Episode #4 -Trying to Lose Weight Quickly? Stop Wasting Time
Short term, rapid weight loss strategies don’t deliver the best results. If they did, we would be teaching you the quickest ways to lose weight in 30 days or less. The truth is that trying to lose weight quickly ends up becoming a major waste of time. Unanticipated life barriers end up getting in the way and the strategies don’t work long term. Also, the quick results, if any, won’t necessarily make you look better. I’m going to show you why a weight loss plan designed for quick results is not worth your time and energy.
“When people try quick weight loss techniques they don’t learn much, they never develop the long term skills they need to keep the weight off, falling back to old habits.” — David Minishian
Sustainability of Rapid Weight Loss
Rapid weight loss can be defined by trying to lose 2+ pounds a week. This rate of weight loss is not easy to do, and it’s not sustainable. To accomplish this, you will need to be in a calorie deficit of 1000 calories a day. This large deficit will cause your hormones to “fight back,” in the form of cravings to say “I need more food.” If you’re struggling to stay disciplined and control your cravings now, imagine what it would be like when your body goes into overdrive, pumping out the strongest cravings.
Long Term Skills
When people try quick weight loss strategies, they do not practice the long term skills necessary to maintain their results. Instead, they revert back to their old habits and regain the weight just as fast, if not faster. Since all the strategies are short term so are the results.
Muscle Tone & Definition
Toned arms, legs, and abs, etc. more accurately means having muscular arms, legs, and abs. When you build muscle tissue at a healthy weight, you’ll see the muscle definition without necessarily being bulky. However, rapid weight loss includes the loss of fat and muscle. Popular rapid weight loss strategies do not support muscle tissue growth but cause muscular atrophy, which has the opposite effect of toning. It is better for most to lose weight at a slower rate, implementing more resistance based training for muscle, not just cardio.
Ready to build the body you want with a sustainable lifestyle?
David is the owner and head coach at Sculpt Fitness in Long Beach, CA. He leads the mission at Sculpt to educate, equip, and empower the local community to make the best decisions for their health. For over 10 years he has coached exercise and nutrition, helping clients create sustainable lifestyle to build the body they want. When he's not training, coaching or cooking, David is on an adventure with his wife and kids or teeing up his next shot on a golf course.
Ever wonder why the push for a low fat diet died? The health and fitness industry goes through cycles pushing the next best thing for your health. Well the low fat cycle didn’t last and for good reason. Before you decide to cut back on fat, here are a few things to know about the low fat diet, the good and the bad.
“What is really beneficial about going on a low-fat diet, or any diet, is that you become more aware of what you’re eating, being conscious about food choices and how they’re prepared.” — David Minishian
The Power of Paying Attention
Any diet you adopt will make you more aware of what you are eating. By forcing you to make conscious nutritional decisions, you won’t automatically eat everything in front of you. As you shift your eating patterns to a low fat diet, you will naturally begin to reduce your consumption foods that are higher in fat, like dairy and meat. Instead, you’ll be more aware of your consumption of whole foods like fruit, vegetables, legumes, and grains that have a lower fat content.
The All or Nothing Approach
Restrictive diets, like a low fat diet, prove difficult to adhere to long term. They make social activities like dining out with friends or family cumbersome. If you’ve went out to dinner during a diet and felt like you can’t eat anything on the menu, it sucks. Being forced to break your diet makes you want to throw in the towel and eat whatever sounds amazing. This all or nothing approach is a product of a restrictive diet.
Bad Relationships With Food
Avoiding fats in your diet can be detrimental to the way you see foods, because you start to view foods as low-fat or high-fat, good or bad. The truth is that there are no bad foods, only foods you should eat in greater or smaller amounts and higher or lower frequencies. Some high fat foods that you should eat often like nuts and seeds are important for your overall health. But when you completely cut out foods for non-medical reasons, it does more than create nutritional imbalances. It creates a bad relationship with food.
Ready to build the body you want with a sustainable lifestyle?
David is the owner and head coach at Sculpt Fitness in Long Beach, CA. He leads the mission at Sculpt to educate, equip, and empower the local community to make the best decisions for their health. For over 10 years he has coached exercise and nutrition, helping clients create sustainable lifestyle to build the body they want. When he's not training, coaching or cooking, David is on an adventure with his wife and kids or teeing up his next shot on a golf course.
