Why do you keep failing and what to do about it
We all fail and failing is an important part of learning. Every time we fail we hopefully learn, adapt, overcome and improve. For some reason, we don’t do that when it comes to achieving the dream body. We keep failing our diets and our training plans.
There are many reasons why people usually fail, I want to explore the five most common ones I encountered when working with clients and suggest possible solutions.
Nothing changes if nothing changes
You right now are a result of your current habits. That applies to everything but I will stay in my lane here and talk about how it applies to fat loss and muscle building.
Most people start a diet as a one-time thing. A quick summer shred, getting fit for a wedding, and a quick weight loss diet for a holiday weight gain. While that works for a short period of time it doesn’t work in the long term. If it would work then there would not be a billion-dollar industry trying to sell you all sorts of crap to help you lose weight again.
What is the problem here? The problem lies in short-term thinking and not changing you as a person.
The key to building lasting habits is focusing on creating a new identity first. Your current behaviours are simply a reflection of your current identity. What you do now is a mirror image of the type of person you believe that you are (either consciously or subconsciously). – James Clear
To have a lasting change it’s not about what you want, it is about who you want to become. To really get the body you always wanted you will need to become a different person. Let me give you a few examples.
Everyone can eat a salad for 12 weeks but few can become a person that eats vegetables daily. Everyone can go to the gym for a 90-day challenge but few become a person that exercises 3-4 times per week forever. There needs to be a mindset shift from “Poor me I am on a diet for x weeks and I can’t wait for it to be over” to “I am a person that has control over food and lives an active lifestyle”.
Starting a diet for x amount of weeks getting shredded only to return to doing the same things you were before dieting and expecting to keep the new body well just doesn’t make sense.
Please don’t confuse things. Don’t think that in order for you to stay shredded you need to live in a calorie deficit and social isolation for the rest of your life. The diet that gets you shredded and the diet that keeps you looking good is not the same.
Unrealistic expectations
It is not your fault. Most people have no idea how long it will really take to achieve the looks that they want. How can they? Every time you look at social media, tv ads, and magazines you see claims like losing 20 pounds in 10 days by doing x, looking like a model by doing this one exercise… No wonder you don’t have realistic expectations.
Before we look at how long it will actually take for you to achieve your dream looks let’s see how did you end up in your current situation. I will assume that the extra pounds gained didn’t happen by having one meal out, or a bag of chips while watching Netflix that one time. It happened because you continuously ate more than what you needed for a long period of time. I am talking months here. Expecting that you will be able to undo months possibly years of work with a quick twelve-week diet is unrealistic.
Now let’s see how long it will realistically take for you to lose fat.
Let’s use Bob as an example. Bob was in great shape during college but later got a job and his active lifestyle became more sedentary. He also got a few kids and seemingly overnight he gained an extra 20 pounds that he now wants to get rid of.
Bob aims to lose 1 pound per week, a very doable and realistic goal for most people. At this rate math is simple, 20 pounds to lose at 1 pound per week gives us 20 weeks, that is assuming that everything runs perfectly which you know it’s not going to happen. To account for that let’s add a buffer of another 4 weeks. You might think 4 weeks is a lot but you would be surprised how quickly four weeks pass by. One week is vacation, kids get sick that’s another week, you have a week off because work got extremely busy and you take a planned diet break for 7 days because you were feeling burned out. With all that it will take about 24 weeks to lose 20 pounds. That is almost half a year.
After you reached your desired looks you will need to transition to maintenance, which is something that most people fail to do. The transition will take a few weeks but this time is easier because you will be eating more and enjoying the new looks.
I am not writing all this to discourage you. I am writing this so you know what you are getting yourself into and that that quick “8-week get abs” diet is not the answer.
The all-or-nothing mentality
For some reason, you believe that if you are not sticking to the diet 100% then it is not worth it and it won’t work for you. You had a meal out and your diet was a bit off, so in your head, you ruined all the progress and might as well eat whatever you want.
Let’s look at three scenarios of how all-or-nothing thinking can ruin your progress.
Your kids got invited to a birthday party. Obviously, there is cake and you love cake. You can’t help yourself but have a slice.
Scenario 1:
You have a slice of cake. You didn’t plan on it but you can’t help yourself. You are guestimating that the slice was about 300-500 calories so you decide that that’s ok and you will just have a bit smaller dinner later.
Scenario 2:
Identical to scenario one, you have a slice of cake. You didn’t plan on it but you can’t help yourself. You guestimate that the slice is about 300-500 calories. The issue here is that you are over the calorie budget for the day. No problem you accept that and call it a day, satisfied that you had a slice of delicious cake. Because you are aware of the dangers of all or nothing thinking you accept that you ate a bit more than planned and will get back on track the next day knowing that one small bump in the road is not a big deal in the long run.
