You can’t out-exercise your diet.
Boom. Mic drop. That’s it.
And yet we’ve all thought…
“I’m training so hard, why can’t I lose weight?!”
The simple fact is…our diet needs to be dialed in to match our training if we want body recomp to happen.
Now…you may be thinking, “But I HAVE lost weight before by just adding on to my training.”
But this attempt to out exercise our diet ultimately SABOTAGES our long-term success.
And it can be why we start even blaming our AGE for our lack of results.
I want to break down why you aren’t losing weight despite exercising longer and harder
and then how you can adjust your diet to lose fat while gaining muscle even if it has felt impossible in the past!
These 5 tips I’ll go over to adjust your diet are what helped me personally because honestly
…I tried to out exercise my diet for the longest time
I literally felt like I could do anything I needed in the gym to see results, but adjusting my diet felt impossible.
I even told myself I simply couldn’t adjust my diet because I liked food too much.
But I realized that was just an excuse.
That I was simply more comfortable being uncomfortable in the gym than I was with adjusting my diet.
However, once I got out of my own way and started adjusting my portions of protein, carbs and fats,
not only did I lose weight but I gained muscle and felt more energized in my training sessions and all around every day life!
But first…why trying to out exercise your diet fails.
And this all comes back to why it works initially…
We’re creating that calorie deficit by adding in more movement.
If you don’t eat more to compensate, by simply adding in extra movement, you’re going to burn more calories and create that calorie deficit.
But the exact same reason we can lift more, run or cycle further faster, is the reason why we ultimately DON’T keep burning more calories over time.
We grow stronger and our body becomes more efficient.
This means that unless we keep doing more, adding on more to our training, we won’t keep burning more.
And we will even start needing LESS energy to repeat the same activities.
Again this is a GOOD thing as it is why we get fitter.
But it is also why our weight loss will often plateau over time.
If we try to keep adding in more to our workouts, making them longer even, we often may see another little drop in weight but then can even see weight start to creep back on.
Not to mention suffer from burnout and injury, which can completely throw us out of any healthy habits we’ve built and lead to us not being able to train at all.
But we may see our weight go up despite trying to increase our activity level to burn more calories because our body will start to find ways to conserve energy.
The more extreme the calorie deficit we try to create through our training, the more our body will rebel.
Our body wants to maintain essential bodily functions which take energy.
And the more you push that calorie deficit to extremes through exercising more, the more our body finds ways to fidget and move less as well as down regulate other energy usage through the day.
It’s why we can even see muscle loss, or our muscle building efforts be sabotaged while working harder in the gym.
This is why if you really want all of your hard work in the gym to pay off, and to create a calorie deficit that leads to fat loss as you even build lean muscle, while keeping you feeling fueled and energized, you can’t avoid the hard of adjusting your diet!
And it isn’t just about cutting calories through how you adjust your nutrition.
While calories in vs. calories out matter for weight loss, macros matter most for body recomp.
The types of foods you consume can not only have an impact on your body recomp results but even how FUELED you feel and the energy you have to be active and alert throughout the day.
Your macros can even impact your recovery and sleep.
And the exact portions of proteins, carbs and fats may vary based on your activity level, needs and goals.
But for most of us, even knowing this…the process of adjusting our diet can feel impossible.
That’s why I want to go over 5 key things to help you embrace adjusting your nutrition to help you lose weight and keep it off!
Number 1 being something that truly was the biggest game changer for me…
Don’t cut out the foods you love first.
I love dessert. And every time I would try to adjust my diet to lose weight, I would cut out dessert.
I knew it wasn’t “healthy” and very calorie dense.
So it seemed like the “easiest” thing to remove.
The thing was…it was also the thing I loved the most and the hardest change MENTALLY to make.
Ultimately I always would have willpower run out at some point and end up overindulging in all of the foods I’d tried to restrict and resist.
Once I started planning in a dessert FIRST and working my other meals around it, I finally created something more sustainable.
Because often it is just the fact we’ve told ourselves we “can’t” have something that makes us want it even more.
There are even nights now where I don’t have dessert and I don’t feel deprived because I know that A. I can work it in if I want and B. I’ve recognized what I include or don’t include is my CHOICE.
But to start, making sure I wasn’t feeling like I couldn’t have things I loved helped make the changes easier and built that momentum to achieve results!
