Why Your Diet and Training Are Making You Fat
For decades, million and millions of people have taken on the typical dieters approach. The eat less, exercise more model.
The Problem:
Maybe this sounds familiar;
You notice you've gained 30 lbs in the last 2 years, because of life, kids schedules, work, pandemic, etc. You come to the realization that its time to focus on YOU for once. You decide to hire a coach or trainer or maybe you decide to do it yourself. Either way, you get a grocery list, meal plan and training regimen and you plan to start Monday. You are super pumped because the excitement of FINALLY getting your health in order is going to happen!
Meeting a trainer twice a week with the perfect plan, meal plan, you think "how can I fail?"
You bust your ass with your coach, you hit the gym three a week outside your sessions.
Two weeks ago you were on the couch ordering pizza from Door Dash and now you are exercising 5x a week and eating chicken and broccoli.
You feel amazing! You are down 10 lbs in 2 weeks and already seeing results! SUCCESS.
Week 4 comes along and on this Monday morning the alarm going off is an unwelcome wakeup call. You wake up tired, sore and less than motivated. You get to the gym to get your workout in but its less than great. Your trainer notices and reassures you that there are good days and bad days but you leave feeling more worn out than when you got there.
The day goes on and not even the extra caffeine will help give you that boost. Lunch comes around and the office bought pizza for lunch. Feeling exhausted and having had your fair share of chicken and broccoli the last 3 weeks you decide one peace wont hurt. So you have 4 and feel stuffed, bloated and worse energy than earlier. The cravings increase because of your highly palatable lunch. You get home for the evening and now dinner is spent ordering out and snacking until your food gets there.
You experience enough shame and guilt that you decide to skip your next workout because you slept like shit and feel worse than you did yesterday.
On the 4th day of sitting in self-pity you decide to get back to the gym, cut out bunch of calories and are back on track.
Except now your cravings are worse than before and your energy and mood are not only unstable but also unpredictable.
You get through the day, tired, sore, hungry, but also feeling bloated and restless. Your partner hints at a little "wrestling match' before bed but you feel too gross and uncomfortable to be touched. You go to sleep isolated, stuck and frustrated with your diet, health and now life.
Repeat on and off with minimal to no success over a lifetime.
Does this sound familiar? I've seen it literally hundreds of times with clients. I've been there myself.
You are doing all the right things.
Exercise, dieting, walking, tracking food, discipline, willpower, listened to all the David Goggin's videos you can find etc.
"Why do I keep failing?" You ask yourself.
The answer isn't in what you are doing, its in how you are doing it.
Let me explain.
The above scenario is what I call the typical "dieters approach." It is an eat less, exercise more philosophy (AKA ELEM).
Lets say you cut calories to 1000 per day (I see this a lot) and you exercise each day and burn 3000 calories per day.
You are now in a deficit of 2000 calories per day. The problem is that this 2000 calorie "gap" is too big and stressful. The more you push on your metabolism this way, the more it will push back.
The way it pushes back is in many ways, but the most typical are what I call SHMEC.
You will see a disruption in; Sleep, Hunger, Mood, Energy and Cravings.
When your sleep is bad you can't recover properly to grow and watch your body change long term. When your energy is low, it is literally your body slowing down to conserve energy (ironically part of conserving energy will be to burn fat much slower) When your hunger and cravings have increased as a starvation response, you can only fight that off for so long.
This is the biggest mistake you are making in your "new fitness program" and also one of the most overlooked aspect of most fitness coaches and trainers.
When this happens, no amount of willpower or discipline will work. You are fighting a losing battle and the more your resist these biofeedback signals the more you run the risk of developing some major metabolic damage or disease.
I really can't stress the importance of understanding this enough.
At this point you may be thinking, well what's the solution?
We will dive into that next week. In the meantime, I want to hear from you on if this has resonated with you.
Have you struggled with the dieters approach?
Do you feel frustrated every time you eat healthy and hit the gym only to find you crave everything in sight and don't have the energy to continue?
Email me back here and tell me your story.
Next week, we will dive into how to move through this.
PS. As always, if you need help moving through this, you can apply for coaching below through either of my 2 options.
