READING TIME: about 9 minutes

So here we go, the truth about dieting and what is really going to happen in terms of progress, results and long term effectiveness. I am going to be completely honest here and speak with experience from both my professionally educated status and my ‘real world’ first person experiences of helping more people successfully reach their goals than I could possible begin to count.

Firstly, everyone is told you should expect to lose 2lb a week. This figure is achieved by assuming that one pound of fat stores around 3500 calories of energy so to lose 2lb you can drop your food calories by 500 a day (making a 3500 calorie shortfall a week) and burn 500 calories a day through exercise (making another 3500 calorie shortfall a week) giving you 7000 calories ‘short’ per week, which means you will burn 2lb of fat off!

There are some problems with this.

• For the average person, to burn 500 calories per day through exercise, equates to exercising for around an hour of intensive training every single day (not going to happen)

• The very act of doing that much training means you need to actually increase your overall food intake to stop your body stalling and getting ‘ill’. It is simply not practical for 99% of us.

• Dropping your calories by 500 every day in theory is great, but that doesn’t work for those of you who only weigh say 120lbs currently and are 5ft tall and it doesn’t work if you are 180lb and 6ft tall. It’s too generalised to work for everyone.

 

But the biggest issue is this, and here is where it all goes completely wrong….

 

Your body DOES NOT LIKE CHANGE, it is fighting against you all the time to stop you losing weight. It likes something called HOMEOSTASIS. This is a state where everything basically stays the same. You have experienced it’s effects hundreds of thousands of times in your life already.

The body has a complex process where it can control the amount of calories it burns by regulating, among other things, its metabolic rate. This is the amount of calories it uses each day to keep you alive and moving around.

• If it thinks you are eating too much it will raise its metabolic rate to burn more of those calories off (because it does not like change so it does not want to put weight on)

• If it thinks you are not eating enough (like when you diet) it will lower its metabolic rate so that it doesn’t burn as many calories (because it does not like change and it does not want you to lose weight)

• You know this already, because in the past when you have been dieting you will of had days or weeks where you have been perfect and followed the diet to the letter but either lost very little, nothing, or even put weight on

• You have also had days or weeks where you thought ‘sod it’ and blown your diet and then lost a load of weight but couldn’t understand how or why.

 

Well that is your metabolism working to try and keep your weight the same. Sometimes it overdoes it a little though (so you eat a load of food, the body ramps up its metabolism but does so a little too high, and you end up burning off not only the extra food you ate but a little bit of stored fat as well, which is why sometimes when you ‘cheat’ on your diet you actually lose more weight)

 

Despite the incredibly complex and efficient metabolic processes going on trying to keep your weight the same it is not unbreakable. If you continue to consistently eat too much food then eventually you put weight on as the body simply accepts defeat and has to start storing the extra calories you consume in the form of fat. This is a gradual process, you did not become overweight overnight, it takes time as the body is still trying to fight it in the background, but eventually it simply becomes exhausted and gives in. Your gluttony wins!

NOW, the opposite is true of losing the fat, and here is the rubbish part and this is exactly what happens, in order:

• You create a calorie deficit by eating less, exercising more or a combination of the two. So if your body normally needs 2000 calories a day you manage to get it to only 1000 a day (which in theory means a shortfall of 1000 calories a day, which is 7000 calories a week, which should be a 2lb loss every single week)

• In the first few weeks the results are epic for everyone. Typically going on a diet means the food you eat tends to be healthier so your hormonal system starts working better, your muscles drop glycogen levels meaning you lose a load of water, your body struggles to cope with the sudden drop in calories and despite its best efforts to adjust it’s metabolic rate to compensate to stop you losing weight it simply cannot adapt fast enough and you can end up with huge losses (depending on your starting weight). The current first month record on The Switch Plan stands at 32lb, which is just absolutely crazy!

• After a few weeks (usually around month 2 for most dieters) things change. You will naturally be a little more relaxed with your diet (not a bad thing I assure you) but more importantly the body starts to get a handle on what is going on. It gets better at controlling your metabolic rate and adjusts things accordingly. Some weeks it get’s it spot on, other weeks it doesn’t. So you will have weeks where you lose loads, others where the weight doesn’t move at all. There is no reasoning behind it, you can’t explain it, it just is what it is. Some weeks the body wins, other weeks you win.

