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“If your diet feels unsustainable, the results will be too” - Me

How often have you heard “it’s easy to lose the weight, keeping it off is the hard part”?

That’s because most people follow unsustainable methods like Keto. F*ck Keto.

They lose weight, struggle to stick to the rules and restrictions, then put it back on.

This is why we never prescribe meal plans to our clients.

Meal plans are unsustainable. 

What happens when the grocery store doesn’t have egg whites?

What happens when you get called in to work and don’t have time to cook? 

What happens when you want to go out and have a social life?

We don’t want that for you. So, naturally, we recommend dieting sustainably.

If your goal is to get shredded for a bodybuilding competition then have a massive rebound then by all means, diet unsustainably. 

But if your goal is to lose weight and keep it off, your best course of action is to try and live your regular lifestyle whilst dieting.

You’ll just be eating fewer calories and getting a bit more movement. That’s really it.

I’m not saying don’t eat ‘healthier’. After all, eating more fruits and vegetables will help you eat less calories because you’ll be so full and fuelled.

Then when you do hit your goal weight or body, you don’t need to drastically change anything, because you’re already living the lifestyle you wanted to live.

You just get to eat a bit more food, now.

I don’t know about you but to me ‘living your regular life’ means eating fast food sometimes.

No - I don’t mean go full IIFYM mode and eat nothing but donuts and protein shakes because ‘it fits my macros bro’.

What I mean is…

Do you intend to eat fast food, or restaurant food, in the future once you’ve lost the weight?

Then your best strategy is to eat those foods whilst you are losing weight, too.

There are pro’s and con’s to this approach:

Pro’s:

• Your diet doesn’t feel so much like a diet.
  
  
• You learn great habits like tracking, guesstimating, macrocycling and making good choices that suit your goals whilst also satisfying the taste buds. These are skills that can only be learnt through practice.
  
  
• You get to eat the foods you love.
  
  
• You are less likely to have a post-diet binge because you don’t feel so restricted.

Con’s

• It’s harder to track fast food & restaurant foods so you may eat a few more calories some days, meaning you might lose weight slightly slower than you otherwise would do.

OK I’m sold, but how?

How to track meals out:

How to find the nutritional information of [insert favourite food here]:

1. Check the Menu (or website).
   
   
2. Consult MyFitnessPal. Plenty of restaurants will upload information there, too.
   
   Bear in mind that MFP contains user-inputted data aka anyone can upload an item and suggest the calories/macros. If we can find the options with the ✅we are much better placed.
   
   
3. Think about the ingredients and try to add them individually.
   
   This may work for items with few ingredients such as an Egg McMuffin from McDonalds (contains: egg, english muffin, maybe some butter and oil for cooking).
   
   

Guess the protein and calories.

When in doubt, over-estimate. Restaurants don’t care about your macros, they care about making that food as tasty as possible. That usually means more oils than we would typically use at home.

How to macrocycle:

Essentially you’ll consume a little bit less calories throughout the week, in order to have much more calories on the weekend.

PS The NCF Fat Loss Macro Calculator will set that up for you.

How Strict Do I Need To Be?

If you’ve got a bodybuilding show in a week… 

Delete this article from your brain - this one isn’t for you.

If you’re in the final stages of a diet and you’ve got a holiday/wedding/photoshoot coming up…

You’re best served being a little more meticulous and pre-planning your food selection based on the accuracy with which you can track.

For example you might opt for the restaurant/fast food chain that displays all of their nutritional information on the menu, so you can move your earlier meals that day (or even week) around to fit this meal in your total daily (or weekly) calories.

If you’re in a fat loss phase with no end date in mind you’ll be best served simply guessing the protein and calories of your meal.

Don’t fall into the trap of only eating foods you can track.

Tracking is a skill you’re working on, not a life sentence.

The more you can practice estimating and  tracking foods now, the better your intuition will be when you eventually achieve your body transformation and move away from tracking.

That’s the secret of non-trackers who manage to stay in great shape, by the way.

Step One: Achieve the transformation via tracking.

Step Two: Maintain the transformation whilst you move away from tracking.

Step Three: Whenever you need to ‘tighten’ things up, you can always come back to tracking!

Tracking your fast foods will also teach you how to approach the rest of your day to facilitate the higher calorie meal.

Weighing It All Up (or not, as it may be)

The crucial point in deciding what you do when eating out is weighing up your actions versus your goals.

Is your goal such that you can have a lot more flexibility and freedom, and still get where you want to be?

Or does your goal require you to be a little firmer with your choices and keep on track?

Only you can make that decision.

Whatever you choose, you've got the tools here at your disposal to ensure you enjoy your food and keep on getting stronger and leaner without feeling like you're being restricted.

PS if you want more actionable tips just like this one you’ll love our private community Fat Loss Hacks For Frustrated Dieters.

In there we post helpful tips like this, every single day. Yes… It’s free.

I’ll see you in there!



Coach Vaughan Burrell.