Or maybe better yet: why do 8,745 new diet books seem to be published each year?

Both questions have the same answer.  You’ve heard the old analogy about a square peg in a round hole: You can try to wedge them together, but it’s just not going to work out.

You are not alone. At some point, everyone has “failed” on a diet. Success is about adjustments.

The same is true of most diets and your life. Your living situation, job, day-to-day schedule, and your taste preferences create a specific set of needs. Your diet has to conform to them—not the other way around.

Yet so many popular nutrition approaches seem to want the opposite. They want you to follow their plan. Do what we say and you’ll look like you’re from South Beach, they tell you. So you eat their foods, make their recipes, and do it all according to the schedule that their book (or website, or whatever) instructs you to follow.

At least, that’s the idea. Slowly but surely, reality creeps in. The foods you’ve been making — sometimes by choice and others by force — start tasting worse. Meanwhile, the foods you gave up seem even more alluring—and you still see them every time you walk through a grocery store or drive past a restaurant.

You might cave slowly, going back to your old ways one small habit at a time. Or you might give it all up in a single moment of “to hell with this!” frustration. Either way, you wind up back where you started, doing the things that you used to do.

The best diet plan needs to start with you. Because a diet is more about changing your habits than it is eating some superfood or removing something you might enjoy. So to succeed, you need to make sure that the habit you’re trying to change isn’t so rigid and ingrained that it causes you to break.

We identified some of the most common “personality types” we see with our clients, and create solutions to help you find the best diet plan that fits. Whether you are a carb-lover, nighttime eater, snacker, sugar-lover, or just plain crazy busy, there is a way to build out a plan so that your diet feels less rigid and more like eating.

Getting started with building your own plan is simpler than you think. In fact, you can kick off the process today by asking yourself four questions.

Start here: What went wrong in the past?

Everyone always wants to jump to the plan, but that approach is inherently flawed. In order to know what will work for your body, you need to honestly assess what has not worked in the past. And then figure about why.

It’s also important that you don’t feel bad about past failures. You are not alone. At some point, everyone has “failed” on a diet. Success is about adjustments. Those diet misfires make great teaching tools that will inevitably help you discover your best diet plan — if you let them. Your mistakes of the past will make the solutions of the future more clear.

For example, a big reason why so many diets fail is that people tend to chase extremes in order to reap immediate results. “People will combine a strict low-carb diet with aggressive workouts and drop weight dramatically, which is reaffirming,” says Leigh Peele, trainer and author of The Fat Loss Troubleshoot. ”But what usually happens after a few weeks or months is that they binge and gain back even more weight.”

There are some people who will thrive on highly restrictive diets like keto or Paleo or veganism. But studies show that the average person spends about 6 weeks following one of those protocols—followed by 14 weeks off of the plan. This is why so many people wind up gaining weight when they diet.

What happens after you go all-out for a big diet change and fall off the wagon is a two-pronged blow to the ego. One makes you feel frustrated about the past; the other totally demotivated for changing in the future. Peele explains it like this: “You wind up feeling even more discouraged, and thinking, ‘I’ve done everything, but I can’t lose weight.”

Odds are that the better answer is a less-flashy one. “Not everyone is so quick to take a moderate approach,” says Peele. “All the research shows that extreme restriction doesn’t work [over the long term] and that the best eating plans are moderate diets that are easy to fit into your social life and everyday routine.”

Instead of setting out to overhaul your lifestyle, first, take an honest look at it.

Does a desk job keep you keep you sedentary for most of the day? Do you eat most of your meals at restaurants?

For better or worse, these habits are a part of your daily schedule—which means that they aren’t going to be easy to change right away.

“It’s hard for people to do something that’s not part of their daily norm,” says Peele. “You have to train yourself to go out of your comfort zone.”

Notice, however, that we didn’t say ‘impossible.’ You can change your behaviors—but it will take some time.

Translation: If you’re not super active, don’t sign up for hour-long workouts every day of the week. If you eat out a lot, don’t expect to turn into Gordon Ramsay overnight. Learning some simple meal prep tips instead may help you a lot.

If you’re a desk-jockey who wants to be more active, start with a goal of consistently hitting some realistically achievable number of workouts per week. Two or three is great, but even one is an improvement. And try to get more steps throughout the day. The number of calories you can burn through non-exercise activities like walking is substantial.

“Start somewhere,” Peele says. “And to me, the best place to start is by learning what your daily normal life is, and not pretending you’re somebody you’re not.”

Question 1:  This is your best diet plan — what do you love?

One thing people often have a hard time believing is that you can make almost any diet requirement work. We’re not talking about health requirements like avoiding gluten if you have celiac or peanuts if you have an allergy.

What we mean are those non-medical needs that you have in order to keep your sanity, like “I have to have pasta with my family sometimes” or “I have to eat dessert.”

Look. Can you love carbs and still lose fat? Yes. Can you eat dessert and still lose fat? Yes. In fact, when I reached the leanest point I ever achieved in my life—we’re talking single-digit body fat percentage territory—I was eating cheesecake once per week. How? By making adjustments elsewhere in the plan.

Whether you’re a carb lover or chocoholic, you can make just about anything work (you’ll see several examples of other situations later under question #3). It is possible to build a diet plan that meets your needs, prevents weight gain, and helps you lose fat and gain muscle. But there is some work involved.

The best diet plan is a byproduct of a little “give and take.” You figure out what you must take, and then balance that out by giving in other ways. After all, if it was a simple as eating whatever you want, no one would be frustrated by dieting.

