Written by Lyle McDonald from
Lyle McDonald - Bodyrecomposition
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How Dieters Fail Diets
Note: The following is the entirety of Chapter 5 from
A Guide to Flexible Dieting.
In this chapter, I want to discuss some two of the primary ways that dieters tend to sabotage their own efforts on a
diet, that is the way that dieters fail diets. These two ways are being too absolute and expecting perfection and by thinking only in the short-term.
And before you complain about how bad it is form wise to write a short introductory paragraph instead of just going straight into the text, I’ll defend my style choice by explaining that I don’t like starting a chapter with a bold-faced sub-category. So there.
Too Absolute/Expecting Perfection
Perhaps the single biggest reason I have found for dieters failing in their
diet effects is that many dieters try to be far too absolute in their approach to the
diet something I alluded to in the foreword. When these people are on their
diet they are ON THE
DIET(!!!). Which is altogether fine as long as they stay on the
diet. The problem is that any slip, no matter how small, is taken as complete and utter failure. The
diet is abandoned and the post-
diet food binge begins. As I’ve said repatedly, this tends to puts the
fat (and frequently a little extra) back on faster than before.
We have all either known (or been) the following person: one cookie eaten in a moment of weakness or distraction, the guilt sets in, and the rest of the bag is GONE (perhaps inhaled is the proper word). Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, right? Psychologists refer to such individuals as rigid dieters, they see the world in a rather extreme right or wrong approach, either they are on their
diet, and 100% perfection is expected, or they are off their
diet, shovelling crap in as fast as it will go. I’m quite sure this type of attitude is not limited to
dieting, probably any behavior you care to name finds people at one extreme or the other.
As a side note, you can oftentimes see the same attitude with people starting an exercise program. The first few weeks go great, workouts are going well, then a single workout is missed. The person figures that any benefits are lost because of missing that one workout and they never go back to the
gym.
Now, I could probably go on for pages about this one topic but I’ll spare you the verbiage. My main point out that there are times (most of them) when obsessive dedication or the expectation of perfection becomes a very real source of failure. Sure, if it drives you towards better and better results, such an attitude will work. But only until you finally slip. Note that I said ‘until you slip’ not ‘if you slip’. In most cases, it’s a matter of when, not if you’re going to break your
diet. There are exceptions, some of which I’ll mention below, but for the majority of dieters, I would say that expecting perfection is pretty much expecting failure.
If you take the attitude that anything less than absolute perfection is a failure, you’re pretty much doomed from the start. Now, there are some exceptions, places where results have to obtained in a very short time frame and you can’t really accept mistakes. Athletes who have a short time to get to a certain level of bodyfat or muscle mass, for whom victory or defeat may hinge on their ability to suffer for long enough are one. I mentioned some others in my last booklet, individuals who have to accomplish some drastic
goal in a very short period of time; even there I included some deliberate breaks for both psychological and physiological reasons. But in the grand majority of cases, this type of obsessive, no-exceptions attitude tends to cause more problems that it solves.
Keeping with this idea, psychologists frequently talk about something called the 80/20 principle which says that ‘If you’re doing what you’re supposed to do 80% of the time, the othe 20% doesn’t matter’. While there are certainly exceptions (try avoiding crack or heroin for 80% of the time), it certainly applies to
dieting and exercise under the grand majority of conditions.
If the changes you’ve made to your
diet and exercise program stay solid for 80% of the time, the other 20% is no big deal. Not unless you make it one. And that’s really the issue, that 20% problem only becomes one if the dieter decides (either consciously or unconciously) to make it a problem. Once again, the exception is for those folks under strict time frames, who don’t have the option to screw up. For everyone else, seeking perfection means seeking failure.
Focusing Only on the Short-Term
The second primary way that dieters fail diets is focusing only on the short-term and this applies in a couple of different ways. The first is a reality issue. Ignoring diets promising quick easy
weight loss (my Rapid
Fat Loss Handbook caused rapid
weight loss, a great deal of which was water, but it sure isn’t an easy
diet), about the best you can usually do with true
fat loss is somewhere between 1.5-3 lbs/week (heavier individuals can lose more).
Sure you can drop a lot more total weight if you factor in water weight and other contributors but true
fat loss typically peaks at about that rate (some lighter women may have trouble even losing one
pound of
fat per week)
For the sake of example, let’s say 2 lbs/week can be reasonably expected for a fatter individual. For someone with a large amount of
fat to lose, 50 or 100
pounds, this may mean one-half to a full year of
dieting. Possibly more since it’s rare to see perfectly linear
fat loss without stalls or plateaus.
Consider the reality of that, you may have to alter eating and exercise habits for nearly a year just to reach your
goal. Do you really expect to be hungry and deprived for that entire period? I thought not. If you have a lot of weight/fat to lose, you need to start thinking in thte long-term, you will need to make changes to
diet or activity (or both) and maintain them in the long-term.[/quote
CONTINUED BELOW! 
Read & re-Read 
Linear Mode
