Should you be dieting? Or working on practicing habits? Doing both? Or say ‘screw it, give me all the cake’?
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It’s confusing, isn’t it? Knowing what to do to lose body fat, how much to do, and, most poignantly, when to do it.
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But first…imagine yourself on the motorway.
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Should you consider yourself a self-respecting, law-abiding citizen, you should be spending most of your time in the inner lane, cruising along at a solid 70-mph. This? Well, this is your LIFELONG WEIGHT MAINTENANCE phase.
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This comprises the great habits you execute every single day that are going to make sure you’re consistently happy with your body. You’re going to hopefully be here a long time.
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Every once in a while, however, you’re going to want to overtake someone. You’re going to need to speed up, move into the middle or outer lane, and press down on that accelerator. How daring. We’ll compare this to a phase of INTENSE DIETING.
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This could be the build-up to a specific holiday or wedding that will involve a slightly more concentrated version of your lifelong weight maintenance habits.
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Remember…
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You won’t spend the majority of your drive in that outer lane – you will eventually end up back implementing that 70-mph approach. But that period of lifelong weight maintenance can be interspersed with specific periods of more intense dieting.
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The problem? People spend their whole life in that outer lane, always dieting.
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They’re never making changes to their habits or lifelong behaviours, they’re constantly depriving themselves, and they inevitably end up in a junk-food induced coma silently sobbing in the corner of the room.
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The solution? To nail down that 70-mph drive, and make this form of ‘maintenance’ the norm. When, and only when, you’ve achieved that, should you attempt to move into those faster lanes and ‘go harder’ with your diet, only for you to ultimately return to the phase of lifelong weight maintenance.