Diets work on a continuum. For the most part, protein stays consistent. The exact amount will different for each person, but there is a mountain of research that shows the importance of protein in both fat loss and muscle gain.

The magic oftentimes occurs with carbohydrates and fat loss. We know that both high-fat and high-carb diets can work for any goal. But they can’t necessarily work for any person. As we’ve discussed before, some people respond well to carbs and others don’t. Or some people exercise in a way that makes it easier to eat certain foods.

What’s important is that you understand that the more carbs you eat, the less fat you will eat. Or the more fat you eat, the fewer carbs you will consume. This is the concept of “dietary balance.”

Here’s how it works:

Let’s say you’re someone who loves to eat pasta with your family at night. Ok, no problem. Because pasta is a carb-heavy meal, you’d then adjust the other meals during the day to be high in protein and non-starchy veggies.

That way you have ample room for the extra carbs come evening, and you haven’t overloaded with fats (because you know you have a carb-bomb coming at night).

If done right, the total number of calories you consume will be on point without restricting a food you love. We have plenty of clients that can eat pasta every week, even when trying to lose a lot of weight. Our job isn’t to restrict the foods they love; it’s to adjust everything else.

When it comes to exercise, doing what you love—rather than what you think you have to do—can help you be much more consistent. You don’t need to start doing Instagram-worthy crazy intense workouts. Just try to do more of the activities that you enjoy. Peele asks her clients to think about what they liked doing in as a kid. Did you like riding your bike to school? Playing varsity tennis? Swimming at the YMCA? Whatever it is, start there.

“I’ll even ask if people like Wii or standing video games,” she says. “Whatever it is, I’ll try to help them work that into their daily norm, and then make it a habit.”

Question 2: What do you want to achieve?

Are you trying to lose weight or gain it? Build muscle or maintain the body you have? Knowing what you want to achieve is an important part of picking a diet.

The first step: use the SMART technique to simplify the process. Different industries have different interpretations, but here’s what you need to know:

1. Specify your goal: What is it that you’re trying to do? Weight loss is not specific enough. It might be that you’re trying to lose 15 pounds in 6 months.
2. How are you going to measure your goal? This could be: I will weight myself every 2 weeks. You need to be able to measure progress, but don’t do it in a way that will drive you crazy or cause you to jump off the plan. Just remember, weight can be deceiving, so it’s good to have a few different ways to measure. For instance, if you weight stayed the same but you lost inches and your body fat decreased, that means you lost fat (and probably a lot of it). Make sure you know what success looks like (and it might be different than what you expect).
3. Make it actionable. In other words, don’t make the barrier to achievement too high. This means that your actions could change over the term of the goal. The action might start with weekly check-ins with a coach, or use an app to help you succeed, or just making sure you eat protein each and every day. The action does matter. What does, is that you do it, repeatedly, and it feels easy.
4. Who will keep you responsible? Accountability is a big part of dietary success because change is hard. It’s OK to admit that because it’s hard for everyone. Don’t leave it up to you alone to have success. Whether you follow a plan with a friend (even if you are both doing something different) or set reminders in your phone (something I do for all new habits), build a system that has a safety net.
5. Time: Set realistic goals so that you don’t get easily discouraged. Healthy weight loss oftentimes means just 1-2 pounds per week. This doesn’t seem like much, but if you applied it to your goal of 15 pounds in 6 months, you would end up being successful far in advance. This is important because most goals aren’t unrealistic, they just follow broken timelines. Weight loss will always have built in plateaus. So it’s important to play the law of averages. Some weeks you might lose 5 pounds, and other weeks you might stand still. So if you apply the law of averages, you can know that you’re staying on track in the big picture. It’s why we don’t freak out when we have a week where the scale doesn’t change. If we have a month where it doesn’t change (or body fat doesn’t change or measurements), then we have to make adjustments.

Beyond the strategy, a good place to start is calculating how many calories you burn every day. (Using a fitness tracker or app like MyFitnessPal can help. And don’t worry: this isn’t something you have to do long term. All of our clients have a choice if they want to track or not, but this can help set you on the right path) Next, think about whether you’re currently losing, gaining, or maintaining weight. From there, you can start making adjustments to your diet.  

For example, if you burn 1,800 calories a day without working out, try cutting out an extra 200 calories—say, a serving of rice—from your dinner. That might not sound like much, but Peele says that it’s a mistake to do something drastic—like cutting your calories down to 1,500 while starting a new workout that will net you a 2,300-calorie burn.

“You can keep your calories about the same or deduct just a little,” says Peele. “This way, you aren’t making very aggressive changes that you can’t stick to. You’re just making a logical shift. It may not be sexy, but it really works.”

Question 3: What are your lifestyle preferences?

Now that you know your goal, have anticipated some of the challenges you’re going to face in achieving it, and what you have to have occasionally along the way, it’s time to get started. Here is how you can find the best diet plan for your lifestyle…and make it stick.

Forget superfoods or so-called diet secrets. Focus on sustainability and consistency.

Violate either and success drops significantly.

The Best Diet Plan for…Carb-Lovers

First, remember that there’s nothing wrong with eating bread or pasta. It’s just about how much you’re eating relative to everything else. We’ve talked about how adjusting your carbs (and the amount of fat you eat) throughout the rest of the day can create leeway to enjoy more carb-heavy meals like pasta.

Another helpful tool is what we call the “Good/Better/Best” continuum. It’s a hierarchy you can use to make upgrades with just about any type of food.

