“I just need to do another diet”
No, you need to go through the appropriate nutrition phases that will allow you to get the results you want and KEEP THEM.
Welcome to yet another post where we, as the buddies we are, get to talk about all the confusing questions surrounding nutrition.
As a coach, I am ALL for helping our clients reach their goals, including those who desire to lose a reasonable amount of body fat. That’s a lot of women’s goals, right? (That being said, it’s most definitely not the only goal you can have as a woman, and we encourage you to make badass performance goals…but if you’ve been around long enough, you already know that).
But the problem we run into with clients quite literally all. the. time… is that they’ve already been on or are on a diet (or ten) for the past few years. Sometimes on-and-off, sometimes constantly. And yet, they’re coming to us coaches because their diet isn’t working. If their diet was getting them results & making them feel better, they wouldn’t need us. But here we are. The real issue is, though, that their body isn’t prepared or ready to be successful in a dieting phase.
And that very well could be the case for you, too.
What do I mean when I say your body needs to be “ready?”
A few things, actually, and we’ll get into those by talking about the 6 signs that your body isn’t ready.
There are plentyyyyy of women (most, I’d argue) we’ve worked with that we had to INCREASE their calorie intake before we went for fat loss, or we’ve had to focus on eating HABITS before we change WHAT they’re eating, or we’ve had to work on stress management and sleep before we even talk about nutrition. So many of us have searched the internet and tried a dozen and a half diets and restricted our intake to absolutely no avail – or, some avail that showed back up on the scale 6 months later. That’s the reality of it, but it’s the reality most of you weren’t made aware of when all the fad diets were screaming at you with false promises of quick and easy results.
Look, just like with my own clients, I want all women (you included) to be successful in the pursuit of their goals- but I also want you to do it in a healthy, sustainable, and efficient way. Going on another diet – or going into yet another dieting phase- isn’t always the solution to that problem.
Before we break down 6 signs you’re not ready for another diet, let’s talk about what we even mean by dieting, because it’s likely a different definition than you may use.
When we talk about dieting…
we are referring to the principle of being in a caloric deficit– a negative energy balance, where you are consuming less energy than you are using each day.
If your body is burning 2,200 calories per day…
- Consuming 2,400 calories/day = calorie surplus
- Consuming 2,200 calories/day = maintenance
- Consuming 1,900 calories/day = calorie deficit
That is the simplified and condensed summary of a caloric balance, but it’s important that we establish that fact before you assume that by “dieting,” we mean avoiding carbs, cutting out junk food altogether, or drinking buttered coffee to “zap belly fat.”
Those things don’t work- in the long run, anyways.
But a smart, timely, & well-executed calorie deficit will always work.
Key: not just any crazy, random calorie deficit. A smart, timely, & well-executed calorie deficit. Let’s talk about what it look like for your body NOT to be ready to go into a calorie deficit, and what we can do about it.
1 – You’ve been dieting for a long time already or your intake is already consistently low.
Yes, losing weight takes time. But at the end of the day, you cannot be in a calorie deficit year-round, and you’re not going to get results if you’ve already been in one for too long. Why is this?
You may have heard of the term “starvation mode,” in which people claim that your body stores everything as fat because it thinks it’s starving. While that isn’t necessarily true or accurate, what is true that your metabolism is adaptable– meaning, if you stay on a low calorie diet for long enough, your metabolism will eventually down-regulate to meet you where you’re at, essentially negating whatever deficit you were in to begin with. This is partially because of how our metabolism works, and partially because when you eat less, you naturally move less.
Long story short, dieting for too long = no results + a lot of negative side effects. (More on that in sign #4).
So if you’re already at 1,200 calories per day, and have been for month now without results, dropping your calories even lower probably isn’t going to do much good for your current results or your future efforts. Your metabolism & movement behaviors are likely a bit down-regulated, and you’re likely feeling some of the side effects like low energy, brittle hair & nails, or digestive issues. We have to be smart about how long and how aggressive our deficit is- and we have to be smart about our intake before dieting.