 

Now this is the danger time and where most dieters fail (and subsequently doom themselves to a continued lifetime of being on a diet). Because they have a week where they feel they have been perfect but the weight loss is tiny if at all they feel the diet is broken, and either bail on it or jump ship to another diet, thereby having to start the whole process again.

But what you have to understand is this. Every single diet, regardless of which one, still has the same problem. It is fighting against your bodies determination to not succumb to the diet and lose weight. Even if you jump ship to XXX diet because your mates done really well on it you (and your mate) are going to have weeks where the same happens and the scales don’t move.

It is demoralising, frustrating, and makes you think ‘what’s the point’ or ‘I can’t lose weight’ or ‘this diet isn’t for me’ but the truth is none of those statements are accurate. You are simply battling against your bodies attempts to keep its weight the same.

Well this is what you do. You remain consistent and keep going. It is all about the direction of travel.

When you were consistently overeating, which subsequently led to you putting the weight on in the first place, you won the battle against your body because you consistently made it fight against you and eventually it had to give up (we know that because you are overweight now), well exactly the same is true when losing weight. It’s just a shame that over eating is so much easier than under eating.

If you consistently eat under the calories you need to then you will win, period (otherwise no one would ever starve to death) but you have to accept that this is a massive conflict going on. Some weeks you win, other weeks the body wins, but the inevitable result of the overall battle will be in your favour if you don’t give up. Over a period of time the body will lose, it always does, and you will drop your weight and you will eventually reach your goal, but consistency is key.

and this leads us to the hardest truth of all (and is not one that tends to sell many diet plans unfortunately but regardless of that, it’s the truth!

Over a period of time, despite epic results in the early days and odd weeks of epic losses, you will, realistically, lose around 1lb a week. Taking account of great weeks, poor weeks, weeks where it goes up, doesn’t move, everything, it will average out at around 1lb a week. I know you don’t believe me, because you may have currently lost 2 stone in 3 months and I understand your doubts but by the time you reach your end goal, if you do, where ever that may be, you will look back at the time it has taken, the amount you have lost, and realise that I am right.

And I am not talking about people who lost epic weight following xxx diet but have subsequently put it on (or never actually reached their goal weight), they gave up half way through (oh and at which point do you think they gave up at?). I am talking about people who saw the journey through to the end, got the job done.

So where does this leave us, what have we learned?

• Every single week is a battle when it comes to weight loss. Over the course of your dieting journey you will win half the weeks, the body will win the others. It’s roughly 50/50.

• Any week you get a loss, no matter how small, is still a loss and should be seen as a victory. Remember it is all about the direction of travel and as long as monthly you have netted a loss from your efforts then you deserve a big pat on the back.

• Realistically, on a monthly basis (not weekly, because your weight can go up some weeks due to water, time of the month, stress, sleep etc) you should be delighted and over the moon if you achieve a 4lb loss, and absolutely shouting from the rooftops if you hit around the 7lb mark. Anything more than that after the first month is unrealistic and the stress you put yourself under chasing the higher figures will actually work against you.

• Accept that sometimes you will get on the scales and despite the effort you have put in nothing has happened (or worse it has gone the opposite way). DO NOT GIVE UP, it is simply part of the battle and the journey, that week was always going to happen, whether now or in a couple of weeks it doesn’t matter. If you give up now what is the alternative, you’ll never ever lose the weight, so you HAVE to carry on, box it off, put it behind you and carry on.

Finally as a bit of disclaimer section I need to remind you of the following:

• Diets where you only consume around 500 calories a day are excluded from all of this, they elicit a completely different response in the body and it simply cannot compete against it (but no one EVER keeps the weight off, so what is the point of doing them)

• Everyone is different, and the results that one person gets should never be compared to your own results, you are fighting your own war, and on your own journey, focus on that. Your question to fellow dieters should never be “How much weight did you lose this week?” it should always simply be “Did you lose weight this week?”, and if they did, huge congratulations all round!

• If you wish to compare yourself to others results only do so against people who actually finished the job and lost ‘all’ the weight they wanted to, never against people who are currently mid journey, ever.

Good luck with your efforts, and I hope that this ‘lengthy I am afraid, sorry’ post serves to show you how incredibly epic it is every single time you actually manage to lose ANY weight at all, nature and biology are fighting against you all the time, but your biggest weapon, and the one that will ultimately be successful, is simply…

CONSISTENCY