Why 'Strict' Diets Don't Work
The pitfalls of Carnivore, Keto, Intermittent Fasting & Any Traditional 'Diet' System...
There’s something about a man’s personality that always makes him take the chemotherapy route to diets.
He will nuke everything that is remotely ‘bad for you to eat’.
So they take the all or nothing, 0 to 100 route, thinking that what drives results is living like Rocky Balboa in his come up.
And while the intention is there, I have rarely ever seen this approach to nutrition ever succeed (especially long term, which is all that matters at the end of the day).
Seriously, Think about it, whenever you hear someone ‘diet’, it always has to be the most extreme diet imaginable…
Carnivore where you cut out all forms of food other than meat because that’s what our ‘ancestors’ did.
Keto where touching a carb is one of the 7 deadly sins.
0 sugar diets, we all know how those go
Or even stupider shit like Ray Peat sugarmaxxing where you ‘increase your metabolic burn like a furnace’ (laughable stuff)
And look, I respect the desire… But why make a process and your relationship with food so negative & restrictive?
Food is a beautiful thing, and to condense your life into a repetition of chicken, rice & broccoli is a poor use of our short time on this planet.
HERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH A RIGID & INFLEXIBLE APPROACH TO NUTRITION…
I’ll share with you the exact pattern I see all the time.
You start a restrictive diet, whether that’s intermittent fasting, keto, carnivore, 0 sugar, whatever your choice of self punishment is.
You feel fired up at the start, you feel amazing and proud of the discipline you have to grit through a ‘diet phase’ (insert David Goggins bs quote here).
Then life begins to throw spanners at your master plan.
Travel. Business meetings. Date night. You get invited to your grandmother’s where you can’t refuse her banquet of food otherwise you’re a disgrace to the family.
It’s only a matter of time before your perfect plan has a tiny deviation.
A small piece of dessert.
You break your diet.
You feel like shit about yourself.
‘Well I’ve broken my diet, I may as well go all out today & start fresh tomorrow”…
You inevitably break the unnecessary promise you keep with yourself.
You have another relapse, then everything unravels.
A few weeks in and you’ve already given up on what you started, and not only did you suffer for no reason for a few weeks, but you have sweet nothing to show for it.
The problem with these ‘diets’ is that an all or nothing approach forces you to be ‘perfect’, that’s unrealistic.
As I am writing this article I am away on travels.
It is impossible for the next week to track calories, eat perfectly, nor do I want to.
When you have a performance nutrition system that is worth it’s salt, 1-2 week nutrition breaks should be normal & encouraged (there’s nuance of course, but even clients who have needed to lose 50+ lb’s to be in optimal body fat range get these release points).
Does that mean I am eating french toast at the buffet breakfast every morning?
No, but I have a system in the back of my head, which is incredibly easy to follow in any season of life.
If I am eating out at restaurants.
If I don’t have access to the perfect nutritional setup when away on travels
If I have to navigate the airport lounge, airplane food, you name it…
There’s contingency plans in place to navigate this with ease.
If you want a system like this including:
My entire dynamic performance nutrition system
AI powered calculators which help you organise your exact eating requirements
Recipes curated so that you don’t need to count your macros as they are baked into the meals…
Check out the lethal physique protocol (it’s packed with a tonne of world class training information too FYI).
Click the button below to get early access.