That being said, you now know that your metabolism is flexible and adaptable, right? Well, the good news is that it works in the other direction, too, and when we slowly increase calories over time, we call it a “reverse diet.” You may have seen that term floating around on the internet and thought, “Who in their right mind would want to do a reverse diet?” But reverse dieting phases, for a lot of women, are an important and necessary part of their nutrition journey. These phases allow us to increase the metabolism’s baseline bit by bit, so we have more wiggle room to work with (and so your body isn’t so stressed out from being in a calorie deficit in the first place- because no, UNDER-eating isn’t perceived as a positive experience by our bodies evolutionarily).
Again, long story short: make sure you spend time fueling your body enough before you go trying to cut calories again.
2 – You’re stuck in a restrict-binge-repeat cycle where you feel like you have to be “all-in.”
Look, while I love the “dedication” that you feel towards improving your health, it’s probably not being channeled in the right way if you’re struggling with bingeing. As backwards as it might sound, bingeing is typically the result of restriction (whether real or imagined- but more on that in a bit).
If you’re struggling with binge-eating, what I’m about to say is going to sound absolutely, downright, and completely ridiculous. It’s going to sound stupid.
But often, the solution to binge-eating is STOPPING the restriction.
I want you to think about it like this: if I tell you to not think about a pink elephant, what are you thinking about now? A pink elephant, right?
If you tell yourself to just not think about the chocolate cake on the counter, what are you thinking about? The chocolate cake, right?
You see, our mind isn’t great with negations and restriction. It’s not really made to work that way, so when we try to use a restrictive approach (or even a restrictive mindset), it’s usually going to backfire. We’re going to feel out of control, frustrated, and helpless when we finally “give in” to one bite…that turns into twenty.
The solution for this? Trading restriction for food freedom.
And, pardon my french here, but that shit takes TIME.
If this is where you’re at with food, and you’re struggling every time you have dessert or each time you go out to eat, you may hate me when I say this, but you’re not ready for a diet. As counterintuitive as it might feel, dieting is the last thing you need right now. Restricting more than you already are is just going to drive you further into that cycle.
Take some time to work on your relationship with/to food- probably with a professional- and I believe that you’ll be able to get to a place where you can, in a healthy way, diet.
But healing that relationship and letting go of restriction is where you must start.
3 – You’re doing a LOT of exercise- specifically lots of cardio, high-intensity activity, or competitive activities.
Okay, so I didn’t expand on this too much in sign #1, so I’m going to talk about it a bit here.
Stress. We all know her, and most of us hate her. And I get it. But what causes stress?
Stressors, right? Well, let’s talk about some of the most common stressors…
Work pressure, family problems, money issues…
But also, workouts, travel, change, new opportunities…
The thing is, we need stress. Not all stress is “bad,” and we quite literally need it in our lives to survive and function. The kicker of it all is that we need it in proper, healthy amounts.
What does this have to do with nutrition and dieting?
Well, dieting (aka a calorie deficit) is also a stressor. Think about it- your body is naturally driven to seek out food because it needs energy, and the only place to get energy is food (unfortunately, we cannot photosynthesize like plants, which in my personal opinion, would be pretty cool). Food is a fundamental requirement in frequent intervals. When your body doesn’t get enough of that fundamental requirement, especially repeatedly (like in a dieting phase) it’s going to experience stress. Habitual, long-term, or aggressive under-fueling is a stressor on the body.
Now think about high intensity or large amounts of exercise and activity. Maybe it’s CrossFit 5x/week, HIIT classes, marathon training, or a hard labor job. Those are all stressors on your body as well, correct? Since that your body needs a healthy balance of stress, how wise do you think it is to be partaking in these types of activities while in a large deficit for a long period of time?
Probably not very wise, yet that’s what most of us think the answer is: more cardio, harder workouts, and less food. Again, it’s not always about more & less, but about striking the right balance.
4 – Your body is showing signs of under-fueling like irregular periods, brittle hair or nails, low sex drive, etc.
If your body is experiencing signs of under-fueling already, I think it’s pretty self-explanatory that it’s not ready for a diet, no?
