stop doing this in your diet

If there’s one thing I’d recommend you stop doing for your diet it would be this:

Stop viewing foods as good or bad.

Viewing foods as good or bad is what causes tremendous anxiety and makes you bounce between the extremities of being super restrictive with your diet and going all out binging.

The short & sweet truth is there is no good or bad foods.

There is no foods where the more you eat the more weight you’ll lose, there’s also no food where the moment you put it in your mouth and swallow it you gain fat. That’s simply not how fat loss works.

Sure of course there are foods that are high in nutrients like whole foods (fruits veggies etc) and there are foods that are low in nutrients like a gummy bears or a snicker bar but that doesn’t mean one is good and the other bad.

It does mean though that you should probably include more foods that are high nutrients in your diet and less of the foods that are low in nutrients. There’s no need to go to the extremes of only including foods that are high in nutrients and completely avoiding those low in nutrients. It’s completely unnecessary and just makes the journey a lot less realistic.

I mean fact is most of the foods we love are low in nutrients, there’s no need to beat around the bush here. We love it, it makes us happy, so there’s no need to completely prevent that happiness. You can still totally enjoy your favorite foods in moderation and still progress towards your fat loss goals.

Obviously you don’t wanna have cake for breakfast, donuts for lunch, and ice cream for dinner then a chicken sandwich for dessert, you’ll wanna do something more opposite of that. Perhaps fruits & yogurt for breakfast, some white rice, veggies, fish for lunch, potatoes and chicken for dinner, and finish the day with your favorite scoop of ice cream on a cone.

It all comes to balance and moderation.

Why include more foods that are high in nutrients in your diet for fat loss?

Well one, our body needs a whole array of different types of nutrients for health on a day to day basis. Two, foods high in nutrients tend to be more satiating than those low in nutrients so dealing with hunger becomes easier. Three, cos most foods high in nutrients are low in calories, you could eat a lot more of them in volume which also helps you feel fuller.

A scoop of ice cream (any flavor) is roughly 200kcal, while half a kilo of watermelon is 175kcal.

Not saying that you have to choose watermelon over ice cream every time, but emphasizing that if your diet consists of mostly nutrient rich foods, it becomes a lot easier to manage. Absolutely don’t forbid yourself from ice cream, but if you’re having say 3-4 scoops daily and feeling hungry all day, maybe you wanna cut that down to 1 scoop instead.

All foods have a place in your diet.

There’s no foods you absolutely must eat, there’s no foods you absolutely must avoid. It’s all about balance, moderation and accountability towards your goals.

It’s possible to lose weight 100% on Mcdonalds. It’s possible to gain weight eating 100% “clean foods”. Losing weight isn’t about the types of food you’re eating. It’s not about the good or bad, it’s about the portions you’re eating on a regular basis. The total calories.

The less you think of food as good or bad, the less you’ll feel guilt, the less you’ll feel the need to punish yourself, and the more realistic it is to keep up with your diet on a consistent basis.

Easiest way to keep consistent with your diet? Make it enjoyable. Of course it’ll never be 100% enjoyable, but make it as enjoyable as possible. Once you start to enjoy it, it starts to feel less like a “diet”, and keeping up with it becomes second nature and results start coming in over time.

—Po