The benefits of yo yo dieting
Yes you read that right - I don’t buy this negative narrative as often as it’s spun and here is why…
I don’t buy the narrative of yoyo dieting as I feel it encourages guys to avoid failure, which limits their number of tries.
If you follow a way of eating, gain weight and lose weight, feel frustrated that you couldn’t maintain the loss, then it is not the diet. The diet doesn’t have any morality (mostly), it’s our interpretation of the story.
Why didn’t it work? Was it because we were too extreme, was it because we put all of our eggs in this one methodological basket and when we couldn’t maintain it, did it damage our sense of self? Was it because we convinced ourselves/allowed ourselves to be convinced by others that this was the way that would finally work for us wholesale?
Identity
In today's world it doesn’t pay to be a pessimist and it’s not advantageous to be a cynic. It does, however, pay to be skeptical of anyone telling you that “this is the way”. This is the way for who? To achieve what? For how long?
Our problem often isn’t with mainstream diets (outside of the extreme garbage of drinking dishwashing chemicals or putting lemon juice in your eyes…and if you’re in those camps then I’m not the guy to save you from yourself), but it’s the way we attach our personal values and identity to them.
If we identify as a “keto guy” and over time, your lifestyle, goals, needs, environment and demands change to create a place where a ketogenic diet isn’t sustainable for you, then giving up or admitting loss can feel like an atom bomb to your identity.
The toxic power of yoyo diets is often created by us and those around us.
Of course, there can be negative physiological effects from a perpetual cycle of losing and gaining weight, especially if you always gain more than you lose with every yoyo effort. Yet the issue that holds us back the most, is how long it takes us to recover psycologicall and emotionally from the fatigue and damage to our self image after we attach our identity to a method only for that method to fail us at some point in time.
Instead, I posit that if we appreciate that there are scientific principles that govern fat loss, muscle growth, athletic performance, and health progress, and that there are infinite combinations of methods we can use to abide by these principles, then we are going to save ourselves a ton of frustration.
Each guy reading this likely has very similar demands such as family, career, and health - but you have them in different doses. For example, if you work from home, have 1 year old twin boys, and are 30, your doses of demand will look very different to the guy who travels for work, has a 14 year old daughter, and is 45 (real world builtXyou clients).
Yoyo diets aren’t ideal
Don’t give them power over you by attaching your identity to methods. Instead, commit to being the kind of guy that figures out what blend of methods match your demands the best today, and be willing to adjust them as your demands change over time.
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