For example, if you’re someone who loves eating bread, you could think of white bread as level 1 (“good”). Trade up to 100% whole wheat bread and you’re at level 2 (“better”). Trade again up to a sprouted whole grain bread like Ezekiel, and you’re at level 3 (“best”).

These sort of switches won’t reduce your calorie intake. But they are a pathway into eating more nutrient-dense foods. Those additional nutrients might provide additional satiety (the feeling of fullness), which may ultimately help you eat a little less.

Notice the terminology, though. White bread is not bad. That’s not a typo. It’s not nutrient dense, so it doesn’t carry many health benefits and won’t fill you up like the other variations that are loaded with things like fiber. But it also won’t instantly pack on pounds. This is an important distinction and something that is overlooked too often.

Making more substitutions for the “best” version doesn’t mean you have to completely go without the “good” versions.

If you’re a carb-lover, find one meal per day that you’re likely to indulge in more of the “good” carb options. This might be pancakes at lunch, a sandwich at lunch, or pasta at dinner. And you can change the meal you emphasize each day. Then, the rest of your meals should consist of lean proteins (whether fish, meat, chicken, plant-based sources, or other), vegetables, fruit, and some fats like nuts, seeds, or olive oil.

This will provide daily flexibility so that you’re never too far on the restriction side but still build the good habits (more protein and vegetables, for example) that are the foundation of any successful diet plan.

The Best Diet Plan for…Nighttime Eaters

Yes, it’s true. Eating at night does not mean you will pack on pounds. And for some, it’s actually ideal.

Your job isn’t to eat on someone else’s schedule, it’s to eat by when you’re hungry. It’s something that all of our coaches preach to their clients. After all, many people wake up in the morning and say that they never feel hungry, but are craving food at night. And many others get up and feel famished, but don’t desire as much in the evening. Both “craving” cycles can be satisfied with completely different approaches.

If you’re a night time eater, here’s what you can do:

1) Don’t stress over breakfast. You don’t have to eat if you’re not hungry. Eating breakfast has no direct effect on weight loss, and a recent study showed that when a group of women who weren’t eating breakfast took up the morning meal, they simply gained weight (from the higher caloric intake). And you don’t have to worry about whether that’s somehow going to adversely affect your metabolism for the rest of the day. It doesn’t. Breakfast is a preference. It works for some but doesn’t work for others. 

2) Work on shifting your calories toward the nighttime. If do you wake up and want breakfast, you can still enjoy the meal, but cut the portion in half and leave the rest of those calories for your evening meal. You can do the same thing with lunch. Less in the middle of the day leaves you more room to dig in at night.

The bottom line? Don’t be afraid to eat at night. The timing of your eating matters less than the total amount you eat. If you’re eating a lot of food toward the end of the day, but not exceeding your targeted total for the day, then you’re doing fine.

The Best Diet Plan for…The Snacker

For years, the grazing method (eating 5-6 smaller meals or snacks) was all the rage because of theories about how it would boost your metabolism. Those theories turned out to be misleading but snacking and smaller meals still work. The key to effective snacking is making sure that you are in control of how much you eat (the size of “snacks” has nearly tripled in size in the last 20 years) and making sure that you are eating when you’re hungry, and not just because you feel like you need to sneak in another meal.

Some people snack because they are legitimately hungry and prefer to eat smaller portions spaced throughout the day. But other people fall victim to snacking triggers like frustration or boredom. So your first step is to examine what’s setting off your snack attacks.

If you’re a compulsive eater who’s more likely to chow down simply when you’re bored, one approach could be to steer clear of having a lot of pre-packed foods on hand. Peele recommends buying raw foods. This way, you’ll have to go out of your way to cook them if you want to indulge.

Meanwhile, if you’re someone who gets hungry often and does well with having several smaller meals throughout the day, then protein may be your friend. Research shows that snackers who switched to high-protein foods lost more body fat. Brian Murray — a head coach at Born Fitness — chalks it up to satiety.

“If you give someone a snack that’s more protein-dense then let them sit there for a little while, they’ll generally be fine with a smaller portion,” Murray says. “If you give someone a bag of chips, which can total in at 1,000 calories, it’s possible that they’re going to make their way through the whole thing.” You can make some high-protein snacks like PB&J Protein Snack Balls and have them ready when you need them.

The Best Diet Plan for…The Sugar-Lover

If you have a sweet tooth, you have several ways to help satisfy your needs (or break the habit, if you so choose). As you’ll see, they aren’t all mutually exclusive, so you could use elements of each.

Option #1: “Eliminate.” Peele gives her clients this rule—you can only eat sweets outside of the house. This means you can enjoy that slice of key lime pie with your friend, but you can’t buy a carton of ice cream and stash it in the fridge. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind—or at least, out of easy access.

But what if you’re not able to eliminate all of the sugars and sweets from your house? Perhaps you share your living environment, or you entertain a lot and have sweet snacks on hand as a result. If that’s you, consider…

Option #2: Reduce. Buy smaller-size portions of the packaged sweets you have on hand. The smaller size helps enforce portion control. “Think about a gallon of ice cream,” Murray says. “If you wanted to, you could get pretty far through it. But if you eat one 200-calorie chocolate bar, in the grand scheme of things that’s not really a big deal.”

Murray says this approach can also be helpful for people who get chocolate cravings, which can take on an almost addictive-like quality.

Option #3: is Replace. Can you swap your favorite guilty pleasure with something that hits on the same nodes in terms of flavor and texture? “This is why I love shakes and smoothies,” says Murray, a self-confessed former ice cream craver. But instead of turning to Ben & Jerry when a craving strikes, he whips up a protein shake with lots of ice. It feels ice-cream-esque, but with way fewer calories and more satiating protein. Or you can go with a long-time Born Fitness favorite: protein ice cream.