Which brings me to the next tip I feel is so essential to creating true nutritional changes…
Keep those adjustments SMALL.
Too often with our diet, we also make these sweeping changes that make us miserable and often leave us very hungry.
Our body doesn’t like change. So dramatic calorie adjustments or changes in our macros, going from high carb to low carb, can make us feel low energy, hungry, deprived and just off.
It makes us not want to stick with the changes for long.
So instead, we want to make small changes, meeting our body where it is at.
The more we focus on just one small tweak, the more we allow our body to quickly adjust so we want to add on more.
This process of small swaps and changes is less mentally uncomfortable and overwhelming, which can lead to us feeling more motivated to keep building!
It can be exactly what we need to ease into being more comfortable being uncomfortable with dietary changes and stop us from feeling like we just can’t adjust our diet.
Because one size doesn’t fit all. Just because a fitness competitor is eating only chicken and broccoli doesn’t mean you need to, especially to start!
Now…I mentioned earlier…macros really matter.
And specifically protein is key. But it is also something many of us struggle to increase, which is why tip #3 is to map in protein first to every meal.
I started to realize that protein was an afterthought in many of my meals instead of something I mapped in first and worked other foods around to create delicious dishes.
I also realized how many meals barely had any protein in them.
I’ve seen this same trend with clients.
We think we’re eating a lot of protein. But when we actually look at our meals, we realize how many don’t really have a main protein source.
So instead of focusing on cutting anything out, work to first add protein in!
Make sure every meal has a protein source and even add just one ounce of protein to meals that do contain a protein already.
This addition of protein can create satiety, and while you’re technically adding in more calories, often it leads to us eating less of other things, including snacking less,
and it can even help us burn more calories at rest because protein requires more energy to be used by our body to digest it.
And as odd as it sounds to add in something that could make you consume more calories, studies have actually shown that a high protein diet is the only diet to not cause unwanted fat gain while in a slight calorie surplus.
Not to mention, often in eating more protein, we will make it easier on ourselves to create a small calorie deficit without feeling super hungry and lower energy.
Which brings me to the 4th key tip…
Stop slashing your calories super low!
Often we feel we can’t stick with dietary changes because the first change we make is to cut our calories down and create as big a calorie deficit as we can.
If weight loss is about eating less than you burn, eating as little as possible should be better, right?
WRONG!
Not only does this lead to us losing muscle, creating metabolic adaptations and hormonal imbalances that fight against our weight loss goals, but we also feel miserable and often run out of willpower to keep restricting as intensely.
And when our willpower runs out, we can end up overeating which can lead to us regaining not only any weight we lost but even more.
In this process of regaining the weight, we also aren’t regaining any muscle we lost. Just fat. And this ultimately will only make any future dieting attempts even harder.
So instead of slashing your calories super low, focus on adjusting your macros, increasing that protein first.
Just by adjusting your macros, you may see body recomp start to happen.
From here, you may find that even just cutting 100 calories from your maintenance level can lead to amazing results where you still feel energized.
We just have to remember that super big calorie deficits mentally derail us and also don’t lead to true fat loss any faster!
The final tip I’ve found to be so key in helping clients make dietary changes is to stop saying that any change we make is a lifestyle.
While we want things to be sustainable so we embrace change, the simply fact is not everything we do that is new will feel comfortable.
And what you do to reach a goal is NOT what you will do to maintain it.
We don’t do ANYTHING in one form exactly for the rest of our life.
There are constantly changes and tweaks and adjustments we are making.
And we need to embrace that.
The more we recognize that evolution will happen over time, the more we also make it easier to embrace some short term sacrifices knowing things will evolve as we go.
We may choose to cut out cocktails for a bit to see better results,
while adding them back in as we reach our goals and transition to maintenance.
While we can’t go back to simply what we did prior to losing the weight, there is constant evolution in our diet to match our body where it is at.
And there will be a different balance we strike over time as we create that new weight set point.
Remind yourself that not everything will feel fully sustainable to start, like a “lifestyle,” but that over you can tweak and adjust to create your balance!
If we want to reach our goals, our diet and our workouts need to evolve to work together and we need to find a balance!
We can’t out exercise our nutrition and our nutrition can really help us feel, move and look our best!
If you’re ready to dial in your diet and your workouts to see fabulous results at any and EVERY age, check out my Private Online Coaching.