There are too many “diet rules” to follow. It is almost intolerable. So where does Intermittent Fasting fit in? As part of a strict short-term diet, it has the potential to deliver fantastic results. But without implementing it in a sustainable way, the results won’t last either. Here we are going to discuss how to leverage the power of intermittent fasting in a sustainable way, so you can achieve the results you want and keep them.
“Giving yourself a window of time to get your food in helps you control and manage your food intake.” — David Minishian
Implementing A Fasting Diet
An 8-10 hour window, alternating days, and the 5/2 method are just a few of the ways to implement intermittent fasting. However, we find that an 8-10 hour window is the most practical method with daily consistency of implementation. Depending on your daily schedule, you may choose to start breakfast at 10am and finish your last meal at 6pm. By practicing this eating window, your mental barriers can help you stave off mindless eating and late night muchies.
Behavioral & Health Marker Benefits
Arguably the best outcome of intermittent fasting is learning the self discipline necessary to manage your food intake. As this discipline is mastered, common health outcomes you may experience include weight loss, reduced inflammation, improved blood sugar, and in athletes, even raised growth hormone levels.
Ready to build the body you want with a sustainable lifestyle?
David is the owner and head coach at Sculpt Fitness in Long Beach, CA. He leads the mission at Sculpt to educate, equip, and empower the local community to make the best decisions for their health. For over 10 years he has coached exercise and nutrition, helping clients create sustainable lifestyle to build the body they want. When he's not training, coaching or cooking, David is on an adventure with his wife and kids or teeing up his next shot on a golf course.
The Episode: The Magical Low Carb Diet and Why It Stopped Working
Have you ever tried a low carb diet and felt like it was working until it didn’t? You aren’t alone. The immediate gratification of seeing the scale go down on a low carb diet has tricked many people. But this seemingly magical experience isn’t that special and learning why it happens will reveal the key to staying on track with your weight loss mission. I’m going to take you behind the magical façade and show you what works and doesn’t work about a low carb diet.
[2:35] – Effects of Psychological Stress on Consistent Results
[3:32] – Suffering or Thriving With A Low Carb Lifestyle
[4:07] – Low Carb Vs Practical Changes With A Balanced Diet
“A low carb diet isn’t magical because it just works. It helps people stay at a much lower calorie intake, because they cut out the processed foods.” — David Minishian
Potential Benefits of Eating Low Carb
A low carb diet may help you replace processed junk food with whole food alternatives. This will reduce your overall calorie intake and make it easier to maintain a healthy weight. When weight-loss is your primary goal, a low carb diet may also provide a psychological side-benefit of seeing “fast results” on the scale that encourages you to continue. This occurs at the beginning of the diet, because reducing your carbohydrate intake reduces the amount of water your muscles retain. This change in weight is quickly seen on the scale. However, this can a double-edged sword that later knock you off track.
The Difficulties With Eating Low Carb
A low carbohydrate intake may prove difficult to maintain day to day as a sustainable way of eating. The weight fluctuations caused by an increase or decrease in carbs can cause an obsession with the scale and this fixation on the short term outcome hinders the long term goal of living a lifestyle that supports a healthy weight.
Ready to build the body you want with a sustainable lifestyle?
David is the owner and head coach at Sculpt Fitness in Long Beach, CA. He leads the mission at Sculpt to educate, equip, and empower the local community to make the best decisions for their health. For over 10 years he has coached exercise and nutrition, helping clients create sustainable lifestyle to build the body they want. When he's not training, coaching or cooking, David is on an adventure with his wife and kids or teeing up his next shot on a golf course.
Meat and Vegetables are not the only foods without carbs.
Foods without carbs are becoming extremely popular. As the ketogenic diet gains traction, food products are lining the shelves advertising No-Carbs, Low-Carbs, keto-friendly, and high-fiber. More food manufacturers are removing carbs from foods to promote healthy alternatives for consumers.
However, to produce these alternatives the food must be processed and manipulated to create these new dietary macro-nutrient profiles. This raises several questions:
Are these alternatives healthy?
Are the sugar alcohols and isolate fiber that replace the carbs safe?
What is better the unprocessed or processed foods?
Let’s take a deep dive into the world of low to no carb foods to discuss the IF and HOW we should include these in our diet.
IF (You Should Eat Foods Without Carbs)
There are a multitude of food options without carbs. Each one is unique and manufactured to maintain a palatable taste, physical structure/consistency, and nutrient profile.
