Following a diet and lowering your body fat percentage is basically quite simple. You set a goal, eat less than you burn, and stay on the diet until the goal is reached. In reality, though, it is not as easy as it is in theory. Plenty of things can go wrong. Even bodybuilding and fitness competitors only rarely get as lean as they need to be. There are thousands of reasons why dieting can fail, and professionals and recreational athletes who simply dream of losing weight often face the same problems.
Lack of motivation
Without enough motivation, a diet usually falls apart. You need a strong desire, and that desire has to come from deep within yourself. If the only reason you start a diet is to impress someone else, you won’t get very far. A lack of motivation may even be the main reason people quit their diets. You could say that if you don’t have a real reason and real desire, there is no point in starting at all. So before going on a diet, you need to do some serious self-analysis to find out what truly matters and what you actually want to achieve.
Poor motivation also often shows up as dwelling on the things you can’t do and the foods you aren’t allowed to eat. In other words, you focus on the negatives. For some people, that means they are already down in the mouth on the very first day of the diet. A diet is actually a nice, positive thing to do – the motivation just has to be in place!
Lack of knowledge
Willpower alone is of course not enough for weight loss; you also need to know how to carry out a diet. It is important to get a firm grasp of the basics of nutrition. You should get your information about dieting from reliable sources and rely on methods whose effectiveness has already been proven. It is also worth remembering that purely theoretical proof is not always enough; learning from someone’s experience is often far more useful. At the same time, it is a fact that if someone has gotten in shape with a particular method, that same method won’t necessarily suit everyone. Going on a diet with inadequate knowledge is therefore like a lottery in which the odds of winning are not very high.
Impatience
It is a physiological fact that fat burns slowly. If you are very overweight, it is pointless to hope that a six-pack will show after a few weeks of dieting. Dieting requires, above all, patience and staying power. Training in a calorie deficit is hard and calls for more careful training planning to avoid losing muscle mass. Optimal recovery is important too. Since the best rate of weight loss is 0.5-1 kg per week, a diet often has to drag on for a long time. So you need to be mentally prepared as well, otherwise your diet may end before you reach your goal.
An irregular daily rhythm
Many people today lead a fairly hectic lifestyle. Add to that an irregular daily schedule caused by work and other reasons, and it’s understandable that planning and carrying out a workable diet is not easy but demands extra attention. What to eat and when during the day is best figured out the day before, and it is also worth thinking about taking food with you from home. If you always eat whatever happens to be within reach, and whenever you happen to have time, it’s no surprise if at some point you hit a wall and the diet stops progressing. So it’s a good idea to fit your diet to your own so-called rhythm right from the start. Clearly, if anything becomes too hard and complicated, giving up comes easily.
A lack of objectivity about yourself
For many competitors, this is the reason they are not in their best shape on competition day. They can’t assess themselves impartially and analytically, and they tend to compare their physique and the training loads they use in the gym with other people training there who are not preparing for competitions. That can create a false impression, especially when all your training partners are patting you on the back in approval. Often people don’t realize that there is still a very long road from that strong gym shape to a polished stage-ready physique. On the stage, every muscle fiber of every muscle has to be visible from any angle. It isn’t enough for the muscles to be big, the veins to bulge and the body fat meter to show a low number. The fat has to be gone from deep between the muscle cells too, so that the muscles look dry and polished.
A lack of self-control
If your goal is to keep muscle mass while burning fat, you need to plan your diet so that the energy deficit doesn’t get too large. A diet, however, doesn’t tolerate excessive indulging in sweets. Even the smallest daily snacks and giving in to your cravings with favorite foods can stall your progress. You have to learn to live with your cravings and try to keep them under control. Many people are helped noticeably by, for example, allowing themselves foods that are otherwise off-limits during the diet one day a week. It is much easier to stick to a strict menu six days a week when you know you can indulge once a week. But even here you have to stay conscientious, because otherwise your calorie intake for the week can end up too high. A successful diet always demands self-discipline and saying no, and you need to be aware of that right from the start.
Unrealistic goals
Before going on a diet, you need to assess your situation objectively, be clear about what your goal is and have a plan for achieving it. You also need to allow enough time to reach the goal. When setting goals, you absolutely must stay within the bounds of reality. Some competitors seem to find this especially hard. The fact is that a well-trained male bodybuilder may have to lose some twenty kilos before his condition is good enough. Say a bodybuilder who currently weighs 105 kg wants to reach a competition weight of 90 kg, and as the diet progresses his weight is approaching 80 kilos, yet his muscle fibers are still not visible. That puts his motivation to a serious test. The end result of such a wrongly set goal is either quitting the diet or poor condition at the competition.
Laziness
In today’s society there seems to be a growing trend of wanting everything quickly and easily, without much effort. That kind of thinking doesn’t work for weight loss, though. Despite being in a negative energy balance, you have to find the energy to train hard in the gym and on top of that do aerobic training. Reaching your goal takes hard work, and no miracle pill or diet will spare you from it. A person who is naturally lazy therefore has to pull themselves together and give themselves a push, because in the end all that effort will pay off.
Overeagerness
Overeagerness can also wreck a diet, and it happens especially often with women. The desire to lose weight can be so strong that people simply overdo everything: they eat too few calories, leave long gaps between meals, go to the gym six times a week and, on top of that, do, say, 12 hours of intensive aerobic training. The result is an overloaded body, loss of muscle mass and, worst of all, a slowdown in fat metabolism. In other words, exactly the opposite of what you actually want to achieve happens. Self-restraint and sticking to a plan are important for reaching your end result, but there is no need to overdo them. That kind of enthusiasm is better directed elsewhere. For example, it is worth doing short but intense workouts and keeping the diet focused on its goal.
The internet
The internet is a great tool and helper, including for someone on a diet. There is an unlimited amount of information out there, if you just know how to look for it. But the internet can also easily lead you astray. In various forums, for example, there is a huge amount of contradictory diet advice, and every “expert” offers well-sounding arguments to prove their theory. If your basic knowledge is lacking or you don’t yet know your own body well enough, it is easy to get confused about what you should actually do. This kind of “what to take, what to leave” situation can ultimately lead to failure. In that case, it is advisable to start from the basic principles and widely accepted methods, and to forget any exotic-sounding advice. If you stick with one method from start to finish, you get to know your body best, and only with your next diet is it worth making corrections and changes if needed.
Author: Greta
Come and work out! ArtGym
