9/9/14 BURN Fitness 101: All diets work… But, all diets fail…
My mom forwarded me an email today… and like many people she’s always looking to keep her weight in check. The email included a link to an article online that was distributed by the BBC on their Health Page. Basically, the subject of the article was “All diets work… if you can stay with them.” They tested some 48 different well known diets, from Atkins to Zone, and 7000+ people … and guess what? Everybody who stuck to the diet, regardless of the “brand” or type… lost weight. The difference in results across 40+ different diets was “not statistically significant”. The key was… the diet ONLY worked if you stuck with it.
Well then…by MY definition… every “diet” they tested failed… in the long-run.
Why? Because… a “diet” is a unique way of eating, significantly different from a person’s “normal” eating patterns. Once the person on a “diet” attains “success” they typically quit the diet and go back to old eating habits. The same goes for exercise… And of course… they regain every pound, and usually more.
Our clients at Burn Fitness Training are “dissuaded” from diets… and instead introduced to a new way of eating for life. This isn’t a diet by any definition. It’s the nutritional component to a new lifestyle. If they choose to adopt a new way of eating, they invariably succeed. If they change the way they eat for a few weeks or a few months, and then return to the food habits that made them fat… there’s no level of workout programming I can do to keep them lean. They will simply become stronger, fitter, marginally healthier… fat people.
Lisa and I have found through the years that there are distinctly two types of people who attain success with nutrition changes. There are “cold turkey” nutrition adaptation people, and “progressive” nutrition adaptation people. The cold-turkey method’s long-term success rate is few and far between! Just like a fad diet, changing your nutrition from “ugly” to “perfect” all at once often leads to a backlash of bad nutrition. (And “perfect” varies a lot from one person to the next. Some prefer a higher fat intake and a lower carb intake. Some prefer more carbs and less fat.) Instead of giving every client a cookie-cutter diet, we ask them to change one or two small things at a time, and allow those small changes to take hold… this way it’s much easier to make a permanent change to a client’s nutrition without suffering a rebound of bad eating. Just adding breakfast every day, no matter how small, is a simple change. Increasing protein intake is a small change. Dropping sugar incrementally out of the diet is a small change. Adding vegetables and fruits to a diet is a small change. But if you add all of these elements in one global dietary shift… you’re begging for a backlash.
Unfortunately, today’s society wants everything NOW!!! Today’s fitness/fat-loss consumer is no different. They want immediate results by simply popping a pill or adding one “critical move for a flat stomach”… and lots of “Personal Trainers” sell this mentality to make a quick buck, typically on-line! LOL…
In reality, the key to long-term success is NOT a diet. It’s not a new workout. It’s not a supplement from a flashy MLM presentation. Success comes from a gradual, yet steady progression of lifestyle… from a life of nutritional ignorance and fluctuation… to a life of nutritional knowledge, and consistency.
All diets do fail… every single one.
An old friend of mine, a carpenter, introduced me to a saying a lot of years back that he used to describe carpentry work…”
“If you want it bad… I’ll give it to you bad. If you want it right… that’ll take some time.”
The exact same holds true for fitness and nutrition!
My mom forwarded me an email today… and like many people she’s always looking to keep her weight in check. The email included a link to an article online that was distributed by the BBC on their Health Page. Basically, the subject of the article was “All diets work… if you can stay with them.” They tested some 48 different well known diets, from Atkins to Zone, and 7000+ people … and guess what? Everybody who stuck to the diet, regardless of the “brand” or type… lost weight. The difference in results across 40+ different diets was “not statistically significant”. The key was… the diet ONLY worked if you stuck with it.
Well then…by MY definition… every “diet” they tested failed… in the long-run.
Why? Because… a “diet” is a unique way of eating, significantly different from a person’s “normal” eating patterns. Once the person on a “diet” attains “success” they typically quit the diet and go back to old eating habits. The same goes for exercise… And of course… they regain every pound, and usually more.
Our clients at Burn Fitness Training are “dissuaded” from diets… and instead introduced to a new way of eating for life. This isn’t a diet by any definition. It’s the nutritional component to a new lifestyle. If they choose to adopt a new way of eating, they invariably succeed. If they change the way they eat for a few weeks or a few months, and then return to the food habits that made them fat… there’s no level of workout programming I can do to keep them lean. They will simply become stronger, fitter, marginally healthier… fat people.
Lisa and I have found through the years that there are distinctly two types of people who attain success with nutrition changes. There are “cold turkey” nutrition adaptation people, and “progressive” nutrition adaptation people. The cold-turkey method’s long-term success rate is few and far between! Just like a fad diet, changing your nutrition from “ugly” to “perfect” all at once often leads to a backlash of bad nutrition. (And “perfect” varies a lot from one person to the next. Some prefer a higher fat intake and a lower carb intake. Some prefer more carbs and less fat.) Instead of giving every client a cookie-cutter diet, we ask them to change one or two small things at a time, and allow those small changes to take hold… this way it’s much easier to make a permanent change to a client’s nutrition without suffering a rebound of bad eating. Just adding breakfast every day, no matter how small, is a simple change. Increasing protein intake is a small change. Dropping sugar incrementally out of the diet is a small change. Adding vegetables and fruits to a diet is a small change. But if you add all of these elements in one global dietary shift… you’re begging for a backlash.
Unfortunately, today’s society wants everything NOW!!! Today’s fitness/fat-loss consumer is no different. They want immediate results by simply popping a pill or adding one “critical move for a flat stomach”… and lots of “Personal Trainers” sell this mentality to make a quick buck, typically on-line! LOL…
In reality, the key to long-term success is NOT a diet. It’s not a new workout. It’s not a supplement from a flashy MLM presentation. Success comes from a gradual, yet steady progression of lifestyle… from a life of nutritional ignorance and fluctuation… to a life of nutritional knowledge, and consistency.
All diets do fail… every single one.
An old friend of mine, a carpenter, introduced me to a saying a lot of years back that he used to describe carpentry work…”
“If you want it bad… I’ll give it to you bad. If you want it right… that’ll take some time.”
The exact same holds true for fitness and nutrition!