But not all foods without carbs are made equal. Some incorporate sugar alcohols that are known to cause digestive and GI issues. Others include high concentrations of isolated fibers from oats, wheat, or are made synthetically.
I’m not going to cover each and every possible sugar alcohol and isolated fiber, but the “best” sugar alcohol to consume would be Erythritol (in my opinion). This sugar alcohol causes minimal digestive issues, if any, and has been well-researched as safe for consumption. It doesn’t promote tooth decay, helps control blood sugar, and is low in calories. Plus, erythritol is naturally occurring in foods you probably consume already.
When you consider consuming foods that have been processed and manipulated to be no carb or low carb, remember this: MODERATION IS KEY. Stick to this mantra and eating foods without carbs are usually a non-issue.
How (You Should Eat Foods Without Carbs)
Experiment with the low carb tortillas. Try the no carb protein bars. Test out the keto pancake mix. Just don’t do it all at once. In general, you want a balanced diet based on whole foods, but that diet can also have any of these options in moderation.
Including these foods without carbs in your diet doesn’t mean you have to eat keto. You are just taking the best parts of the diet and adding it to your own diet.
By approaching your diet this way, you can incorporate low carbs foods to help decrease your caloric intake for the day or fill that sweet craving without the added sugars. When you eat these foods without carbs strategically, you can more consistently reach your goals without sacrificing the foods you love.
If you are struggling with your diet and it’s holding you back from building the body you want, you may want to check out the Nutrition Coaching. It’s our nutrition course to help you build the body you want with a sustainable way of eating.
Subscribing to a diet is not the right solution. It could be hurting your chances of success.
Diet Subscription
Starting a new diet is like a temporary subscription. You try it for awhile. See how it feels. Tell your friends and family about it. It’s fun at first, maybe even a little exciting as you figure out new recipes and flavors. After a couple weeks you’re seeing results (down 5 lbs!). The diet is working and you feel incredible!
Maybe you’ve been there and had that initial feeling of success. Well you aren’t alone. Many have seen immediate “results” on a diet and have been quick to share their success. Others hear the diet works, get inspired, try the diet for themselves and have the same experience. The cycle repeats.
But fast forward 3 months and you’ve gained the weight back. The success didn’t last. So…what happened?
You were victimized by the Diet Subscription Trap.
This is a nasty trap that has been used for decades to SELL DIETS. Why sell diets? Because no one makes money telling people to eat fruits and vegetables, reduce processed food intake, and consume smaller portions. Although this is great health advice, it doesn’t sell. However, if the nutrition information is packaged into a specific diet that is easy to follow, it can be sold as a “cure” by savvy individuals who write books. Consumers buy the books, subscribe to the diet, share their results, and promote the diet.
The truth is: it’s all hype. Anyone who restricts their food intake and makes healthier choices will get results. In this way diets are not unique or special. Don’t be a victim of someone’s Diet Subscription Trap. I know several diets look promising. They are backed by science, testimonials, and professionals who advocate for the diet claiming it’s better for XYZ reasons. But none of that matters.
Why?
Because it’s not your diet.
Your Diet
Your diet is the way you eat. It includes the foods you most commonly consume. Everyone has a diet they currently adhere to and depending on the person that diet can fluctuate drastically or be very limited in scope.
Your diet is uniquely yours. It is tailored to your likes and dislikes. For this reason, trying to subscribe to someone else’s diet is like attempting to fit a square peg in a round hole. It doesn’t fit. It was designed by another person who has their own likes and dislikes. Taking their diet won’t work for you.
You have to create your own diet tailored to your goals.
Your “goal oriented” diet will include the foods you enjoy eating. It will also take into account:
Required preparation times
Willingness and ability to cook
Food availability
Take out options
Nutritional knowledge
These numerous factors won’t be taken into account with someone else’s plan. This is why I advocate for creating your own personalized plan, an ideal diet.
Creating your ideal diet is a great place to start, because it provides a diet framework to follow that isn’t food exclusive, but inclusive. This framework is at the core of our Nutrition Coaching to continuously improve their personal diets.
Our Nutrition Coaching is designed to address diet fluidity, because our diets constantly change over time, as the contributing factors I described above change. (This is why rigid diets like meal plans don’t work long-term.) Your ideal diet can be developed in an afternoon, but it requires time and effort to prepare, considering all the factors involved.
