Why do mainstream diets fail us long-term?

Drawing your own health and fitness map ensures you get to where you want to go in a way that matches you.

I had an interesting conversation with a nutrition coaching client this week where she marveled that though the approach we are taking to build her nutritional toolbox is currently slower than her previous efforts, she doesn’t feel the pressure or needs to conform, which is liberating and drives motivation.

Mainstream diets are often general rules and regulations around food. Things like;

• “Don’t eat X macronutrient”

• “Don’t eat between X o’clock and Y o’clock”

• “Only eat things that grew in the ground”

• “Don’t eat things with ingredients you can’t pronounce”

These rules are structure - and I am all about structure. We human beings thrive on that shit. We wear a seatbelt, brush our teeth, and go to school from 4-18 years old because the structure is the fabric of order and success (currently speaking).

Yet trying to follow someone else's rules that they created for their life, is a recipe for disaster when your life is different. 

A good analogy here is being given a map without a key. If you can’t tell what the key depicts and what the landmarks mean, you’re likely to get lost and turn back. But if you draw your own map, and populate it with your own landmarks along the way, you can Hansel and Gretel your way to lifestyle improvement, nutritional skills, and your long-term goals.

Your landmarks might look like;

• Tracking your steps daily

• Not weighing yourself

• Circumference measurements

• Home cooking skills

• Weekend activities

• Social accountability

• Keeping a food journal

• Limiting eating out to X per week

• Drinking 1 glass of water with every meal

• Preparing your easiest meal of the day the night before

• Eating a vegetable w/ 2 pf 3 daily meals

And so on and so on. These are skills that create structure. They can drive us towards our goal of improving nutritional knowledge without someone else adding restrictions to a life they don’t have context for. 

Limiting an eating window isn’t magic - it limits the time you have to eat which limits how much you can eat.

Limiting carbs isn’t voodoo - it removes ⅓ of the available macronutrients you can eat and so we end up eating less.

Eating exclusively vegetables isn’t magic - it limits the number of options we have to choose from and so we end up eating less.

These are methods that abide by scientific principles. And so is the bulleted list above.

Pick and choose the methods that create your desired map. There is no need to conform when it comes to nutritional skills and preferences. There are scientific principles, environmental demands, personal preferences, and preferred methods.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.