At FIT4FUNCTION we coach people for goals ranging from muscle growth, boosting productivity and performance to fat loss diets. One of the things that very often predicts failed weight loss attempts, is a history of prolonged calorie restriction. That’s right

— too much dieting makes you less likely to be successful on a fat loss diet.

“Too much dieting” means either overly harsh diets, dieting too often, running extended diets or off-and-on diets, or running “maintenance” with low calories. In such cases, we very predictably see people require drastic and miserable calorie cuts for minimal weight loss. This very often comes with rebound gain of any weight loss. 

Does this sound familiar? : 

You try various diets and means of calorie restriction, but feel like you have plateaued or been stuck around a certain weight for months or years despite your constant efforts. Maybe you lost some weight a while ago, but nothing seems to work now. Or you lose the same weight over and over, gain it back, and feel like you are perpetually worried about and trying to get it off. You eat carefully all of the time and rarely allow yourself to enjoy a meal out or a treat. Maybe you occasionally indulge, but then feel a great deal of guilt and compensate with exercise or excessive restriction the following day. You feel like you work so hard and no progress is made. You count, weigh, log, and track everything but nothing seems to change. 

If this sounds familiar, it will sound counter-intuitive when I say this:

What you need to lose weight is to stop trying to diet and eat more for a while.

Please note, we are not saying that eating more will cause weight loss directly, a calorie deficit is always the way to lose weight. If you increase your intake carefully, however, it will allow you to maintain your weight and prepare you to lose more efficiently and sustainably in the future. 

Many people won’t even call what they have been doing a “diet” since they are no longer losing weight. They consider the constant restriction “eating healthy” and assume that is what they need to do just to maintain. Not realising that with some work, they could eat more, enjoy more, and still maintain weight.

The truth is, eating healthy for your body and sanity involves diet breaks, occasional indulgences, and some treats here and there; it involves balance.

The restriction should be limited to brief periods of weight change followed again by periods of weight maintenance and balance. This also helps prevent black and white thinking about food––there are not good foods and bad foods, only foods you might want to eat more often than others and types of foods you might temporarily avoid to reach a goal more easily.  

Even when weight loss has ceased, continued caloric restriction results in accumulated fatigue (psychological and physiological) and compensation mechanisms. This means that even if your weight loss has plateaued, if you keep trying to diet, you will continue to accumulate fatigue and your body will continue to try to compensate for the low calorie intake. Your body adjusts to prevent weight loss when you diet by lowering your metabolism by a small amount, decreasing your tendencies and inclinations to move your body and burn calories, and by down-regulating some hormone production. These mechanisms were helpful for our ancestors’ survival when food was scarce, but can make dieting more complicated in this age of plenty!

Thus,

when you reduce calories across a diet, those calories need to be added back in slowly after the diet to allow all of those changes to return to baseline.

Once you are back at baseline, another diet phase can be attempted with more success since your daily caloric burn will have ramped back up and other compensation mechanisms will have been eliminated. In addition, you will feel mentally relaxed from having been able to indulge a bit occasionally and ready for another brief phase of restriction.

In order to undo diet stress and fatigue we recommend spending a few weeks to months without any counting, weighing, measuring, or worrying–– just eating whatever sounds good and as much of it as desired.

This might sound funny, but can be extremely stressful to the chronic dieter who will fear weight gain and loss of control. Nevertheless, it is likely a critical step for resetting someone’s relationship with food. The period of complete relaxation usually naturally leads into a bit healthier eating––we all tire of sweet treats and savoury snacks in excess it turns out. A few weeks to months of slightly healthier, but still relaxed eating should follow. This will slowly transition you out of chronic diet fatigue and into the start of a healthy diet and healthy mindset.

Sometimes the longer road is the road to sustainable results.

We hope that this blog, in addition to the testimonial below from one of the women in this mini-study will help clients in this position make a positive change in their habits, relationship with food, and perspective on dieting and get to a place where they are running the show in a healthy, sustainable manner.  

Testimonial from a client who did the diet reset:

“When I first contacted Bradley Roehrig he required me to do a "8-12 wk diet break". WHAT!?!? My world literally felt as if it was colliding. Yeah, I'm a bit dramatic, lol. But seriously, the thought of living without any rules pertaining to what I ate sent me spinning in a complete panic. You see, I've not really lived without being on a diet, since I was a teen! How in the world do I do this? He told me "if you want cake for breakfast and a jar of PB for dinner, then eat just that". I will never forget those words. Also, no measuring, counting, or weighing of anything! Unbelievable, not doable, ridiculous, I cried that whole day. But, my hubby was 110% behind me and so excited to live with me without restricting my food. I knew I wanted freedom in this area so, after much thought and more tears I decided to do it.” … “I ended up fully embracing this and enjoying life! I healed emotionally and mentally from a lifetime of disordered thinking and beliefs. I tried a few times to start early, lol, but she insisted I wait a little longer. So, when the time was up I was ready to begin my cut and he agreed. The incredible thing?? I gained absolutely NOTHING!!! My cut was a little rocky but we found my metabolism was so ramped up from being fed well that we had to continue increasing food to find my base! I lost 8kg total, dropped 2 pant sizes, and continue to work through the online coaching program with great energy. I have loved this process so much that I signed up for another 6 months! I'm continuing to heal from my lifetime of dieting and fully enjoying food each day! So, if a coach suggests a diet break, fully embrace it because the benefits are Immeasurable.”