The Best Diet Plan for…The Busy Lifestyle

Let’s say you’re working two jobs, or you’re a mom who’s on the go from dawn to dusk. You don’t have time to cook once Monday morning rolls around. What you need is something healthy, that you can make relatively quickly, and then turn to over and over again throughout the week.

In this case, spending just a little bit of your weekend on meal prep can help set you up for success throughout the week. Pick one or two recipes that you cook once but can enjoy several times. “Eggs on-the-go,” which is basically a souffle of eggs and veggies, are an option you may like. And making them is easy. You simply chop up the ingredients, bake them in the oven, then store them in the fridge. Now you have a high-protein meal ready whenever you need it. We created a guide for simple meal prep, which you can follow here.

If meal prep isn’t your thing, you can strategically make bigger portions and turn every meal into 2 meals. When you make dinner at night, double down on the portion size. Before you even serve the food, take half, and then store it in your fridge. This becomes your lunch for the next day. And these meals don’t have to be complex. Think simple meals — like fajitas — where you grill or sauté some vegetables, add a source of protein, and you’re good to go.

You may also find food delivery services helpful, but they can be expensive.  

Whatever your struggle, when you build a diet to fit your life (rather than trying it the other way around), you’re in the driver’s seat on the road to positive change. That alone can make a huge difference. “Once you feel like you have control over the outcome—that it’s not just up to the whims of the diet gods—that’s when you’ll stop feeling stuck,” says Peele.

READ MORE: 

Want to Burn More Calories? Add This to Your Fat Loss Plan

Winning the War on Hunger: Practical Solutions to Overeating

Breakfast is Not the Most Important Meal of the Day

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post The Best Diet Plan Myth (And How to Find What Works For You) appeared first on Born Fitness.

Here’s how it works: if you’ve ever tried to drop more than a few pounds or really change the way you look, there comes a time when you have to make a choice: continue to believe in a process that is clearly not working, or look for better options for your goals.

You probably choose option B — correctly — but it leaves you vulnerable to the trapdoor. When you’re trying to lose weight fast, it’s easy to become frustrated by a lack of progress and go searching for alternative options that make sense. You inevitably stumble upon theories about inflammation, food allergies, not enough “good” fats, a lack of superfoods, how eating breakfast is the problem…or is it avoiding breakfast and fasting?

When you learn about theory of fat availability, it can change everything about how you understand fat loss.

The list goes on and on. You’re stuck in plateau mode, so just about any option starts to sound good and then you make a choice that still doesn’t lead to change. (This might explain your fexperiences with most diet books.)

The problem isn’t that you’re making changes, it’s that the adjustments and misleading solutions are overwhelming, confusing, and oftentimes inaccurate.

Most fat loss hype is just another empty promise that is more likely to leave you frustrated with your body rather than satisfied with your results. Instead of relying on scapegoats — like meal frequency, single categories of foods, or anything else that flies in the face of science — a more effective approach is rethinking why your previous attempts didn’t work.

Behind the “Lose Weight Fast” Solutions: Seeing is Not Believing

You’ve probably heard a lot of reasons why you gain weight or struggle to drop pounds, these include:

• You don’t eat enough meals in the day to help your metabolism
• You skip breakfast, which means you don’t “turn on” your metabolism to start the day
• You don’t do intermittent fasting, which means your hormones are messed up (Yes, I wrote a book on intermittent fasting; while it’s a good technique, my thoughts on how it benefits your body have changed)
• You eat too late at night and those calories are more likely to become fat
• You eat “starchy” carbs, which are transformed into sugar
• You eat white foods, such as white rice, which make you fat
• You eat gluten or non-organic food sources, which pollute your body

All of these are behavioral choices you can make…if they fit your lifestyle and feel sustainable. But don’t be fooled: none of these are reasons why you gain weight or can’t lose fat.

You can eat meals at night, enjoy gluten, and never fast a day in your life, and your body is still capable of changing.

You must learn to separate technique from causes, differentiate strategy from roadblock, and science from science fiction.

Instead of searching for quick answers for your “lose weight fast” goals, it’s more effective to ask why your current approach has failed to produce the results you want.

Here are four common weight loss mistakes and alternate solutions that can set you on the right path. None of these approaches are extreme or set unrealistic expectations. What they will do is help you understand why you haven’t seen changes in the past, and why this time — with a more strategic approach–your results can be different.

Weight Loss Question #1: What is Your Body Type?

No one likes to admit it, but genetics are an important part of the weight loss equation. They can influence what diets might work best for your body (many diet plans work, so don’t buy the hype that you must follow a certain plan), as well as how you metabolize food.

You probably have at least one friend who can eat ‘whatever they want’ and still stay thin. While exceptions exist, chances are your friend is taller than you, and this isn’t a coincidence.

Your metabolic rate is highly influenced by your lean body mass. That is, the amount of muscle on your body relative to your total body weight. And the taller you are, the more likely it is that you’ll have more lean mass. That’s because a tall person’s lean mass advantage isn’t just limited to their muscle.

Your internal organs—the real metabolic power plants of your body—are also dependent on your height. So the taller you are, the bigger your heart, lungs, liver, and every other organ that requires energy to function. And in order to keep those organs functioning, you need calories. That means those with bigger organs burn more—and can eat more without gaining weight.

