This is a blog post by Rowville personal trainer, Grant Lofthouse
And if you would like to watch this video on YouTube you can do so here: Rowville Personal Trainer Reveals Perfect Nutrition in 6 Weeks
There are a lot of diet plans and courses out there that tell you what to do to get great results.
So you go to the grocery store, buy all the food from the shopping list and go home to prepare your food for the week — just like what the plan told you to do.
Monday comes…
Everything runs smoothly, you didn’t ‘slip up’ and managed to follow the plan to a tee.
Same goes for Tuesday. Things are going well.
Wednesday hits and the chicken and broccoli just doesn’t hit the taste buds like it did on Monday.
Thursday hits and you notice you start to crave that lil sugary hit that you promised to give up last week.
Things slowly start to go down hill coming into the weekend, a friend has offered you a slice of pizza (that wasn’t apart of the plan)…
1 turns to 2. 2 to 3. and before you know it you’ve even the whole damn pie!
You feel like a failure, so you decide to blow out the rest of the weekend and start fresh on Monday.
Has ever happened to you?
It definitely has to me.
And it definitely happened to a new client of mine last week.
In fact, the story I just told you above was actually her story.
So why does this happen? Why do we start our ‘new’ diet strong in the week but fall off the wagon on the weekend?
It’s because the diet plan is too much, too consuming, too overwhelming, and it’s too soon.
You are probably just not ready for a ‘perfect diet’ yet.
Think about when you decided to start exercising again.
You probably started out with just a couple sessions per week.
Then after a couple of weeks you went to 3 times per week, then every second day.
You continued along this path until maybe you got to training every day — but it took you 2–3 months to get there.
However, when it comes to our diet we try and be ‘perfect’ every day in the beginning.
If you don’t do it with your fitness regime when you started, why should we do it with our diet?
Here’s what I suggest you do instead:
Week 1 — pick 1 day in the week where you are going to have what we will call a ‘best nutrition day.’
You get everything right according to your plan.
And as for the rest of the week (the other 6 remaining days) you can do whatever you want when it comes to food.
From a results point of view is this great? No, probably not.
However, long-term is this going to work? Yes, and you will see why in a second…
Week 2 — pick 2 non consecutive days in the week for your ‘best nutrition days.’
Week 3 — pick 3 non consecutive days.
If we continue along this fashion, here is what we get…
By week 4, you be doing 4 ‘best nutrition days’ with 3 days off.
In week 5 you will be at 5/2.
Week 6 will be 6/1.
And I would say, that once you have reached week 6, you will continue with that momentum of having 6 great days, and 1 off day — consider that your cheat day.
I have found that this has been the best way to build up to a nutrition program so you can make it apart of your lifestyle, remain consistent and reap the benefits.
So there you have it. That’s how you start a diet plan and stick to it.