Why your next diet will fail
When it comes to weight-loss, it is an undisputed fact that nutrition plays a major role (as much as 70-80%) in your ability to achieve your desired weight. Even if you exercise regularly, there is no way you will be able to make up for the shortcomings in your diet with some additional workouts. As the saying goes:
“You cannot out-train a bad diet”.
While exercise is an essential part of a successful weight-loss plan due to its numerous benefits, your diet (eating habit) is the primary driver of weight-reduction.
When you think of your habitual eating habits, you must consider EVERYTHING that you consume. This includes your breakfast, lunch, dinner, any snacks you take in between meals, nibbles you consume (perhaps without realising) and any beverages you consume that contain calories. These can be soft drinks, juices, teas, coffees (do they contain sugar?), wine, spirits etc. They all collectively contribute to your energy intake, and a potential calorie surplus, which will result in additional fat storage.
People often seem to forget these details, but the devil lies in the detail. We’ve heard the phrase “My diet is very healthy, I just nibble too much in the evening” countless times. If you’re nibbling too much in the evening, and that is the source of your weight-gain, then your diet is not that healthy after all, and your nibbling issue is the first issue you need to tackle.
Don’t diet – change your routine
It only makes sense to embark on a weight-loss programme if you can expect the weight you’ve lost to stay off in the long run, right?
Unfortunately that’s rarely the case in people who ‘go on a diet’, because all they do is temporarily deviate from their flawed way of eating, which made them gain weight in the first place. Once the excitement of dieting wears off, and some distractions come along, such as work problems, family problems or stress, they soon return to their old, flawed eating habits, because these have been ingrained for so long. They revert back to their default way of doing things.
No diet will solve this problem. Only behaviour change will. If you don’t reprogram your brain and create a new way of doing things, a new habitual routine that runs on auto-pilot, weight-loss won’t last.
The problem is, creating new habits doesn’t happen overnight. It requires focus, some forward planning and repetition, repetition and more repetition.
Therefore, if you want long-lasting weight-loss, you have to be prepared to invest time and energy in re-wiring your brain. Your focus needs to be less on “how much weight did I lose today” , and more on “did I repeat my new daily habits today?” We call this focussing on the process, and not on the outcome. After all, you have full control over what you eat and how much you eat, but you do not have control over how much the weighing scales are going to move. Not all people lose weight at the same rate, and there are many factors that influence your daily weight, such as hormonal cycles or water retention. So your weight can be up on one day, and down on the next. You do, however, have control over your meals, your snacks, and your exercise, so that’s what you have to focus on!
Our behaviour change programme
Are you ready to make changes to your daily routine, for the long haul?
Here’s how we do it:
- During our initial meeting we’ll do a review of your current lifestyle, daily schedule, eating habits and challenges. We’ll highlight the problems, and pick the worst offenders. We’ll create an action plan to tackle the worst 1-2
- Change tasks are subtle – you cannot focus on many tasks at the same time, and you should be able to follow them (almost) every day!
- You will have follow-up sessions every 2 weeks to review your performance on your action plan, and if you cannot cope with them, we’ll simplify them until you can.
- Our process is to assess your condition, action your problem, reassess effectiveness and modify the action plan if necessary. This process loop is widely used in science, research and business. It can be applied to behaviour change too.
- Since everyone has unique challenges and problems, the action plan may differ from one person to the next, but the fundamental principles that it is built on always remain the same.
- Our programme will run for at least 3 months, but we do have 12-month programmes as well, which we recommend if you have more than 15kg to lose.
Don’t make the mistake of wanting record weight-loss NOW. It won’t last. Take the time to adopt new lifestyle habits, and enjoy the hard-earned weight-loss long term.
Packages
You can run our behaviour change programme in combination with a personal training programme, or you can do it on its own.
Ready to make the change?
Call us on 27 877 445 / 99 877 445 to fix an appointment for a free consultation or click the link below to book it online.
If you live abroad or cannot personally attend our review appointments, and would like to follow the programme entirely online, please contact us for special pricing and arrangements.