In fact, your height can make a significant difference in how much you can eat every day. Consider a person who is 6 feet 4 inches tall. Compared to someone who is 5 foot 8 inches, the taller person could be burning as much as 400 calories more per day, and that’s just when you’re inactive. And the impact is only compounded during activity simply because of the size of their body.

It may not seem fair, but it’s true: The taller you are the more you can eat. What’s more, this impact is further heightened between sexes. Men’s bodies burn more calories than women, too.

When starting a nutrition or diet plan, don’t blindly follow a template that works for someone else. The “it works for them, it must work for me” is the exact reason why so many people fail in their attempts to lose weight. And the stubborn approach to stick with a program that isn’t making changes only enhances doubts about your ability to make the number on the scale shrink.

Remember, your meal frequency does not impact your metabolism. So if you eat 2,000 calories per day, it doesn’t matter if it’s spread across 3 or 6 meals; your calorie burn is the same, assuming that the food quality (proteins, fats, and carbs) is equal. Instead of following a general plan for meal frequency (for weight loss), track when you feel hungry during the day, and then build your eating plan around your schedule. This can help with overeating.

Not sure how much to eat? Start with the sample equation (below) and track your food intake for a week. (I use My Fitness Pal with my coaching clients.)

Protein: Eat 1 gram for every pound of your target body weight. If you want to weigh 180 pounds, you’ll eat 180 grams of protein. One gram of protein is about 4 calories, so 180 grams of protein is 720 calories.

Fat: Eat .3 to .5 grams for every pound of your target body weight. So if you did .5 (based on a preference of more fat-filled foods instead of carb-based foods) for a goal weight of 180 pounds, that’d be 90 grams. One 1 gram of fat has about 9 calories, so 90 grams is 810 calories from fat.

Carbs: Add your calories from protein and fat, and subtract that total from your allotted daily calories. Using the 180-pound example, that leaves you with 630 calories. One gram of carbohydrates is four calories (just like protein), so 630 calories divide by 4 would equal 158 grams of carbs.

NOTE: Remember, your diet should be personalized, so the exact amounts of carbs and fats — in particular — might need to be adjusted more or less aggressively, or changed once you reach a plateau.

Weight Loss Question #2: Are Your Being Too Patient?

The example above is a great starting point for almost anyone. But the big secret in weight loss is that one size does not fit all. And while the best nutrition plan is one that is sustainable, the doesn’t mean you can’t be aggressive with your plan. It all depends on your body and how much weight you want to lose.

Tell me if this story sounds familiar: You start a new diet and instantly lose weight. Maybe it’s 4 pounds the first week. And then a few more pounds the next week. But after that initial surge the weight loss slows down, and by the second month, your progress has come to halt. In some instances, you might have already regained the weight.

Naturally, you search for answers. The typical explanation: Your body has entered “starvation mode” or your metabolism has slowed down.

Both options seem reasonable, and you become convinced that you need a diet that’s even more extreme, or you convince yourself that fat loss pills are necessary for an extra boost.

Those answers are not what you need. Save your money.

But, when nothing works you become convinced that the problem is you.

However, slowed fat loss is natural and something that happens to everyone. You see, body fat is just stored energy. When you diet you create a deficit between the calories you eat and the amount you burn in a day.

That deficit is ‘made up’ by the calories stored in your body fat. This is known as the “theory of fat availability.”

As you become leaner, there is less fat available as an energy source – meaning you can lose lots of fat at the beginning of a diet, but less and less as you become leaner.

In other words, your body has a hard time keeping up with your calorie deficit as you continue to lose body fat. You end up feeling grumpy, tired, lethargic, and even risk losing your hard earned muscle.

Part of avoiding this frustrated is to adjust your expectations. The “how to lose 20 pounds  in 4 weeks” is frustrating because no one can blindly make that guarantee. (I’ve discussed these “lose weight fast” lies in the past.) Can quick weight loss happen? Of course. But it all depends on your body, your goals, your activity levels, your genetics, and a host of other factors. So before you start any plan, hit reset on your expectations.

That said, when weight loss stalls, most people don’t challenge the typical approach to weight loss, or at least reconsider what might work best. Instead of looking at how much weight they need to lose (and thus ignore the theory of fat availability), they start with a small calorie deficit.

As time progresses, they become more extreme in their efforts and increase the strain on their body. If you need to lose a lot of weight, oftentimes this can be the opposite of what you should be doing.

Based on the theory of fat availability, you should start off going hard, and try to drop as much weight as safely as possible in the first few weeks and then ease up. This does not mean taking extreme measures that aren’t sustainable, such as removing all foods or carbs. 

Diets that drop to dangerously low levels of calories — such as plans that go below 1,000 calories — are not aggressive, they are dangerous.

But this does mean you can experiment with accelerating the process, and then making it easier over time.

With each week reduce your expectations a little bit. Think of this as easing your way into your new body as opposed to starving yourself into it.

As a rule of thumb, you should match the size of your calorie deficit (calories you eat minus calories you burn) to the amount of body fat you have. The more fat on your body, the larger the deficit you can handle.

If you are already lean and are trying to become even more defined, then your best bet is to go with a smaller deficit for a greater amount of time. It takes a little longer, but you won’t be faced with the uncomfortable lethargy or muscle loss.

Weight Loss Question #3: Is Your Post-Workout Nutrition Strategy Really Working?

Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a massive upswing in the supplement industry. Suddenly, the chalky protein powders and concrete tasting bars were more palatable, and for some even enjoyable. As the supplement industry grew to a multi-billion dollar business, a-not-so-coincidental emphasis on post-workout nutrition began to take hold of nutrition research and influence meal timing habits.

