This is another series of articles centered around a central theme.
This time, I argue that just like in many other pursuits, one must sort out one’s personal nuances to experience success in dieting.
Losing fat isn’t an opinion. Aside from a few special cases (see End Notes*), all we need to do is to create a caloric deficit. Much easier said than done.The only way that people can screw up in this respect is to stray from the plan, or worse still, have no plan to start with.
Furthermore, in dieting, some personality types work better than others, and some people have their own idiosyncrasies that make dieting a serious mistake.
Amid the flurry of personal nuances, each diet must be specifically catered towards the sole purpose of Dietary Adhesion. Assuming a solid plan is in place, success is guaranteed.
Thus, this series is aimed at 3 aspects of how people manage to sabotage their dieting efforts right before they start. These are:
- A lack of a plan + fuzzy/unrealistic expectations and goals
- A lack of Patience and the Curse of Random Variables
- Never allowing flexibility
Each of these will be a article posted and linked in the following days.
Essentially, a lack of a plan coupled with a lack of knowledge of the right expectations drives one towards a fuzzy goal. This tends to lead to a whole host of complications which lead the dieter to do some stupid things with their activity and food intake. A lack of perspective and appreciation for the many variables in dieting tend to confuse the dieter and again cause them to do stupid things or to give up. Finally, a lack of flexibility in the diet compromises other parts of the dieter’s life (relationships, social activities, mood, etc) that lead to a sense of frustration and ultimately failure of adherence.
These 3 factors combine to create a potent cocktail of failure. No wonder so many people fail to keep the weight off after a diet!
But perhaps most importantly, these factors all act on the individual constantly, even before the diet. If you have not gotten such issues settled, success is never guaranteed.
If this all sounds vague, that’s because it is. Nevertheless, I will cover this in good enough detail through all the posts. Finally, I will end the series with a post with Suggested Solutions to Stop Self Sabotage which offers possible solutions to such problems.
As a closing statement to this post, I would like to give 3 takeaways from this post:
The first is that self mastery is key to success in basically everything, that includes dieting.
The second is that you have to get the basics right before anything else and have an accurate picture of the calories your are consuming and expending. For some info, view my other related posts: The 3-part Calorie Counting Series, How many calories are you burning?, The Fundamental Conditions for any Fat Loss Diet Attempt
The third is more of a point of interest for those interested and for the ladies going on a diet out there. Women have gotten the short end of the stick in terms of fat loss. Evolutionary, it makes sense, aesthetically it does not. The hormonal profile of a woman is an ever-changing thing (assuming their not in menopause) and this leads to both physiological changes AND psychological changes which makes the body give mixed signals to dieting. This will be covered in the posts that follow.
Stay tuned.
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*End Notes:
I will admit that although the ‘Energy Balance Equation‘ is always valid, some things can cause alterations of expenditure. Some examples include pregnancy, severe hormonal issues like hypothyroidism, hyperinsulinemia, and other metabolic and hormonal disorders. Menopause may also present changes to this balance.
At the same time, dietary extremes tend to cause some hormonal problems which cause these problems. The best case would be with prolonged very-low-calories diets and symptoms in anorexics along with their hormonal profile supports the theory that fat loss has completely stalled for them. The final group would be those who are at extreme levels of leanness, whereby the body simply doesn’t want to get any leaner.
Ultimately, it all comes down to hormones. So if you have a pre-existing hormonal condition, get it sorted out before even attempting a diet. Anyway, most people described above shouldn’t be dieting in the first place!
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