By Mark Carroll.
Have you been dieting for 12 month, but haven’t been able to see consistent results. Why? Probably because you’ve not been dieting for 12 months!
Dieting for a long period of time
Here’s the thing, when people diet for long periods of time, they think they’ve been in calorie deficit that entire year, but when you actually delve deeper you realise they actually haven’t been in a deficit, that’s why they haven’t lost weight.
So when we’re thinking of a deficit, we want to think of it not just as a few days, but over the course of periods, of months, weeks, years.
Over that year they’ve probably done this: They’ve dieted hard for a couple weeks, gone very low calories, then given up, binged, eaten very high calories, been in surplus, and put that weight back on. Then they’d diet again for a few weeks, binge, put that weight back on.
Diet, binge, diet, binge.
So, even though they feel like they’re living in a calorie deficit, the reason why they’re not losing weight is because they’re not in a calorie deficit. Just because you’ve been in a calorie deficit for a period of time doesn’t mean you’re going to lose weight from a net period of time if you keep being at a calorie surplus when you come out of that deficit. Spend short periods of time in a calorie deficit.
How to spend correct periods of time in a Calorie Deficit
- Choose four, six, eight weeks, be in a calorie deficit, lose some weight, then go up to your maintenance calories, spend a bit of time there, diet break for a couple weeks, then come back down.
- Try to break it up into mini dieting blocks, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose. So spend that time, be in that four, six, eight week block of calorie deficit, but do it really well. Don’t mess around.
- Know that you’ve got a short term goal, get it done, lose a couple kilos, then build your calories up, have a break, but don’t when you have that break go into a surplus. That’s issue, that’s where people have their problem, they put that weight back on.
The key to losing weight
What we want to do is spend that time in calorie deficit, lose a couple kilos, have a break, but when you have a break you maintain your weight, then you come back down into calorie deficit, you lose a few more kilos, then have a break, then keep going back and forth, but the difference is this time when you go back and forth, when you go up you’re not putting on weight, you’re just maintaining your weight.
This way, over the course of the year, you’re spending the majority of your time in a deficit, but when you’re not in a deficit you’re just maintaining, rather than that deficit being canceled out by that surplus.
Learn more about training for optimal results with me in my online guidebooks.
Yours in health,
Mark Carroll, Global Head of Education
Clean Health Fitness Institute
