3 Reasons why diets fail

“I’ve tried everything”.

When athletes reach out to me telling me they’ve tried every diet under the sun and don’t know what they’re supposed to do any more, the answer is often so obviously in plain sight that it doesn’t get noticed. Why? Because we want everything all at once, we aren’t willing to settle for being a ‘little better’.

Who wants to be average when we can be the best? So we spend our lives trying to be the top percentile of people that can do everything. The problem is that not everyone can be in the top percentile because thats not how numbers work. Someone has to be somewhere else on that scale. Not me though, I have to be better than the average population. Sound familiar?

So when your diet ‘fails’, it’s often not the diet itself, but the perspective of it that leads us to behave in ways that become counterproductive in that weight loss process.

This blog will highlight 3 of the most common reasons why we fail at dieting.

#1 Falling for the next diet trend

Oof, this one hits hard because I have experienced it personally and because I see it all the time in athletes. I have worked with athletes that have tried it all, 75 Hard, Paleo, Keto, Whole 30, you name it. The result? “I worked great for 6 months, then the weight crept back up”.

The problem with these diet fads is that they’re designed to get you quick results but they aren’t sustainable, because you either have to give up everything all at once, or you’re shamed into thinking you’re not trying hard enough. Sustainability comes from being able to do what you can within your physical and emotional bandwidth. 

The basics still work:

Choose lean protein

Eat your vegetables

Get 7-8 hours of sleep

Drink enough water

These are science-based strategies that work, but they aren’t sexy and often become too “boring” to practice every day.

Most people approach their diet with too much enthusiasm looking for the next shiny object. Strategies like diet periodisation and nutrient timing are effective, but only if you are practising the essentials. Attempting too many fancy strategies without first creating great habits is quite literally learning to run before you can walk.

This leads us nicely to the next point…

#2 The ‘all-or-nothing mentality

One of the biggest challenges I see for athletes is the inability to live in a zone I like to call “the grey” where your diet isn’t the best, but it isn’t the worse either.

The constant swinging back and forth between restrictive eating and trying to be perfect, and then eating everything in sight later on the weekends is what is likely causing you to either plateau or gain weight.

In some cases, athletes will drop to 1,200 calories from Monday -Thursday and from Friday throughout the weekends end up in a surplus and eating well over 3,000 calories each day. 

Even though deficits are needed to lose weight, a sudden drop in calories leaving you with very little to eat will likely lead to bingeing over the weekends.

The reality is that when it comes to weight loss you just have to be in a deficit, it doesnt matter if that deficit is 200 calories less every day or 1,000 every day, both work, but one of them is less sustainable than the other.

You don’t have to go ‘all in’ to see results, you just have to do a little every single day.

#3 Discounting the positives

According to research, humans have a tendency towards negativity bias. We see, feel and experience negativity before anything else.

Take an athlete who has a goal of losing 10 pounds over 12 weeks for example. She gets to the end of the 12 week cycle and has only lost 5 pounds. She feels disappointed with the “lack of progress”, completely discounting the fact that she has PR’d almost all of her movements in the gym, her clothes fit better and her body compostion has improved. 

We can often lose momentum without seeing the positives of the situation. This is why it can extremely helpful to acknowledge our achievements no matter how small.

Faulty comparisons

In a digital world, where people showcase their successes through social media, it can often be difficult for us to judge our progress fairly. We often default to feelings of inadequacy without knowing the whole picture and relying heavily on our unrealistic expectations of what our lives should look like.

We shame ourselves into believing that because someone else can do it, we should be able to too, often leading us to the “all in” mentality, and as we know, isn’t sustainable.

Takeways

Consistency trumps intensity. 

In next week’s blog I’ll go into details on what kinds of goal settings are helpful and how to remain consistent.

Until then, have a great week.