Weight loss is hard, but keeping the weight off is even harder.
Especially, when your initial approach was not sustainable.
Have you ever found yourself super motivated to lose weight, and in turn you cut out all the sweets and "junk food" from your diet to get results.
You'll then find this approach will work only to a certain point, as you can't live the rest of your life without a donut.
Usually, you'll tell yourself "I'll be disciplined for the next 3 months, eat chicken and broccoli everyday and I'll reach my weight loss goal"
Only to end up quitting in a couple of days or a few weeks.
This is known as "All or Nothing" dieting, and as you're probably experienced.... it doesn't work.
So then what does work?
A concept known as flexible dieting.
Fat loss whether you like it or not, comes down to how many calories you eat in a day.
If you eat less calories than you burn in a day, you will lose weight.
With that concept holding true, technically you could eat whatever you wanted as long as you eat less calories than you burn in a day.
You need to know that, and never forget it.
One more time for you, you could eat whatever you wanted to as long as you eat less calories than you burn and you will still lose weight.
I don't recommend eating burgers and ice cream all day, as they are not very nutrient dense and don't fill you up very well.
But, it is still okay to have burgers and ice cream.
And there is no reason to call it a cheat meal, as you can still lose weight eating it.
Now if you want to make things simple on yourself you would track your calories.
If you do that, then you have the ultimate freedom to use your calories as you like.
Eating ice cream 2-3x a week without feeling an ounce of guilt, while dropping weight.
If you don't track your calories, that's okay.
You probably shouldn't eat as much ice cream or burgers, because they can easily put you over your calories for the day considering they are not very filling foods for the calories they provide.
Now you've understood, a calorie is always a calorie so enjoy your favorite foods.
Another characteristic of flexible dieting is learning to be okay with the decisions you make.
For example, if you are craving a snickers bar, go get one as long as it fits in your calories.
You may feel a bit guilty, as your whole life you believed sugar makes you fat, but it's not true.
And the more snickers you eat, the more comfortable you become with the idea of losing weight without cutting out your favorite foods.
The days of beating yourself up for enjoying a snickers bar are over.
Now over restricting yourself can make the weight loss process go by "faster", however due to the inability for people to sustain it, most people won't stick with it long enough to actually see results.
When it comes to flexible dieting the idea of wanting to quit doesn't leave.
Even though you are now allowed to enjoy your favorite foods, you will still deal with some minor hunger. Due to the fact that you are in a calorie deficit of course.
So in order to stop you from quitting, you should employ this genius technique known as " diet breaks "
A diet break is a crawl from your deficit into maintenance for some time.
Usually they last 5-7 days, and are programmed every 6-8 weeks.
If you have more than 15 pounds to lose, these are specifically helpful for you.
As it will take a while to lose that fat, you can enjoy the process and implement these diet breaks as needed.
To recap.......
Sustainable dieting comes down to your ability to be flexible with yourself.
Calories are everything when it comes to fat loss.
You need to include your favorite foods in your diet and it's not a "cheat meal"
Real results take real time, so take diet breaks as needed.
Hope this helps, and try out my free 14 day healthy habits challenge :)