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The first three steps to starting a diet

Getting started is always hard… true.

Today, let’s talk about dieting.

If you want to change the way you look, where do you start? Plenty of you have probably thought: I should go on a diet and watch what I eat, but I have absolutely no idea where to begin. I’ll help you.

When it comes to making conscious choices about a healthy, balanced diet, the rules are universal. It’s not as though a bodybuilding diet is a completely separate thing, weight watchers take an entirely different approach, and ordinary people follow yet another set of healthy eating principles. There are no such categories. The principles of a healthy, balanced diet are the same for everyone. When a competitive bodybuilder follows a strict diet to get into contest shape, an ordinary person looking to reduce their body fat percentage should actually be eating according to those same principles. The only difference is that an ordinary person has no need to bring their body fat percentage down as low as bodybuilders do.

Where should you start? I’ll give you three simple steps that I follow myself whenever I start and work through a diet. You can combine these three steps, introducing them all at once when you begin your diet, but you don’t have to. To keep things simple and give yourself time to adjust, I recommend taking them one at a time. You’ll still start seeing results. Of course, time matters. Nothing happens in a day or two, and you may not see any results even in a week or two, but be patient and they will come.

“So, I’m an ordinary person who eats whatever is available, wherever and whenever. I’m not completely inactive, either. I cycle 1 – 2 times a week, about 5 – 10 km at a time, and sometimes I go inline skating. The problem is that despite all this, my body is still getting out of shape: my belly is growing, so is my backside, and I’d like to lose about 10 kg.”

Step… set fixed mealtimes.

This could be where it all begins. It really is that simple. You can even keep eating exactly the same foods at first, but you should establish fixed mealtimes. That’s a very big first step. This step alone may bring about some changes in how you look. A good, simple rule is the 3-hour rule. I don’t mean the rule about eating 30 grams of protein every three hours. It’s simply that, in practice, three hours has proved to be a good interval between meals. So, if your first meal is at 8.00, your next should be no earlier than 11.00, then 14.00, and so on. As I said, even if you change nothing else and simply stick to a strict meal schedule, that alone may deliver results. Once your mealtimes are set, you really do need to stick to them: no snacking or drinking high-calorie soft drinks between meals, and so on. Try following a strict meal schedule for 2 – 3 weeks, then you can take the next step.

Step… clean up your meals.

Once you’ve managed to stick to fixed mealtimes for a couple of weeks, the next step could be to clean up your diet. This means keeping the intervals between meals firmly in place while cutting out everything known to be clearly very unhealthy or extremely fatty, along with sweets, mixed dishes, rich drinks, junk food, and so on. This is the stage when your diet really starts to feel like a diet. There are two reasons for doing this.
First, all this “stuff”—potatoes and gravy, various soups, pasta with ground meat, junk food, cakes, pastries, and so on—is extremely rich. Even very small portions give you a lot of calories. The fact is that if you want to change the way you look, you have to give up this kind of “stuff.”

Second, sooner or later, again to get results, you’ll need to start weighing your food. Initially, you can spend some time simply following the steps I’ve outlined, but at some point you’ll still need to start calculating and recording your food quantities.
Of course, you can eat healthily without kitchen scales, but I believe that in nine cases out of ten, people eventually become unable to assess themselves and their needs accurately, which automatically means a lack of results.
So, clean up your meals, both to make them less rich and to make it possible to start weighing your food. You can weigh your portion of “solyanka,” but you can never really know how many calories those 350 grams of “solyanka” gave you. Yet it’s perfectly possible to find out the calorie content of 350 grams of cooked rice or buckwheat. The same applies to all foods. Dumplings, potatoes and gravies, sandwiches, cakes, soups, meat patties, “mixed concoctions,” and so on… they’re very rich, and you can never know their actual calorie content per 100 grams. So, the first step is to set your mealtimes, and the second is to clean up your meals.

Step… increase physical activity to increase energy expenditure.

