The truth is, I don’t. I believe in strategically selecting practices that match our goals and serve as NUTRITION.
Individual diets have inherent bias and preferences depending on the creator and the outcomes achieved on themselves or in their coaching or medical practice. In many cases you can follow the money…
The *best* diet is the one that matches:
1) Your physical goals. Keep in mind this could be a performance goal or body composition goal.
2) Your lifestyle. Keep in mind this includes both FUN and Not-So-Fun Elements of Adulting.
3) Your ability to adhere to a plan. A quality nutrition and lifestyle protocol can be steered, manipulated, and fine tuned in a myriad of directions to accomplish either of the above considerations.
Think of a particular dietary “attempt” or goal setting like the act of climbing a single mountain. What worked to climb Mt. Rainer in the United States probably isn’t going to work to climb Mt. Everest. You need different equipment, a different guide, and a different strategy. Would a climber climb every mountain the same exact way? No. They pick and choose strategies based on past successes and failures to formulate a plan for the current task or obstacle ahead.
Your fat loss, your muscle gain, your night out with friends – those carve out your unique mountain side. Just because someone wrote about Low Carb diets, Carb Cycling, fasting, or extreme calorie restriction doesn’t make it a map for your mountain – it simply worked for theirs.
Cultivate an understanding of nutrition, not a single diet – learn Macros, Micros, Calories, Recovery and Supplementation- then apply them with an organized system or framework.
So now I address the easiest diet… what would you suggest?
I get asked this all of the time and each and every time I say it depends….the diet industry is a multi billion dollar industry that has done a great job of brainwashing people and pretty much setting them up for failure.
And I completely understand why, since today’s world is all about convenience. We’ve created a society that thrives on things being done for us, removing effort, eliminating patience, and immediate gratification.
So why on earth would dieting not be the same?!
Well, for many reasons. But the primary reason is due to sustainability and what is required in order to make a diet sustainable. See what makes a diet sustainable, is often the opposite of what makes it work rapidly, require less work or thought, and ultimately easily. Now that doesn’t mean it can’t be simple; in fact, it should be VERY simple. Science is simple, if you understand it correctly. But work is required and time needs to be invested, therefore it’s not always easy.
But that’s not actually what I’m here to tell you or provide you with today. Today, I’m going to break down all the diets you have attempted to try because you probably THINK they are simple, easy-to-follow, and fast-acting, but they’re completely unsustainable and overly hyped by great marketing.
Then, I will give you an actually sustainable dietary system that allows for better adherence, flexibility, consistency, and adjustments along the way – ultimately leading to nutritional autonomy, hopefully, so that you can get results now and keep them for later on (unlike the fad diets that tempt you so often).
How To Find The Easiest Diet To Follow
The answer to this question is completely individualized, so I cannot tell you with 100% absolute certainty. But I can give you an insight into what I’ve seen work with thousands of people over the years and what I’ve personally concluded with, after “trying it all” – like I’m sure you have, too.
The easiest diet to follow is the diet that covers all these bullets:
- Flexibility: You want to find a diet that allows you to limit, but not sacrifice, social events, so that you can continue enjoying life while also still seeing results.
- Adjustability: You will hit a plateau. Plain and simple. And a great diet plan is one that allows you to adjust it, to work through those plateaus and continue progressing.
- Adherence: If you do not enjoy the diet, if you resent the diet, if you don’t have any energy while on the diet, or if you just generally have poor biofeedback while following the diet (and we’re not talking about the last couple weeks of contest prep here, we’re talking your DAILY biofeedback throughout the diet)… it’s not the right diet for you.
- Health-Promoting: Yes, we want to train hard. Yes, we want to perform better. Yes, we want to look better. But we cannot forget that down the line, we also need to be healthier from the diet as well! And without that, your body will fight back.
- Education: If your diet doesn’t teach you about your body and the food you’re putting in it, you’re walking in the dark. You need to understand the processes of the diet in order to not only adhere to it – but build autonomy, so that you can be in control of your own diet (even if that means you need a coach now, you shouldn’t need one forever).
- Sustainability: This is the final bullet and the most important one, because without sustainability… Well, you can’t sustain the diet! But also, KNOWING its sustainable personally is one of the things that keeps you motivated to continue the diet. So if you’re following a diet that you know has a timeline associated with it, you will not easily stick to it even in the short term – because, what’s the point…?
Now, what you can do is print this out or write those down… this is your checklist next time you go to start a diet! This is going to stop you from starting a destructive diet OR help you properly audit a great diet to begin!
Want to learn more about diets?
Register for my FREE Webinar and Workshop- starts Friday for the Workshop and then continues for 5 days of learning The Secret Sauce to Weight Loss. www.inmotionbend.com/webinar Starts Friday at 1pm. Can’t make it no problem- register and I’ll send the replay!