I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but just like getting a six pack or building muscle, there is no easy gimmick to go about losing body fat. In fact, I will go as far as to say that if it has a name, then it’s a fad, and a fad will never get you where you want to be.
Now before you go off on your pitchforked rant about how Timmy Guru’s ultimate fat blaster bacon and beer diet worked for you, let me explain myself. When I say diets don’t work, I mean they don’t work in the long run.
Yes, I, and many other people, have seen some drastic short-term results, but drastic is the key word here. If anything is happening to your body drastically, it is probably either an incurable form of cancer or something that is not sustainable.
When you say, “I want to get in shape”, I assume you are implying, and stay in shape. I will say it again and probably in every other post that I write: consistency is key. Therein lies the problem with “going on a diet” when trying to get in shape.
A lot of these diets that are popular make some extreme changes to what you eat and the way you eat it. Now, extreme change may be necessary in some cases, but that change needs to be applied gradually to your lifestyle. Another major problem with dieting is that most are restriction-based, which, unless you are a robot with zero life or self-control issues, will eventually become too hard to sustain.
Below are a few of the popular diets out there that I have tried, and my experiences with them. This is not meant to be an in-depth dive into the science behind the diet; I recommend doing your own research on that if you are curious. Quite frankly, I think that with diets, experience means more than what the “experts” say, because nobody can seem to agree anyways and everyone’s body works differently. Sustainable fitness isn’t as much about the exact science but more about what you as an individual can reasonably keep doing for the long haul. In addition, if someone thinks that one method or another is the best, I would be willing to bet they can find some study out there to back up their opinion and so they can ram it down your throat.
Keto
The basic premise of this diet is that your diet consists of mostly fat, which puts your body in a state of Ketosis. In Ketosis, your body will burn fat for fuel rather than carbs for fuel.
Macro Intake: 75% Fat, 20% Protein, and 5% Carbs. This is the breakdown of where your calories should come from.
This is the most popular diet amongst people that I know, so I decided to give it a try in 2016. As advertised, I cut down FAST. Like really fast. In fact, everyone I knew who was trying it was really slimming down.
I was diligent for about 60 days of keto, and I was looking great. Abs were fully in, and I went from my pretty standard 175 lbs to about 164 lbs. I stuck it out for about another month, but eventually I fell off the keto wagon. This is what I noticed while I was continuously sticking with it:
- To only eat 5% of your calories from carbs was really hard to maintain while doing HIIT and kickboxing as my cardio methods. My energy was low when I got into the gym and/or I would feel overly full.
- This is often misrepresented as a reason to eat bacon and cheese all day. The intent of this diet is not to binge on unhealthy foods, but the reality is that is what happens. It is far easier to heat up some bacon or grab some cheese than it is to cook up a lean cut of meat which is why…
- My diet became unhealthy. I was eating fatty beef, bacon, cheese, peanuts. Whatever has a bunch of fat to get my calories in and feel full. If you are thinking, well you just aren’t doing it right, you are probably right. However, this is the real world, and the reality is this is what will often happen.
- Speaking of the real world…it is impossible to mix this diet in with a social life. No more drinks, eating out is very tough, and good luck on a holiday. This is in no way a convenient or flexible lifestyle.
- What do lean meats, oils, nuts, and dairy have in common? They are expensive. My grocery bill skyrocketed when I was using this diet.
- If you really want to do this right, you need to be checking if you are in ketosis. That means peeing on a stick or testing your blood. Just another reason that it was hard to maintain. If you fall out of ketosis, the fat burning stops.
- You need to eat a lot of veggies and supplements to compensate for all of the micro-nutrients and fiber you miss out on with such a restrictive diet.
- I could not put on any muscle. Maybe it was the fatigue in the gym or maybe the lack of protein, but while I was leaning out a lot, I was not gaining any lean muscle mass.
Overall, this diet was just too restrictive, too inflexible, and too hard to maintain.
Would I ever recommend it? If you already have a fairly healthy lifestyle and diet and are just looking to shred down for something, sure I think this is a good way to get some really quick results. At the end of the day though, I found this was just too hard of a diet to maintain as a lifestyle in the long run.
OMAD (One Meal A Day)
The OMAD diet is essentially just a more extreme version of intermittent fasting. You compress all the calories you eat in a day into one giant meal.
I tried OMAD for 8 weeks. The overall results fluctuated, unfortunately like keto, I started strong but it really got tough after a while. In the end, it was again too restrictive and too hard to incorporate into a normal lifestyle.
For me, this was tougher to maintain than Keto.
Here is what happened when I tried it:
- I was either hungry or stuffed. Most of the day I spent in a state of ravenous hunger followed by a food coma after my large meal.
- I would workout before the large meal at first, but my energy was very low in the gym.
- The weight I was lifting started to actually decline, because I just was not properly fueled for the workout and HIIT cardio or kickboxing was pretty much out of the question most days. This was especially bad towards the end of the week when I was sore and tired from my previous day’s workouts.
- Along with this hunger came a lack of motivation. It was hard to get into the gym when I was starving.
- I switched to working out after the meal and needless to say, that was a disaster. I was so full and bloated it was almost painful to workout.
- When I was cutting, my calories were 1900 per day. You would not believe how easy it is to consume that in one meal. This diet makes you think that you can eat whatever you want since you haven’t eaten all day, but that is certainly not the case.
- I tended to crave more junk food and make poor food choices. If you are like me, the hungrier you are, the easier it is to succumb to the drive through vortex or stop off and grab a whole cake or two.
- Extremely hard to incorporate into a social life. You will either go out and watch everyone else eat and drink or, what will most likely happen, just grab a fry or two. Maybe a beer, now an appetizer, and before you know it you are having meal number 2 of the day after your already giant meal.
