Why Weight Loss Advice Doesn’t Work Over the Long Term
Why Weight Loss Advice Doesn’t Work Over the Long Term
My qualifications could give me a whole bunch of job titles, but primarily, I’m a teacher. I teach people how to live a healthier life. I devise and use strategies based on individuals requirements, goals, limiting factors and abilities. My approaches work. When followed correctly, my dietary advice has a 100% track record.
So why is my approach successful?
I like to keep things simple. Complicated causes stress. Complicated causes confusion. Complicated ultimately causes failure, and I don’t like to be associated with failure.
I try to keep my teachings as simple as possible, I use analogies and most importantly, I don’t like to set ‘rules’ – I set guidelines. My nutritional approach isn’t ‘Day 1, eat this, followed by that, with a side order of these’. I find that approach patronising and ultimately what you create that way is reliance – your clients or followers need you in order to eat well, and that dependence on you can be a responsibility you don’t want to bear forever.
I like to empower clients – teach them what to eat but more importantly, why they should eat this way. As the old phrase goes, knowledge is power. By empowering clients they are helping to spread your message for you and that is only ever a good thing.
I was reading the tweets of other people in my field, many of them dishing out the old, generic advice to their followers – you will have heard it before! The tired (and inaccurate) guidance such as ‘men should eat 2500 calories per day’ and ‘try to make sure you eat less than 30g of fat to lose weight’. This kind of terrible advice is partly the reason many people fail on their weight loss journey and why weight loss advice doesn’t work over the long term.
I have a number of issues with this ‘advice’…
- Guidelines are wrong. Telling ‘men’ they should eat 2500 calories per day is about as accurate as performing heart surgery with a chainsaw. So ‘men’ should eat 2500 calories per day? Are you suggesting a 6’8 man would have the same calorie requirements as a 5’3 man? Does the male olympic rower who is training 6 hours per day need the same calories as the man sat in the office?
- Eating less than 30g of fat per day is required to lose weight? Wrong. I have proven using the Handy Plan that you can lose weight quickly and healthily without over-monitoring your fat intake. Additionally, who measures their food?! Outside of competitive bodybuilders, who honestly weighs their foods and accurately monitors intake? Even apps like My Fitness Pal aren’t spot on with their accuracy and they depend on the honesty of the user.
- The messages are too complicated. As I mentioned earlier, I teach a simple system using simple guidelines. Simple doesn’t mean less effective – in fact it is far more effective as clients stick to the plan – adherence is higher and therefore the results are far better.
- The advice is old hat. Nutrition changes, advice changes, research uncovers new secrets. What we have to do is explore the research, apply the principles and see the results in ‘real life’. Lots of fitness professionals still advise clients with information they were taught 20 years ago and haven’t updated. The Handy Plan system was devised over 10 years and hundreds of clients. I didn’t write the guidelines based on my university studies – it is a melting pot of approaches, real life results and cutting edge nutrition advice.
- It’s gimmicky! There is a significant percentage of the industry who seek to provide the magic quick fix. Unfortunately, sports science hasn’t come up with it yet. Good food, sensible exercise and sleep are still the best way we know when it comes to health. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appeal to those who want to get in shape within a fortnight.
Telling people to weigh their food will never catch on – we are too busy. Making clients feel guilty because their macronutrient split wasn’t right yesterday isn’t going to work – weight loss psychology dictates so.
A successful weight loss approach needs to be…
- Easy to understand
- Easy to follow
- Accessible – meals shouldn’t take hours to prepare
- Flexible – we don’t all have the same food tastes
- Allow for failure – we all want a cheat day every now and then
- Sticky – all diets work in the short term, but as the client loses interest they fall off the wagon. Your wagon needs to be sticky to prevent members falling off!
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