Try these 3 things to improve your diet adherence

Most people don’t understand that losing weight is fairly easy. I bet if I challenged you to drop a couple of kilograms in a few weeks you wouldn’t find it that difficult.

Maybe you cut back on the dine out, reduce alcohol consumption, and walk a bit more than usual. That should have the desired effect.

Now what if I told you that you had to keep that weight off for a year. How easy do you think that would be?

What happens to these new healthy habits you’ve incorporated into your daily and weekly routines?

We will most likely see an exponential decay of adherence, leading to weight regain.

So, we can assume that weight regain is the problem, not weight loss, and that the reason is simply lower adherence to a dietary approach.

Here are 3 solid tips to help you maintain dietary adherence for the long term.

Avoid extreme approaches 

Whilst the temptation after a weekend blowout is to restrict food, try to exercise every day, and cancel all social events, this is possibly the worst approach possible because it is likely not sustainable for you in the long run.

You may be able to keep it up for a week or maybe two at best; however, the likelihood of this approach capitulating at the next moderately stressful day at work or Friday happy hour is extremely high.

It is a far better approach to plan three gym sessions each week and do them consistently than to do six one week then nothing for another three because you ‘fell off the wagon’.

It is a much better approach to work on improving one aspect of your diet at a time and doing that consistently, rather than choosing to do a juice detox and inevitably bingeing by the time the weekend comes around because you are so deprived and exhausted.

Try planning your week of eating ahead of time

Many people I meet treat their diet as an afterthought, waiting until they are already hungry before choosing what to eat.

This is a recipe for disaster, as once you are hungry and faced with the choice of going for something nutritious or something that tastes amazing, which one do you think you’ll choose? Once this happens, all bets are off.

Try spending some time each week on an eating schedule for breakfast, lunch, mid-afternoon snacks, and dinner to remove the guesswork and be pre-emptive with your diet.

Those that are successful on weight loss journeys are not the ones with the strongest willpower or the best discipline.

They are the ones that test their willpower the least and avoid putting themselves in a position where they are forced to make a sub-optimal choice for their goals.

Don’t be so hard on yourself

Going into a dieting phase, you should expect things to go wrong. That is all part of the process.

Try to have an iterative mindset when it comes to your personal journey. That means when things don’t go accordingly, instead of giving up, ask yourself why it didn’t and adjust so that next time something similar happens, you know how to handle it.

These are just a few areas that I feel people need help with when making lifestyle adjustments with the outcome of fat loss.

If you need help making these adjustments book a call with one of our team today.