Flexibility, balance, and consistency are the keys to long term success. There are all sorts of plans, diets, and fads that one could follow, most of which end up a crash style short term run and you end up right where you started. If you are not progressing over time, you are regressing. I am very against following a strict diet, unless short term for a specific sport. Anyone who wants to lose weight doesn’t want to just lose weight for a month or two, the goal is to have that weight be off for forever. So if we think about this logically, we want an eating plan that we can stick with forever. Right? So why then do so many do the exact opposite?

Healthy eating habits are so important for so many reasons. Physically, if you are not eating well balanced meals, you are not likely getting the proper nutrition your body needs. If your calories are too low coupled with low levels of protein, you can easily fall into a state of catabolism, where you are breaking down your skeletal muscle for amino acids. When this happens not only are you already going to be hungry from literally starving yourself, but you are slowing your metabolism also, which means burning less fat. All of this is obviously the exact opposite of what we want. You may also start to see your weight go up. This is often referred to as ‘starvation mode’,  where physiologically everything is working against you and you are not going to see results.

There is a big psychological impact that you may not realize you are having on yourself. Many people stay too strict during the week, with their eyes on a ‘cheat day’. This is something that is generally not conducive. Again, if you feel as though you have to kill yourself all week, how sustainable is this approach in the long run? Then, more often than not, this splurge and negate the entire week any way. Please see the graphic below. This really breaks it down simple to understand numbers. I would be willing to bet that this yo-yo diet approach is a main reason why so many people have a hard time dropping body fat.

Yo-yo dieting is when a person follows a diet for a short period of time, loses some weight, then stops and gains all, or sometimes even more fat back that what they lost. As I mentioned above, following a plan that is not sustainable is setting yourself up for failure. How do you think you are going to feel after ‘dieting’  and depriving yourself food, exercising your butt off, then binging yourself back to where you started? Simply put, it is calories in versus calories out. If at the end of the week you have expended more calories than you consumed, you will have lost weight. If you did not burn more than you consumed, then you will remain the same, or possible gain weight. Plain and simple.

This is why 95 Nutrition has such a high success rate. You are eating calorie controlled meals that taste amazing. After eating a Black-n-Bleu burger, or our European Spinach and Feta Pasta, you are going to be satisfied. You are definitely not depriving yourself of nutrition, or flavor. If you stick to our meal plan and stay in a deficit there is room for you to enjoy a guilt free meal once in a while. Not a ‘cheat day’, perhaps a meal out with the family, have that slice of pizza or enjoy a cocktail. If you are putting in the hard work and consistency the other 95% of the time, you are leaving room to enjoy times like these, and you will not set yourself back either.

- Paul Emmick
Healthy Lifestyle Coach