Scenario 3:
Identical to scenario one. You have a slice of cake. You didn’t plan on it but you can’t help yourself. You guestimate that the slice is about 300-500 calories. Same issue here, you are over the daily calorie budget. The difference is you think screw it, I ruined everything by going over my calories by 300-500 cal, might as well call this a cheat day and eat whatever I want and as much as I want. You then go on and have a few more slices of cake, some BBQ ribs, and a few beers. Going way over your calorie budget.
Let’s see what really happens here. It is commonly accepted that to burn 1 pound of fat per week you need to be in a calorie deficit of 500 calories. In a week that would be a weekly deficit of 3500 calories (500cal x 7 days). By knowing this week can look at the above scenario and see what was the real effect of your decisions.
In scenario one there are no effects of you eating that cake. You ate it and adjusted the rest of the daily calories to account for it – like a pro!
Second scenario. You miss plan and it happens sometimes, you ended up being 400 calories above your budget. You might have not lost any fat on that day, but looking at the weekly average you were still 3100 calories in deficit (3500-400) which means you lost a hair less than one pound of fat that week. Having that cake was not a big deal at all.
In the last scenario, you pretty much went screw it and ate like you haven’t seen food in months. That resulted in you going way past your calorie budget. A few slices of cake, BBQ ribs, a few beers, chips you name it, and let’s say you ate an extra 2500 cal on the day. That completely negated the daily 500-calorie deficit. You also made no progress weekly by only being in a calorie deficit of 1000 calories (3500-2500). You might have lost a tiny bit of fat but the extra food in your gut, water retention from extra salt, and extra carbs will mask that as you will be a few pounds heavier the following few days. Seeing your weight jump the next few days is exactly the thing that causes you to give up.
Lack of basic food knowledge
Knowledge is power. The more we know the better decisions we can make. Not having a basic level of food knowledge will make any attempt at losing fat and getting jacked increasingly harder. I really do mean basic food knowledge.
Understanding what is a calorie and what are Low-calorie vs. high-calorie foods.
A calorie is just a unit of measure for energy, just like a pound is a unit of measure for weight. No matter what you heard all calories are equal. Knowing which foods are high calorie, high energy foods and which ones are low calorie, low energy foods alone is enough knowledge to lose fat.
High-calorie foods:
Peanut butter
Fatty meat
Oils
Butter
Processed foods
Low-calorie foods:
Fruits
Vegetables
Potatoes
Lean meats
Whole foods
Which foods are high in protein
Protein is almost a magical macronutrient it helps us stay full longer when we diet, helps us build muscles when we bulk and it even burns calories when eating it due to its thermic effect.
About 80% of people that work with me will need to eat more protein. Having knowledge of what lean protein courses are will be extremely helpful. Here are a few options.
Whey protein
Chicken breast (skinless)
Pork loin, tenderloin
0% Greek Yogurt
Beef Jerky
Your environment working against you
Your environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behaviour. We tend to believe our habits are a product of our motivation, talent, and effort. Certainly, these qualities matter. But the surprising thing is, especially over a long time period, your personal characteristics tend to get overpowered by your environment. – James Clear
I am sure you can agree that the environment that we are in plays a huge role in how we feel, perform, and even what we do. If you ever went to a hardcore gym where everyone is training hard I am willing to bet you pushed yourself a bit harder in that session.
How can you design your environment to help you reach your goals easier? I like to use three principles that I got from James Clear’s book Atomic Habits.
Step 1 – Make good decisions a default setting
Design an environment that helps you make good decisions. An example might be emptying your panty of foods that you don’t want to eat and are not helping you reach your goals and filling it up with foods that will help you and you want to eat. Another great one is buying smaller plates. Both of those examples make the decision for you. You have no other option but to make the right decision.
Step 2 – Make it fit your day to day
Imagine you want to run more (for some reason), but your running shoes are in the basement in a back closet under a bunch of winter clothes versus they are right at the door where you will trip over them every time that you walk in. In which scenario will you do more running? Going to the gym might be easy for some and not so easy for others. Going to the gym that is on the way to work will make it easier and flow seamlessly in your day-to-day compared to going to the gym that is closer to you but it’s actually the opposite of your morning drive. Change is hard make it easier by having an environment that supports your goals.
Step 3 – Make the things you don’t want to be doing hard
This is the opposite of step 1. You are trying to design your environment by making things that are unhelpful to your goals harder to do. A few examples here are not buying foods that you don’t want to be eating while losing fat. Putting foods that you don’t want to eat in hard-to-reach places.
People fail for many reasons but the above ones are the ones I see most commonly. Remember there is no such thing as perfect. The goal is to be good enough. A day off doesn’t mean you ruined your progress and present just a small bump on a very long road. Don’t lie to yourself thinking that you can undo years of poor habits and nutrition in a 90day challenge. Go into this journey with eyes open, and realistic expectations, focusing on the process of getting a little better every day. By doing so you will be able to accumulate enough knowledge that you will never need to do another diet again.
Thank you for reading!
-Anze
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