Diet and Exercise Myth #14: You must be on this particular diet to lose weight

One of the defining characteristics of most trendy diets is that they’re essentially a collection of rules about eating.

Things you MUST do, and things you MUST NOT do.

But life isn’t that simple. And when you think about it, if the rules of, say, the Paleo diet were the only rules that worked, then Intermittent Fasting wouldn’t work. And if the rules of the carnivore diet were the correct rules, then a vegetarian diet wouldn’t work. 

In reality, of course, there are ALL SORTS of eating strategies that different people have had huge success with.

The sort of mindset that’s promoted by restrictive diets is a step towards orthorexia. Orthorexia is a medical condition characterised by an obsession with eating foods that are ‘good’, and the systematic avoidance of foods that are ‘bad’.

Good and bad. Right and wrong.

That’s no basis for a healthy relationship with food! And it’s hardly conducive to enjoying your life, or consistency and sticking with your eating strategy over the long run.

Thankfully it’s a lot easier and more fun than that to look good, feel great, and get the body you’ve always wanted. There are just a couple of fundamental principles that need to be understood. If you can get yourself on the right side of these, most of the time, then you’ll get to where you want to go.

Those principles are (1) energy balance, (2) macronutrient balance, and (3) resistance training – in that order of importance.

But within those broad guard rails, there is practically unlimited variation and personalisation that you can adopt. And to be honest, you don’t even need to be within those guard rails 100% of the time. Just being close to the mark, most of the time, is more than enough to start seeing real benefits.

So please don’t feel like you need to learn all the rules and do’s and don’ts of a restrictive diet.

Instead, make friends with your food. And with yourself!  You can easily manipulate your diet and exercise so that they’re tools that help you, rather than rules that confine you.