I won’t dig into this one too much here, but you can (and should) check out THIS POST- 7 Signs You’re Under-Eating…they might surprise you and you might relate to more than one!
5 – You have a high stress or mental load in this season of life, or are unable to sleep well.
Here’s the thing…you’d agree, I would assume, that you don’t live in a bubble, nor do you live in a perfect world. Things go wrong, how you plan isn’t always how things happen, and life does life things sometimes. It be like that, right?
That’s not news to you, but what might be news, is that things like stress management and sleep matter just as much as your nutrition approach does. Just like your body requires energy (from calories), your body also requires sleep and rest. Science doesn’t really know exactly why we need it and why we need the amount we do, we just know that things don’t go well when we don’t get enough of it. And we know that a lot of important processes happen in sleep that affect you on a cellular level, to how you feel and experience your day, and how you progress in fat loss, muscle gain, and performance.
It’s boring, though. If you’re actually reading this section, I’m pretty proud of you, actually. Most people would skip past this one- and I get it. Talking about sleep and stress management is boring mostly because those activities are boring. But they’re important. They’re the “health hack” and the “secret supplement” you’ve been looking for all this time.
Don’t believe me?
In THIS study, two groups were placed short-term on a moderate calorie deficit. Group A step 5.5 hours and Group B slept 8.5 hours.
Group A lost 55% LESS body fat and 60% MORE fat-free mass (aka muscle).
Sleep. Isn’t. Lazy.
Sleep is the “fat loss hack” so many people are looking for.
A lot of this has to do with regulating hunger hormones and creating clear cognitive function (for things like decision making), as those things have a direct impact on both physiological functions and your external health behaviors. Stress functions in a different way, but has similar effects.
You can see more studies & more info on that at these links below, but all this goes to show that if you’re in a season where your sleep is majorly compromised or your stress management is essentially nonexistent, you’re just straight-up not setting yourself up for success. You’re likely going to end up even more frustrated and tired than when you started nad not going to get the results you were seeking after in the first place.
You are better off working on improving sleep, improving stress management, and going into a more focused dieting phase when those things are already in place and managed well. With those things alone you’re likely to see improvement in overall health and feelings of wellbeing, and oftentimes some body composition improvements over the long-term.
6 – Your diet already interferes with your life and mental wellness- like skipping social events, food anxiety, digestive issues, etc.
Much like we discussed how a restrict-binge-repeat cycle is a sign you’re not prepared for a dieting phase, so are other patterns of negative or adverse food issues. These look different for different women, but frequently manifests as skipping social events because of food or body image, feeling hyper-focused on food throughout the day (like constantly thinking about previous or future meals) , feeling anxiety about what you already ate or will eat later, experiencing unexplained digestive distress or bloating, and other similar issues.
This is another signal that what should take priority- and what will lead to long-term success anyways- is improving your relationship and mindset around food. This comes with intentional time spent practicing new mindset, reframing thoughts, building freedom around your eating behaviors, and creating non-restrictive habits around all foods. While I fully believe everyone is capable of getting to a better place with these things, considering the social conditioning most of us have experienced, I personally think that having a professional like a therapist or certified nutrition coach (not just anyone offering nutrition advice on FaceBook) in your corner is absolutely paramount.
Again, when you focus on these things first, you’re probably going to improve your quality of life and eventually reach a point in which approaching a dieting phase will be healthier and more successful!
Bottom line:
Your body is not going to lose fat if it’s being habitually under-fed over long periods of time, you’re mentally & emotionally struggling with food, or you’re not managing your stress and sleep well.
Your body has to be in a healthy condition to expect the results you want- whether that’s fat loss (like we’re talking about in this case) or muscle gain or performance improvement.
It may feel like I’m telling you that no one is ready for a dieting phase, which is not my point, not my goal, nor the truth. I just want you to- and believe that you can be- successful if you’re given the right tools, armed with right information, and provided the right support.
You deserve your goals and you deserve to feel good. If you’re interested in what your approach should look like whether you relate to these signs or not, hop on a free discovery call with Coach Kelsey to talk about a gameplan for you- just click the button below!