While pre- and post-workout nutrition is important, there was an overreaction to its importance on weight loss. In fact, if your primary goal is to lose weight fast, you could be undoing some of the fat-scorching benefits of your workout if you eat too many calories (and carbs) after you finish your sweat session.

The reason for eating after your workout goes like this: After your finish training, you need to replenish the glycogen (stored carbohydrates) that you burned during exercise. But here’s a truth few people ever mention:

1. Most weight workouts do not deplete the glycogen in your muscles, so there isn’t an urgency to replenish.
2. More importantly to your goal to lose weight fast: the glycogen in your muscles will replenish themselves over the next couple of days, and this slow approach will help you lose body fat.

If you stuff yourself with massive amounts of carbs and proteins after your workout, you can completely erase the fat-burning environment you created in the first place. That’s because the calorie deficit you created by exercising would be eliminated.

If you’re working out with any consistency then technically every meal you eat is both pre and post workout (because metabolic effects of a single workout can last up to 48 hours).

Every meal is important to your weight loss and muscle building goals, so there is no need to over-emphasize the meal after your workout.

If you are leaner, there is an exception to the rule. At low levels of body fat (visible six-pack), post-workout nutrition becomes more important, and the timing becomes emphasized more.

Weight Loss Question #4: Do You Put Too Much Faith in Weight Loss Calculators?

Counting calories is a great way to lose weight—with one small exception: Your calorie goal is nothing more than a guesstimate. And that has nothing with the choice of calculator you use or the foods you eat. The fact is many foods are mislabeled and your body works on a unique set of variables. (For instance, hormones like insulin can impact how you process certain foods.) So while using calorie calculators and applications may seem like a foolproof plan, you need to adjust how you eat based on your results.

Consider the following example, using a common weight loss caloric formula:

Let’s say calculate your BMR (daily calories you burn) as 1720 calories. As part of the equation, you then multiply that number by 1.3 to get the exact number of calories you burn in a day (2,236). Then, you subtract 500 calories to get 1736, or the “exact” number of calories you need to eat to lose a pound of fat in one week.

If you were to spend the next 7 days tracking every single calorie you put in your mouth, one of two things could happen: You’ll either lose the weight or you won’t. Makes sense, right?

So what happens when you don’t drop the pounds? For most people, you might blame your metabolism, your workout, or even the foods you eat (you knew those apples weren’t organic!)

But the problem most likely has nothing to do with any of those factors. The metabolic calculators and food labels are not 100 percent accurate.

The calculators are great for helping you track what you eat, make adjustments, and learn portion sizes. But they cannot accurately measure your metabolism. The provide a best guess at where to start estimating your metabolic rate, but it’s just a guess, and you have to test it out for yourself to truly determine how many calories you burn in a day.

More importantly, the calculators can’t be held accountable for bad food labeling. If you were to visit your local health food store and buy 3 protein bars and weigh them, you might be shocked to determine that many are inaccurate.

Calculators that tell you how many calories you burn while exercising are also fuzzy guesses and notorious for over estimating, some exercise machines can overestimate the calories burned by up to 30 percent. Again, this could completely sabotage your weight loss efforts if you assume you burned 500 calories during your daily workout when in reality you only burned 300.

This might frustrate you (and it shouldn’t), but there is no perfect math for the human body, especially when it comes to losing weight. Using tools can be very helpful, and it’s something next necessary for most people. But if you don’t lose weight, it’s not because the tool is broken.

Use these tools as a way to determine a starting point. From there, the key is finding what working for you, and adjusting until you find out what you need to eat and how much you need to exercise to produce results.

Personalize Your Fitness Plan

Want to work one-on-one with a coach to cater a workout plan to your goals, your lifestyle, and your schedule? Now you can. Click here to learn more about Born Fitness online coaching

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post The Deception of “Lose Weight Fast” Plans appeared first on Born Fitness.

That’s what’s delivered for free through The Born Fitness Insider, a weekly digital newsletter where experts help you make sense of the nonsense .

This is just a sample of what’s typically sent, where Born Fitness takes an inside look at Tom Brady and Giselle Bündchen’s diet, based on this article from The Boston Globe.

Framing all carbohydrates – essentially everything from lentils, apples, and broccoli to muffins, Swedish Fish, and soda – as unhealthy is nutritionally inaccurate.

We all know that Tom Brady is an incredible quarterback and Giselle is beautiful, but that doesn’t mean you should follow their nutrition plan. Despite their star power, are their chef’s recommendations worth your time?

To answer that question, I reviewed his advice with nutritionist Andy Bellatti, MS, RD.

So just what are Tom and Giselle doing right and wrong? Read on to find out how Bellatti translates the dietary suggestions into advice you can use and mistakes you can avoid.

The Tom Brady Diet: An Inside Look

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady made nutrition headlines in 2015 over his harsh criticism of Frosted Flakes and Coca-Cola. But Tom is obviously not a nutritionist, so his opinions come from somewhere. The main source: his personal chef, Allen Campbell. The Boston Globe interviewed Allen Campbell about the power couple’s dietary habits.

As a dietitian, these sorts of articles are often a mixed bag. On the one hand, the celebrity packaging takes the message of healthful eating to a wide audience that can otherwise be difficult to reach. Conversely, there is always a high risk of spotting nutritional inaccuracies and myths that only further confuse the general public.

The Good: Finding the Magic Ratio

Campbell has a plant-based, whole-food perspective, and roughly 80 percent of the food he prepares for Tom and Gisele is plant-based. That’s terrific.