Again, just too tough to try and make this a lifestyle.
Would I ever recommend it? Probably not this specifically. I would instead go with a more traditional form of intermittent fasting which I will go into at the end.
IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros)
Also known as flexible dieting, this has become popular in the last few years, and there is a ton of information out there on it.
The basic principle: Eat whatever you want as long as you are hitting your macro nutrient and calorie targets for the day
Your body does not know the difference between protein from lean meats like chicken or tilapia or a full fat greasy burger. To an extent, this is true, but there are a few issues with this approach.
I again went on an 8-week period of trying this diet, two separate times actually but, you guessed it, gave it up. My results were far less drastic than the other two. I did not start out with a sprint of fat loss. It followed a much more traditional pound to pound and a half a week that you would expect with any traditional healthy eating plan. That’s a plus right?
Well not so much, and here is why:
- First of all tracking is imperative. I am a proponent of tracking your calories, but this took it to an extreme. You need to be very diligent about measuring exact serving sizes, especially if you plan on eating junk food.
- Eating whatever you want sounds great, but if you are trying to lose fat or build lean muscle then you need to be sure your calories are either slightly below or slightly above your maintenance level and your protein intake should increase.
- 1 gram of protein has 4 calories, 1g of fat: 9 cal, 1g of carbs: 4 cal. So lets say instead of eating chicken for your protein you choose a burger or cheese quesadilla. The chicken doesn’t have a ton of carbs or fat, but the burger and bacon does. So you may have hit your protein goal but at the expense of a lot of additional calories in the form of fat and carbs.
- To sum that last point up, it was very easy to overeat if you intend on eating bad food, and if you don’t, why do this in the first place?
- I was hungrier more often. 20 grams of sugary cereal does not fill you up the same as 20g of oatmeal. You will feel hungrier faster the more that you replace complex carbs with processed and refined carbs.
- I did not feel great or have great digestion eating unhealthy food most of the day.
- Did I mention tracking serving size? Do you know how big a serving size of potato chips is? 21 chips. How about ice cream? About ¼ cup. Who in their right mind can stop at 21 chips or a quarter cup of ice cream? Very easy to splurge on these junk foods.
- You may be hitting macro nutrients, but you are missing out on a lot of good micro nutrients and fiber if you decide you want to use “flexible” dieting.
Overall, it was nice not being super conscious of what I was eating, and it was easy to fit into life…kind of; tracking was still super hard if I was eating out. I just did not see much progress with toning up or leaning out because it was so easy to cheat, and it was too hard to constantly try and measure out everything and not go overboard.
Would I ever recommend it? To be honest, not really. It did not seem too far off from a traditional bad diet, you are just tracking it more. I do not think eating junk food consistently is a healthy long-term lifestyle.
What’s that? It would work better if I didn’t just eat junk food? Well, let’s be honest, people go on this diet because they want to eat junk food and still lose weight. The unicorn of life. Not practical though. It would be far better to have a healthy diet and build in cheat meals or a cheat day.
Is There Anything Out There That Works??
So that may have sounded a bit discouraging, at least it was for me after wasting so much time on these types of diets. There are things I have found success with though.
I will say it again, create an eating PLAN that you can do every day. DO NOT go on a diet. Structure your eating plan around whole, unprocessed foods and watch your calories and macro nutrients. Follow the 80-20 rule. Eat good 80% of the time and leave the other 20% for splurging and social events. This allows you to enjoy life without obsessing over food and drink the whole time.
I structured my eating plan around a few things that work for me and that I enjoy doing. Unfortunately, if you could not tell by America’s skyrocketing obesity rates or just your last stroll around the local Walmart, America has a terrible relationship with food. So bad in fact that we started calling other countries eating habits diets. They are not dieting, they just eat healthy.
I have found success with a combination of:
The Mediterranean Diet
Again, hate calling this a diet but for ease of this article I will. All it is is replacing terrible processed foods with high quality whole foods. Replaces white carbs with brown carbs, fatty beef and pork with a lot of seafood and chicken, and unhealthy fats with healthier oils and nuts.
Whole grain pasta, olive oil, wine, avocados, fresh fish are all on the table with this, and I love that.
The Okinawa Diet
I love rice and sweet potatoes, and these are staples of this diet. So, I stole them and brought them into my eating plan.
All fresh foods, high in vegetables, legumes, and soy products, as well as some fresh fish.
Intermittent Fasting
This is more about timing when you eat, not what you eat. If you follow a traditional 16 hours of fasting and 8 hours of eating it is extremely easy. I simply eat from noon to 8 pm and fast the rest of the time. Most of that is spent sleeping so I am only skipping breakfast.
I try to get some cardio in before my first meal at noon and it is a great way to burn some extra calories. The reason I do it though is to help keep my calories where I want them. Having a shorter eating time frame helps me consume less during the day while still eating enough to fuel a good workout.
Wrap Up
These were my experiences as well as my observations of other people’s success/failure on these diets. I am not saying these won’t work for everyone. Maybe one of these is just what someone wants, and it will be easy for them to stick to it. My point is that these are generally temporary due to their complicated and/or restrictive nature.
Nutrition and fitness are a choice that you need to make. “Dieting” can make that choice less convenient with your lifestyle, which will eventually cause you to choose something different. The best solution is to view your nutrition plan as a lifestyle change. Taylor it to fit your everyday life so that the choice to choose healthy eating is easy. Also make sure that it is the right diet for your fitness goals
Your plan does not have to be just one thing either. Like I said above, I created an eating routine centered around a few different eating principles and styles. I can eat when it’s convenient for me and eat foods that I enjoy.
Do your research, pick what you like, track your calories, and get your proper nutrients in and your body will start to transform.
Please comment below if you have any experiences or ideas that you would like to share!
Thanks for reading!
