The first mistake people make is they try to follow trends and switch to whatever the popular new diet or program is. Over the past few years, there have been many new diets which have become popularized which cut out different foods, such as the keto diet, vegan diet, paleo diet, and Atkins diet.
For a program to be effective, the biggest key is for it to be sustainable. When you’re choosing a diet, the main question you need to ask yourself is “Can I do this diet for the rest of my life?” If a diet is not sustainable, it will work for a few weeks or months, but then you will stop following it and lose all the progress you made. For an average person, their diet only lasts for a few months or even a few weeks, and then they return to their old habits. This way, all the progress they made on the diet will be lost much quicker than it took for them to make the progress initially.
Another key to keeping your weight loss progress is enjoying the diet. Your diet should have no restrictions on foods, so you do not have to give up all the foods you enjoy forever. If you can enjoy your diet while getting results, you will continue to follow the plan because you are not completely giving up foods you enjoy. This long term approach will help you to continue to lose weight and not gain the weight by binging on the foods you gave up once you have stopped the plan.
Also, if you are going to enjoy your diet it needs to be flexible. You should not have set meals for every day, as when something changes which makes it impossible to follow this plan you don’t know what to do and will usually pick an option which is unhealthy and ruins your plan. Your plan should allow you to eat out and eat delivery foods you like, so you can stay on the plan and not have to break your plan to eat these foods. When incorporating all different types of food, the diet will not get old and you will not get tired of constantly eating the same things.
The final key to breaking the loose weight, gain weight cycle is sustainability beats perfection. Some people follow a perfect diet with only a few foods they are allowed to eat, but usually, they stay on this diet for a few weeks and then go off of it and lose all your progress. If you consistently are eating foods you like on a program which is effective but not perfect, consistently following this will always be better than the perfect diets you see.
In conclusion, the key for a diet is the same as the keys for a gym program. To be effective, you need to enjoy it and it needs to be flexible. If you are on a diet plan which you enjoy and it is flexible so it doesn’t hinge on specific foods, you will be able to follow it long term and reap the results from your diet. This video goes into greater detail about how to break the loose weight – gain weight cycle, and how to escape it and start enjoying your diet.