Current health statistics — heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S., 1 in 3 American adults has high blood pressure, and 50 percent of Americans have Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes — point to a nation in the grips of a nutritional deficit disorder.

Eating more whole, plant-based foods and fewer highly processed foods (aka “junk food”) are two of the best things the average American can do to improve his or her health. Campbell frequently prepares nutrient-rich brown rice, quinoa, millet, and beans for the superstar couple. Can’t argue with any of those recommendations.

Campbell also mentions an effort to procure sustainable and local food as much as possible, which is commendable. Unfortunately, this is where the good stops and the bad begins.

Red Flag #1: Organic is Not the Only Way

“If it’s not organic, I don’t use it.”

Organic agriculture has many environmental benefits (i.e.: reduction of agricultural pollutants and the preservation of on-farm biodiversity), but from a nutritional standpoint, a conventional avocado offers the same heart-healthy fats found in an organic avocado, and both conventional and organic oranges are excellent sources of vitamin C.

Or put more clearly: both of those conventional produce choices will always trump an organic cookie.

[prompted-search initial-state=”open” /]

Red Flag #2: The Acid/Alkaline Myth

“If you just eat sugar and carbs—which a lot of people do—your body is so acidic, and that causes disease.” 

Framing all carbohydrates – essentially everything from lentils, apples, and broccoli to muffins, Swedish Fish, and soda – as unhealthy is nutritionally inaccurate. And it’s enough to confuse you into not knowing what’s OK to eat.

This statement also supports the acid-alkaline myth, a thoroughly debunked theory, which suggests that certain foods (i.e.: refined starches, coffee, and white sugar), are “acid-forming”, while others (i.e.: almonds, spinach, and grapefruit) are “alkaline-forming”.

The theory works like this: the more alkaline-forming foods you eat, the more alkaline your blood, and the more alkaline your blood, the lower your risk of developing a host of chronic diseases.

This is simply not true and here’s why. Your blood pH is tightly regulated so it stays between 7.35 and 7.45, which is slightly alkaline (1 is acidic, 7 is neutral, and 14 is alkaline).

No food can lower or raise blood pH. (Let that sink in as the first sign that any acid/alkaline diet suggestions are simply scare tactics based on bad science.)

Furthermore, a blood pH below 7.35 is known as metabolic acidosis, while alkalosis refers to a blood pH above 7.45. Either case is cause for serious concern and requires medical attention.

Copious amounts of added sugars and refined starches are problematic not because they are “acid-forming,” but because they are minimally nutritious, raise biomarkers for heart disease, and can wreak havoc on our blood sugar levels.

Red Flag #3: “No white sugar.”

Americans’ current intake of added sugars — that is, sugar added to foods during processing and preparation — is cause for concern. An ever-growing body of research has linked higher amounts of added sugar to increased risks of type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.

According to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the average adult man in the United States consumes 21 teaspoons a day; the average woman: 15 teaspoons.

These figures far exceed the American Heart Association’s recommendation of no more than 36 grams (9 teaspoons) for men, and 24 grams (6 teaspoons) for women per day, and the World Health Organization’s recommendation to cap added sugar intake at 10 percent of calories for adults (for a 2,000-calorie diet, that equates to 12 teaspoons per day). It’s worth noting, too, that WHO states a further reduction to five percent of total calories is suggested for additional health benefits.

Do you probably need to eat less sugar? Sure. But does white sugar need to be demonized as the source of all health problems? Not at all.

Sugar is sugar is sugar. Two tablespoons of agave nectar, maple syrup, or coconut nectar are no healthier than two tablespoons of white sugar. All forms of added sugar should be equally limited, and no form of added sugar should ever be framed as ‘healthier’ because your body will process it the same way no matter what healthy spin you try to create.

Red Flag #4: Cooking Oils and Salt

“I’ll use raw olive oil, but I never cook with olive oil. I only cook with coconut oil. I use Himalayan pink salt as the sodium. I never use iodized salt.”

This is a perfect example of someone taking a food most people believe is healthy—olive oil—and creating unnecessary confusion and fear.

Olive oil is actually quite heat stable due to its high monounsaturated fat content. Extra virgin olive oil has been shown to retain its nutritional properties up to 350 degrees Fahrenheit, and its smoke point is anywhere between 374 and 400 degrees Fahrenheit (when cooking oil surpasses its smoke point, free radicals are formed).

Oils high in omega-3 fatty acids, such as flax, walnut, and hempseed oil are best used in salad dressings or raw dips, as the fats are fragile and have significantly lower smoke points.

As far as salt goes, while Himalayan pink salt gets its hue from its mineral content, you would need multiple heaping tablespoons – surpassing daily sodium recommendations by tenfold – to add a substantial amount of minerals to your diet. From a culinary standpoint, different salts can provide different properties, but nutritionally all are equal.

Red Flag #5: Are Nightshades Dangerous?

“[Tom] doesn’t eat nightshades, because they’re not anti-inflammatory. So no tomatoes, peppers, mushrooms, or eggplants. Tomatoes trickle in every now and then, but just maybe once a month. I’m very cautious about tomatoes. They cause inflammation.”

It is a shame that nightshade vegetables are still relegated by some to the “do not eat” pile based on inaccurate information. Nightshade vegetables – which include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and potatoes; mushrooms are not nightshades – offer a plethora of vitamins, minerals, and anti-inflammatory compounds.

There is no scientific evidence that tomatoes cause inflammation, and, barring issues with heartburn, no real reason to avoid them. In fact, men should consume tomatoes – especially cooked ones – frequently, as they are an excellent source of lycopene, an antioxidant that may help protect against the development of prostate cancer (you also find lycopene in watermelon and red peppers, but it is abundant in cooked tomatoes).

