Difficulties You’ll Face While Dieting and How to Deal with Them
If you’re been following me for a while now, you’ve probably know that to lose weight, you will need to be in a caloric deficit. That is, to expend more calories than you are consuming. This is usually done by tracking your calories and macronutrients, and then ensuring you’re consuming the right amount of calories such that your weight drops. Simple as it sounds, doesn’t it? However, like any other journey, roadblocks are unavoidable and difficulties are sure to come.
These difficulties can highly derail your success. You definitely wouldn’t want that, would you? But if you are able to foresee these difficulties, you’ll be able to deal with them more effectively. Even better, if you can deal with them ahead of time, you will be able to avoid these difficulties altogether. Fortunately, in this article, I will be going through 3 difficulties that is very likely to happen to you during a fat loss diet and how to deal with them.
1. Hunger
As you lose more and more fat, you will get hungrier and hungrier. It is almost a guarantee. It is just evolution doing its thing - telling your body to eat more because it seems like you’re starving to death. That’s obviously not true, but evolution doesn’t know what purposeful dieting is, since it only started in the last century.
Most people fall off the bandwagon because hunger is an incredibly powerful primal human sensation that can topple willpower. People go into cheat meals, cheat days, or even binge eating as a result. But you can be ready for this. There are 3 ways to get the same calories and macros with much less hunger.
Eat more filling foods as you feel hungrier
Fresh fruits and fresh vegetables are some foods that will fill you up easily. If you’re going to eat 100 calories of broccoli, you’ll probably take an hour to finish it! (assuming you could even finish it) Instead, if you’re going to eat 100 calories of potato chips, you’ll finish it in less than a minute and you’ll probably feel even hungrier after. Other than fruits and vegetables, yogurts are also a good choice to curb hunger, especially greek yogurt. Lean protein sources such as lean beef, lean pork, shrimp, chicken breast are great choices too. If you include more of them in your diet, you’ll feel full faster and longer.
Fruits and vegetables are low in caloric density - high volume, but low calories. This will make you full without consuming much calories.
Eat less tasty foods as you feel hungrier
Sometimes, very tasty food will make you want to eat them more. For example, you can’t just stop at one piece of potato chip. Once you start eating a piece, you’ll probably want to finish the whole bag. And when you do, you’ll realize you just finished more than 1000 calories. This is common for most people who aren’t trying to lose fat - what more someone who is on a diet? Your hunger sensation is so sensitized that one little bit of tasty food makes you want to eat more and more. So how do you curb that? By making your prep food not that great tasting. But that isn’t to say that you’ll need to make it bad tasting - just minimally flavored. And when you’re done with your prep food, you would probably not want more of it. You’ll then be less likely to overeat. Therefore, by making your food less tasty, the chances of dieting success is much higher.
Choose bigger meals during predictably hungrier times
There are times of the day where people are predictably hungrier or less hungry. Some people wake up starving in the morning, but towards the evening they aren’t that hungry anymore. Others wake up without wanting to eat at all but in the evening their hunger levels are sky high. Think about what times of the day that you’re most hungry at - pre-workout, after-workout, mornings, or evenings. Choose more of your macros to go in that time of the day. And during times that you’re not as hungry, you should be eating a lot less food and save the food for times when you’re hungry. For example, I personally feel more hungry in the morning and evening, so I’ll usually take a light lunch, and spend more of my calories on breakfast and dinner.
Eating less tasty food is one good strategy to control hunger levels when you’re dieting.
2. Hitting your Macros
Macros here refer to mainly calories and protein. Figuring out what foods to hit your macros daily can be hard. This is even harder when you get busy, especially if you’re always on the go. For example, if you’re rushing for time and you’re at a Starbucks and you want to make the right choice, you’ll probably not know what to eat. Of course, one great way to solve this problem is to use an app. MyFitnessPal is a great app where you are able to plan your food and track them. It is a great tool, but some just can’t make the habit of tracking, while others simply can’t hit their macros.
So what can you do then? One great tip is to prepare your meals. Choose from a list of 2-4 basic proteins, basic vegetables, grains/fruits and fats. For example, chicken or fish for proteins, broccoli or cauliflower for vegetables, brown rice, pasta or apples for grains, and avocado or nuts for fats. Now that you have a couple of choices, you mix and match, flavour your meals, prepare them in bulk and put them in the fridge. This means that you don’t have to do any macro calculations anymore. Instead of standing outside the restaurant thinking of what to eat, you can just sit at your desk at your office, open up your tupperware and there you go - diet for the day, success! And if time is a lot of money to you, you might want to consider meal prep - it will be more expensive but you hardly have to think at all. Either way, it will be a huge advantage. Simply put them in your bagpack or car and you’re good to go for the day.
If you are unable to pre-pack your meals or bring them with you for whatever reason, you should have pre-planned go-to ideas on the go. For example, tuna cans, vacuumed-packed chicken breast or eggs, or beef jerky for protein which you’ll be able to find at any petrol stations. Protein bars and shakes are great replacements too, especially if you’re so busy you can’t stop by to buy food. You should be able to get fruit easily too. Nuts should also be found in little packets in almost any store. This will allow you to construct macro-friendly meals everywhere you go. Having these go-to meals, you won’t have the excuse of saying that you do not have anything to eat. This also reduces decision paralysis.
At the end of the day, fortune favours the prepared. If you pre-planned all your meals and bring them with you, and have your emergency go-to options when you can’t make your meals, you will be more destined for success. On the other hand, if you’re just going to go with the flow and decide everything on the spot, it’ll likely reduce your chances of success.
Prepare your meals in advance and bring them with you when you’re out. With that, it’s less likely that you’ll go off plan.
3. Water Weight Problems
Sometimes you’re losing a lot of tissue (mostly fat) but the scale weight is barely going down week after week, even when you’re tired and hungry. If you’re putting in the effort to track your calories, prepare your meals, and workout, more likely that not, you’re losing a lot of tissue. But what happened is that you may be storing more and more body water as time goes on. Body water is usually stored under your skin at places your fat used to be stored - for example your belly, your thighs, your arms. And the worse thing is that it can be really hard to tell apart from fat. That can be psychologically devastating when you see no difference on the scale and in the mirror, and it can be easy to quit.
However, this happens for various reasons. The most notable reason is stress. If you stress less and sleep more, you might be less bloated and will contain less water weight. This will result in you waking up weighing less. Another reason is when you are hungry and you can’t eat more food, you tend to increase flavor experience, and one of the main ones is salt. If you add more salt to your food week by week, you’ll become thirstier and take in more water. With more salt and water, this will lead to an expansion of water you’re holding. This can lead to an increasing bloat which is shown on the scale and in the mirror. What you should do is to standardize your salt and water/liquid intake so your water weight won’t fluctuate that much.
Stress and the lack of sleep can result in high water retention, which deceivingly adds to your scale weight.
Conclusion
Dieting in itself is already so tough. Together with the 3 most common difficulties as mentioned above, that is why so many people quit before reaching their goals. However, if you’re able to plan for them and deal with them ahead of time, this will highly increase your chances of dieting success.
P.S. - still struggling with dieting? Try out my online coaching! Many have found success in losing 5-10lbs in 4 weeks!
