Is It Good To Restrict Food When Dieting?

RESTRICTION BREEDS CONTEMPT

Tag yourself if you've ever cheated on a diet.

We talked last week about why diets fail.  In short, it's because people don't stick to them.  Let's dig into that a little bit deeper.  

There is something in our human nature that makes us want things that we both don't have and can't have.  We've all experienced it.  It can manifest itself in many ways including emotional wants as well as materialistic desires.  The same principle is true when dieting.  As you know, when you're trying to lose weight, you can only eat so many calories and be successful.  Unfortunately that usually means abstaining from some of the foods that we really would want.  That reminds me of the piece of carrot cake I had on my 40th birthday this year... but I digress.  

Like we talked about last week in our nutrition post, all diets work (assuming they keep you at a caloric deficit over a long period of time) unless they are not complied with.  So what makes them hard to comply with long term?  I believe it's when a diet places extreme restrictions on the types of foods that you can eat.  We either fall off the wagon and eat those foods while on the diet or once the diet is "over" we splurge on everything we couldn't have previously.

We preach a different approach.  Don't avoid or demonize complete categories of foods and don't look at the way you eat as a short term "diet".  Make it something that you enjoy and can make a lifestyle out of.   Adjust your caloric intake to help you achieve your goals and then find foods that you enjoy that fit within those caloric goals.  You can probably have many of the foods you enjoy, just maybe not as much of it as you are used to.  Sustainability will lead to consistency which will lead to what you really want, RESULTS.

Scroll back through our nutrition posts here on instagram or on digitalbarbell.com to see more about setting your caloric and macro nutrient goals. 

As always, reach out if you have any quesions.