Some eschew nightshades due to the presence of compounds known as saponins, which are also found in beans, legumes, garlic, asparagus, matcha tea, and oats. Although some dietary circles blame saponins for some health issues — especially “leaky gut”, which is not yet a recognized diagnosis due to an absence of scientific evidence — animal studies have found anti-inflammatory properties as well as an ability to bind cholesterol.

The good takeaways from this piece? Eat more plants, eat more real food, and get a be your own personal chef.

READ MORE

Do Carbs Actually Make You Fat? 

Breakfast is Not the Most Important Meal of the Day

Why Do Football Players Take Deer Antler Velvet? Does it Build Muscle?

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post FLAWED: The Tom Brady and Giselle Bündchen Diet Plan appeared first on Born Fitness.

I’m pretty worried right now. Every time I want to enjoy eating out, being social, or even the holidays, all the diet plans I try just stress me out. How do I make this work without losing my mind?

The question was fair but frustrating, and only because he was one of 100 people to ask almost the same question.

I could only wonder and regret, “How the did we get to this point?”

This “point” is a place where the most commonly held belief is that fitness and nutrition are black and white. “Healthy eating” and most “diet plans” are experienced as an overwhelming and depressing shade of stressful perfection, oftentimes created by popular diet books. Ask most people, and they believe the most effective diet and training plan consists of two primary concepts:

1. You can’t indulge and still look great
2. You must train or exercise all the time to be fit, look great, and be healthy.

The healthiest diet plans and most effective nutrition strategies focus are not about superfoods, scapegoats, or supplements. Rather, if there’s one reality that we see in research (from Atkins to The Zone), consistency, sustainability, and patience are the foundations of a good plan and prevent diet failure. And when done right, any diet and fitness plan should be built to withstand desserts, days off, and daiquiris. (Yeah, I said daiquiris. I guess “drinks” would have been a little manlier.)

This applies year-round, but it is especially important during the holiday season where many people that have worked hard throughout the year are worried about blowing it all in a couple of weeks.

Not. Going. To. Happen.

The same can be said for people that weren’t so healthy throughout the year. You can start the process of undoing your struggles by shifting your mindset towards something new; an approach that might just knock over the first domino to better health and put an end to the yearly struggle.

Hit Refresh: What Healthy Diet Plans Should Look Like

Let’s take a step back from goals like fat loss, healthy eating, and body transformation. Start by ditching whatever inflexible mindset you have about what it takes to look and feel good. That doesn’t mean you should say, “screw it” and not worry about your behaviors and actions.

But it does mean you should understand the context of what it means to be healthy, and how seemingly good behaviors can become obsessive and dangerous, and most importantly deceive you into believing you must follow certain “extreme” measures to be fit.

Before you start any plan, here’s a checklist that matters more than any weight-loss promise:

Healthy is enjoying your life.
Healthy is finding the right situations to eat the foods you love.
Healthy is not worrying if you miss a day you planned to exercise, especially if it’s because you’re doing something better with your time.

Born Fitness, was built on the principle of balance, honesty, and keeping it real so you don’t waste your time or risk your health in an attempt to become better. I don’t care if you’re a professional bodybuilder or a recreational couch surfer — we all need balance.

How will I eat during the holidays or a night out? However I please. And I recommend you try something similar.

Your goal is to separate what it takes to change your body from what sounds helpful but isn’t needed. It can be as simple as a two-step filter:

1. Add the good
2. Remove the bad, and that includes the rigidity of diets you can’t stand (you hear me, diets that say you can’t eat at night) and workouts that aren’t fun.

Do your best to train hard, passionately, and relentlessly. But if you miss days don’t sweat it.

Your job is to prioritize your health but not be perfect with it, especially during the holidays. The people you spend time with and the memories you make count more than any one workout.

That’s not an excuse or a lack of commitment to your fitness. Anyone who suggests that is only spreading the venom of their own insecurities and fears. If they choose to stay strict it can be perfectly healthy… if it’s their choice. But that doesn’t mean it has to be yours.

Instead, focus a mindset that helps you establish balance and peace of mind. Ultimately, it will probably lead to more consistency, better workouts, and improved diet compliance. That’s what happens when you have freedom and don’t need to stress the small things.

If you need a place to start, find an area that’s tough for you — such as eating carbs — and follow a more realistic approach.

Your workouts and eating habits should be a priority, but not always the top priority. Use your judgment about what’s important and enjoy.

Your body wouldn’t have it any other way.

Adam Bornstein

Adam Bornstein is a New York Times bestselling author and the author of You Can’t Screw This Up. He is the founder of Born Fitness, and the co-founder of Arnold’s Pump Club (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Pen Name Consulting. An award-winning writer and editor, Bornstein was previously the Chief Nutrition Officer for Ladder, the Fitness and Nutrition editor for Men’s Health, Editorial Director at LIVESTRONG.com, and a columnist for SHAPE, Men’s Fitness, and Muscle & Fitness. He’s also a nutrition and fitness advisor for LeBron James, Cindy Crawford, Lindsey Vonn, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. According to The Huffington Post, Bornstein is “one of the most inspiring sources in all of health and fitness.” His work has been featured in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, Fast Company, ESPN, and GQ, and he’s appeared on Good Morning America, The Today Show, and E! News.

The post Why 99% of Diet Plans Really Fail (Hint: It’s Not Dessert) appeared first on Born Fitness.