READING TIME: 4 Minutes

Everyone, including you, has struggled to lose weight at some point in their lives, Actually the very fact you are reading this is evidence of that. It is hard, and it has no logic.

Some weeks you will absolutely nail it, be perfect on everything, work your butt off and exercise like a trooper and very little weight is lost, if anything. You’ll get on and off the scales 2 or 3 times to be sure that the figure staring back at you, after all your hard work and sacrifice, is actually right. And it is!

You stand there for moment, deflated, upset and then angry. “It must be the diet’s fault”, “I must be eating too much”, “This diet doesn’t suit me”, “I need to eat fewer calories”, “It must be the carbs”, “I should of done XXX diet because that’s what my mates are doing and ‘so and so’ lost 3lb this week”.  All these things go through your head and this is where 99% of dieters fail.

The minute you decide you are going to change your diet because this one isn’t working you are doomed. As soon as you start flipping between diets all is lost, trust me. Consistency is the biggest thing you need to conquer.

And everything I have just said is true, it really happens, you know it does.

Other weeks you think f**k it, cheat a bit, relax on the food, can’t be bothered to go the gym and bam, 4lb drops off. Why? How does that work? What is going on? I don’t understand? I’ve eaten LOADS more food than I should of?

Well, you need to understand one overriding thing in dieting that most people forget. Your body does NOT want to lose weight. Your body likes homeostasis (it doesn’t like change), and dropping its stored fuel (body fat) for no apparent reason is a change it does not want to let happen. This is actually a good thing, it is trying to think ahead and keep you alive for longer, it doesn’t want you to encounter problems further down the line in times of food shortage etc.

Thanks ‘body’, that’s really kind of you but not what we are trying to achieve right now, famine is not my concern, it’s my gluttony!

To understand this better you need to realise that to efficiently regulate it’s energy needs the body is able to regulate it’s metabolism (the amount of fuel it needs to burn) up and down to accommodate the amount of food it is receiving. So when you eat more food, it lifts UP your metabolism to burn it off, and when you eat less it LOWERS your metabolism so it doesn’t burn too much.

This is because not only does your body not want to lose weight, it also actually does not want to put any on, it does not like change.

Now this should fill you with hope, because in reality you beat the odds by making the body store weight (which it didn’t want to do, because that is a change), so you can beat the odds by making it lose weight. 

First and foremost, before anything else, regardless of what ANYONE might tell you (including the fat-phobes, the carb adverse individuals, the paleo enthusiasts, in fact ANYONE), calories matter. Period. Your body survives off them. Fat can not be created out of nothing, only an excess of calories will cause the body to store fat, and only a shortage of calories will cause your body to lose fat. THAT IS IT.

WEEK ONE:

So, you lower your calories (by following a diet) and in the first week, WOW, OMG, EPIC RESULT, this is the best diet ever, GET IN, NAILED IT. Yes correct. You shocked the body, you caught it unawares and the shortage of calories forced it to drop some water and burn some fat off. Round One to YOU!

WEEK TWO:

Ha ha, the body is on to you now. It’s sussed you out. It realises it is getting less calories so it slows down it’s metabolism so that it doesn’t need to burn as much fuel, which means it doesn’t need to eat off and burn up it’s fat stores, it manages things just enough so that it can ‘survive’ off the reduced calories you are giving it and lo and behold, the scales show zero movement or just a little, even though you have been perfect on your diet. Round Two to The Body!

And here is the danger point, most people will now quit, decide the diet was rubbish, didn’t work and look for something else (after having a food binge). So actually the whole fight was won by the body because you gave in. It was victorious. You are the loser.

However had you carried on, sticking to your diet, managing your food intake, doing some exercise and rode through the rough patch with the attitude of ‘You are not going to beat me and I am going to win’ then the body usually by week three will realise that this weight loss and reduced calories is not the end of the world, there isn’t a panic, actually a few systems are working better because we are not carrying as much fat, and it will start to relax a bit.

From this point on week on week weight loss can be pretty regular. Every now and then the body will catch up and you will have a week where nothing moves, but again you need to simply tick it off as the body winning that one, and carry on. You HAVE to have this attitude or you will not win the overall battle, because your mind will force you to give in.

Your body is simply an organism, it want’s to survive, for as long as it can, and to do that it has to protect it’s energy stores, and by you dieting and reducing the amount of food you are giving it you are threatening that, so it responds by trying to protect itself. However you WILL ultimately win because the body can only manage for a certain amount of time on reduced calories before it HAS to burn it’s fat stores (otherwise no one would ever starve).

As soon as you realise that, and understand that each week is a battle and some you will win and some you won’t you will have a much better chance of reaching your goals. This is one reason why weighing weekly is such a bad idea (monthly is so much easier and healthier for your mind). The weeks you don’t win do not mean the diet has failed, or you have done something wrong, it’s just that that week, tough luck, it wasn’t meant to be, but you have to carry on, with determination and vigour, because if you don’t the body will win again,

and then you will be overweight forever, always going round in circles, always on a diet, always depressed about your shape.

Think about that…and next time the scales don’t show what you were hoping for remember all of this, give the scales the middle finger, step off and carry on doing exactly what you have been, because the consequences of giving up (again) are much worse.

 James