The End Of Your Diet
I don’t have all the answers on this subject, but here is an interesting idea I came across as I’ve been investigating this subject. Physique competitors have to lower their body fat percentages for competition, by a lot. Pro body-builders get into the 5% body fat range, which is difficult to achieve and definitely not sustainable long term. That means that they have to be thinking about what to do after competition when they come back off of their cutting phase. Here are a couple of principles that they follow:
1. Don’t go hog wild: After a competition, body builders don’t go on eating binges. They are careful to add in calories slowly so that the metabolism has a chance to gradually up-regulate again.
2. Train hard: If you start adding calories back in that’s a very good time to give the body something to do with them. By planning an intense training phase to coincide with the end of a diet, you can do just that.
3. Be mindful with high pleasure foods: Really tasty foods are easy to binge on. If you have just lost a lot of weight through a very disciplined diet, you are going to be more vulnerable to losing control with the cookies. So be mindful of how you re-introduce any indulgences (which you should allow yourself, by the way). Keep it out of the house, for example, and do the occasional treat when you are out and don’t have the whole box staring you in the face.
I think it is worth considering that this end-of-diet-strategy is as important as the diet itself.