A lot of people will try and tell you that their diet is best. There is someone who has gone out and debunked every diet imaginable, and over exaggerated the results that they get from their super special one size fits all ultimate awesome diet for super bulking, getting lean and losing weight and maximising hormone production all in one go!
The truth is there is no hard and fast diet that will make you superman in 14 days.
I was listening to a podcast the other day with Seth Godin; he said the best diet is the one you will stick to, how true is that.
But how can you craft your own diet that suits your needs and ensures you will get the results that you are after?
Simple,
Make definitive decisions, craft your meals to help you stick to your decisions.
Tracking Your Food – The Macro Game
There are thousands of calorie counting apps you could easily get to keep an eye on what you are eating. But I don’t use them because they are a chore. I don’t want to measure out my food every day and also I don’t count calories!
No I’m not mad! I really don’t think it matters too much. You will know if you are eating enough because you will be full, you will know if you aren’t eating enough because you’ll be hungry right!?
But that advice doesn’t help people really.
The absolute easiest way to keep an eye on the food you are eating is to track your macros.
Macros are the broad spectrum of nutrient types, Protein, Carbs, Fats, Fibre. If you just keep an eye on the ratios, you will be doing better than a lot of people and it is pretty easy to do.
Look on the pack of whatever it is you are about to eat, macronutrients are always the feature of the packaging. Provided you are keeping rough ratios in your body then you will be on to a winner.
The only things I really track are my Fats and Carbs. This is because I want to be burning fat rather than carbs. A high fat diet will put you into a state called Ketosis; it is the basis of Paleo, Atkins and every low carb diet in existence.
Ketosis simply means your body is producing ketones to use as an energy source rather than glucose, which on a macro level means you are eating more fat than carbs. I’m not going to ramble on about what ketones are or why you may want to try a ketogenic diet because I will be talking for days, so you can check that out in your own time on Wiki or Google.
How To Prepare To Eat Better
Being prepared to stick to your diet is the key to your success. If you have a cupboard full of chocolate biscuits, you are going to eat them, it’s just that simple. So make it harder to fail.
I tend to stock up on fruit these days; keep my cupboards full of coconut oil and organic peanut butter, hemp etc. This helps me eat clean because any time I’m feeling peckish, they are my options, not KitKats or Rice Crispy Squares.
If you want to try out any particular diet, give it a good shot for 6 weeks, see how you feel and take it from there, but you need to make sure that you are sticking to your diet if you commit to it.
The alternative is just to make it difficult to mess up in a similar way to what I do. It really isn’t that hard, if you want the end goal invest a little time and energy upfront, in one day – the day you decide to try it is best.
This way you will be setting yourself up to succeed, and you will also be developing the habit of buying better food, snacking smarter and ultimately eating as well as you can.
What To Do If You Flop The Diet
If your diet goes to pot in the first day or so, it isn’t the end of the world. But recognise where you are slipping up and try to make it easier to win. Take a packed lunch, sandwiches or a salad to work so you don’t need to go into Tesco or Sainsbury’s, this helped me no end when I became veggie.
These days I only take a packed lunch into work, I get up and make a salad in the morning, using bags of salad leaves and other pre made stuff that I can easily throw into a pot; then I do the same with some bread, et voi la, Lunch sorted, salad and sandwich in a total of 5 minutes.
Watching what you eat can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be, I used to have a right fetish for Reece’s cups, so instead of dropping them out right at the start, I would allow myself one at lunch or late afternoon to help with any sugar cravings, and then over a period of 2-3 weeks, I just stopped.
Provided you keep that intention in your mind and you are actively taking small steps towards your goal, you can do it.
How To Approach Your Diet
When you want to try something out, try it, but don’t be afraid to change later on. If any particular diet isn’t working for you, if you are flopping all the time, or simply not sticking to it at all, there is something to be said about it.
If you have just tried going veggie, but you are having bacon sandwiches every morning, you are either not committing or you simply don’t want to be veggie.
You shouldn’t force yourself at all costs to eat only salad and then beat yourself up for that KFC – although you probably should anyway!
Just take it slower, try only having a bacon sarnie, let that be your only meat. Then after a few weeks, if it’s all going well, you can think about dropping the bacon.
There is no rush, you are only accountable to yourself, so don’t force yourself to do something you don’t want to.
The Caveat
Having said all of that, you do want to be eating well. McDonald’s breakfast followed by dominoes, with a takeaway for dinner is not going to get you fit and healthy. High sugar diets are probably not going to help either. So although I said don’t be too hard on yourself, you still have to try, make smart decisions and get healthy, just don’t make it a struggle.
You should want to make yourself healthier, it shouldn’t be so painful that you can’t do it, but you are going to have to exercise a little bit of willpower.