There are no scientifically prescribed time frames, but as a rough guide, the second step or phase could also last 2 – 3 weeks. Some of you may already see clear changes for the better after taking this step. It all depends on your circumstances: how high your daily energy expenditure already is, what your metabolism is like, how many calories you actually consume even when eating clean foods, and so on. In any case, one thing is clear: nobody gets to skip this third step. How much you need to increase your calorie expenditure to see results is another matter. Ultimately, losing weight through fat loss comes down to the gap between energy expenditure and intake: a deficit. Put simply, you have to burn more energy than you take in through food. How much more… there’s been a lot of discussion about a 300 – 500 kcal deficit, and I also believe this is optimal for losing body fat while preserving muscle. You certainly shouldn’t go overboard. It doesn’t work like this: if I’m in a – 500 kcal deficit, I burn 100 grams of fat a day, so if I endure more and go into a – 1000 kcal deficit, I’ll reach my goal in half the time. That’s not how it works. Time is very important here: beyond a certain limit, your body won’t release much more from its reserves each day, even if you run a marathon every day. Up to a point, fat burning increases in proportion to energy expenditure, but then it stalls, and if you do keep losing weight, you lose a lot of muscle along with it. That’s how it is, and in that sense you have to accept that there are no shortcuts. It’s like eating: you can’t eat enough in advance to keep yourself full indefinitely. When you get hungry, you get hungry!!! What does increasing energy expenditure look like??? Again, it’s very individual. Some of you will add 15 – 20 minutes of cardio to the end of your strength workout; others will increase their cardio sessions from two to three or four, or make their existing cardio workouts 10 – 15 minutes longer… it’s very individual. Some of you may take the first two steps without adding any physical activity at all… that’s also fine, but when you reach the third step, you should still add 2 – 3 workouts a week. Again, remember that nothing happens overnight, and the results of this process are no exception. But if you’ve taken these three steps at intervals of 2 – 3 weeks and stayed on track, your diet should be well underway and working after those 1.5 – 2 months.

To take things further, my next step (the fourth), depending again on the number on the scales and what I saw in the mirror, would be to start weighing my food. This would allow me to record my calorie intake fairly accurately. At some point, your weight loss will definitely stall, and you will need to make changes to get it moving again. But you cannot make those changes without knowing where you actually stand and how much food you are really putting away. There is another important reason to weigh your food: up to a point, you can stay realistic and judge your appetite accurately, but as your body fat percentage drops, your appetite will eventually start increasing severalfold. Clearly, you cannot go around starving, nor should you. At the same time, if you want results, you cannot give your cravings free rein either. This is where having actual numbers recorded makes it much easier to adjust your calorie deficit.

Following the steps above should make your diet work. There is also a fifth step worth mentioning, although whether you take it very much depends on your circumstances. You may have your meals in order, be eating clean foods, have increased your physical activity over the week and know where you stand because you weigh your food and record your calories, yet for some reason your weight loss still stalls. This is a common occurrence. What the fifth step involves now depends on your decision: is there room to increase your weekly activity further, or would you prefer to maintain your current activity level but feel you could cut your calorie intake a little more? Whether you need to take this step largely depends on your situation and needs at that point. You may never need it!!!

These are simple, achievable principles of healthy eating. I would also stress that you should not expect miracles within days. Some people may notice changes after just a couple of weeks; others may not notice anything even after a month. Be patient. You can also take all three of the first steps mentioned above at once: get your meals in order, cut the “junk” out of your diet and increase your physical activity straight away. But my advice is to avoid restricting everything as much as possible from the outset—you will not keep that up for long. Work with your body and be honest about your willpower. Of course, if you have the motivation, you can move through the steps faster. Be sure to assess your own behavior: are you really meeting the requirements of each step, sneaking treats between meals, and so on? By the third step, simply cycling across town to work and back instead of driving may be enough for some people. Someone else may have taken the first two steps and already be cycling to work, yet still be getting bigger. Situations like this are very common, and the harsh reality is simply that your daily energy expenditure is still too low. If you see no results for several weeks, the only obvious reason is that you are not burning enough energy. I am certainly familiar with these situations: “I’m doing everything right, but I’m still not losing weight!” To me, this often sounds like an attempt to avoid taking responsibility, with a hint of blame directed at whoever devised the meal plan. Nothing is necessarily wrong; you need to face reality. If, by your own account, you are doing everything as prescribed and explained, weighing your food and getting what you consider enough physical activity, yet your weight still is not dropping, then you are simply burning too little energy each day and need to increase your expenditure further. How do I know that??? I would not know myself, but clearly, if you are unhappy with your progress, the scales and the mirror are telling you that themselves!!!

As for turning to supplements for help, that should only be the sixth and final step. The previous five conditions should be met, and your diet should already have been working well for 2.5 – 3 months. Before then, there is no point even discussing fat burners!!! It must be said straight away that these are no miracle products either. If they help you at all, it will only be when your diet is already in good order. You certainly should not expect miracles from green tea capsules!!!