Can flexible dieting be too flexible?
I had a wobble. There I said it. I ate about 150 calories of pumpkin cheesecake Ben and Jerry's that I didn’t account for. I stupidly opened the tub to take a look at it and thought I'd try a little, as you do.
Then I tried a little more...
And then a little more....
Until I'd eaten about a fifth of the tub.
Big deal huh?!
The problem really though is that it has not been a one off. A one off is nothing, a drop in the ocean.
As I tell people, you're the average of what you do, and 150 kcals in the grand scheme of things is nothing. Nothing.
You would never notice it.
But I need to be honest with myself... My drop in the ocean is looking more like a giant lake.
I've handfuls of popcorn, the odd sweet, couple squares of choclate, maybe a biscuit etc etc justifying it as being flexible with my diet. YOLO and all that.
You need to live life right?
That's true. You do. But you also need to align your expectations, and sometimes it ain't all sweetness and light.
There's a certain level of being able to stay lean and healthy and being flexible. But if you have a really specific goal then you may have to be more restricted than you're comfortable with.
My progress has stalled as of late (one week, man up Brett), and it's been frustrating...
I'm struggling with myself daily.
Should I continue to cut or to move to a gaining phase...
I am what most people would consider lean, but not shredded, and my issues with my weight and fear of gaining fat has always caused me to go in the direction of cutting. I think a lot of people have the same struggle who used to be overweight... One minute I think progress is going well, the next I step on the scales and my weight has gone up 3lbs in 3 days and I am like WTF happened?!
Although I am educated enough to understand how and why weight changes, it doesn’t mean it's really any less of a head fu*k to deal with. The "one offs", and the foods I haven't tracked when I have been eyeballing stuff instead of weighing, not counting sauces I put on food, milk in coffee etc, and just generally underestimating hasn’t helped.
It's easy to allow yourself to underestimate stuff when you're already eating small amounts and you're faced with going hungry if you’re honest with yourself.
You even do it subconsciously, justifying to yourself that the burger you ate was only 500 calories when you know deep down it was a lot more.
I have an almost constant wrangle between short term goals, comfortability, and long terms goals. Anxiety I don't really need.
I understand what needs to happen for my long term physique goals, but the psychology of weight loss and muscle gain is totally different from the physiological process.
This is why a coach is so important and probably something I need to invest in myself.
I always harp on about the benefits of hiring someone to take the subjectivity out of the situation, because when you're emotionally invested in a process you can’t think RATIONALLY.
Having a coach does that, they can guide you in the right direction when your head is telling you to run away from the fear and you end up in self sabotage mode.
I've been dieting since the start of the year since I had a small 12 week fulk (as Sir Alan of Aragon would say)...
Here's an example of my weekly average weight in lbs for the last couple of months since I returned from two weeks in Orlando;
03/07 - 173.8
10/07 - 171.8
17/07 - 171
24/07 - 170.6
31/07 - 170.3
07/08 - 169
14/08 - 168.7
21/08 - 167.4
28/08 - 168
04/09 - 168.3
11/09 - 167.9
18/09 - 166.9
You would look at this objectively and say it's steady progress towards fat loss, RIGHT? a trend in the right direction?
There was also a two week diet break in there from the 19th August (which was my birthday), so considering this it's pretty good, averaging 0.7lb per week.
If this was a client i'd be stoked.
However, this week so far my average weight from two readings is 167.7lbs, and it's a complete mind f*ck!
My calories have been as low as 1,800 per day now for a good number of weeks, and I know there isn’t too much further to go down unless I want to get into real grafting territory.
I could add in cardio (I am only doing one session of 3-400 calories a week at the moment) to increase the calorie deficit and get leaner, or I could stay the course and hope to see more slow progress, or I can make the decision to move to a gaining phase given that I am probably, in reality, lean enough already. My mind says I want to keep dieting as I just don’t feel I am lean enough, but I also want to grow muscle, increase my metabolic rate and be able to eat more calories in the long term.
And unless you're a complete newbie to training it's not possible to do all at the same time with any great success.
This is the constant wrangle I was talking about... And where a coach can squeeze out of you what you REALLY want and if you trust them they can guide you to long term success, while managing your short terms goals.
Even writing all this out and taking a step back to look at things has made me feel a bit better, and maybe my progress hasn’t stalled at all.
Maybe it's just a small fluctuation that, by the end of the week, may have dipped and started again. That's what i'd be telling my clients, because I wouldn't be emotionally invested.
Panic over. For now,
I have accepted that I am far from perfect with my tracking of food and maybe I need to reign it in a little.
I don’t weigh a great deal of the foods I eat, and there is probably a higher margin of error than I would like.
If I tighten this up a bit, the small margins of errors that add up over time wont be there.
I haven't bothered previously as it’s enabled me to still live life with a great deal of flexibility, but if you are thinking progress might be stalling then this is the best place to start before adding in cardio or dropping calories even further...
I will still be flexible with the TYPES of food I eat.
But I need to be less flexible in the AMOUNT... If I want to get shredded AF.
Thanks
Brett
Adapt. Evolve. Become.
