What is a Good “Diet”?

These days everyone’s an expert. 

Your over/underweight friend, your mum who’s been to a slimming club, your work colleagues, the magazine you read… But what they’re telling you is often contradictory and conflicting.

The truth is there’s no one, perfect diet that works for everyone. LOTS of these things will work… for some people.

They key things to embrace are not the differences, but the common ground between all successful “Diets”.

For weight loss, yes, you will need to eat less calories than you burn (but that doesn’t necessarily mean eat less!)

All successful, healthy diets (you can have a successful unhealthy diet, but the results are short-term and you’ll feel terrible doing them – think “juice detox”, or powdered meal replacements!!) have a few things in common...

A good diet will address energy balance (calories in vs calories out) without a drastic reduction in calories, but through good nutrition and switching from high-calorie/low nutrient foods, to low-calorie/high nutrient foods. By making this switch you may be surprised at just how much you can eat and remain within your calorie goal, whilst also getting lots of nutrition from what you're eating.

It will look at health, nutrition, hydration, body composition (body fat % vs. lean/fat-free mass) and performance, not just weight.

The healthy diet will not be set, but flexible and constantly changing to meet your needs. This relies on you monitoring your progress and making appropriate adjustments to suit. If weight loss is slow, you’ll need to alter the diet in some way; if you lose weight, but your body fat % increases, you’ll need to immediately re-evaluate and make the necessary changes to make sure you’re losing fat and not muscle. A mistake many calorie-cutting diets make by dropping calories too low.

The point is – you can’t follow an “exact” plan permanently; the diet will change as your body does, and you’ll need to stay on top of this. That’s why your skinny friend can eat junk and not gain weight and you just need to look at a cake… It’s because their dietary requirements are DIFFERENT to yours, and in a year’s time, so will yours be!

The diet needs to be sustainable, not something that ends when you lose x-lbs, or go on holiday; not something that you suffer through for 3 weeks, and then revert to your old ways. You don’t “Go on a diet”, you change your eating habits.

And finally, the “Diet” will look outside of just food! Exercise is a crucial part of the energy balance equation, and if you want to burn more calories than you eat, this should be your first port of call before you start reducing food intake and restricting your nutrient intake. 

The bonus of doing it this way (as long as you don't overtrain) is that you may not even need to restrict your diet or eat less- if you burn more calories, you may be able to carry on as usual and still benefit; although exercise without a healthy diet is not likely to work wonders.

The key here is to change over to healthier foods that nourish your body. By restricting food intake, you also restrict nourishment, leading to ill-health rather than the vital, healthy body you want.

Use diet and exercise together to build a better, stronger you.

If you need more help, visit www.DartfordBootcamps.com for information on Personal Training, Nutrition Coaching, and Bootcamp classes.