We all know that nutrition will make or break your results, and this is irrespective of whether you’re trying to gain muscle mass or pull body fat levels down.
However, adherence to nutritional principles is notoriously difficult and probably the thing people struggle with most, particularly in a dieting phase!
So, why is adherence so difficult, and what can you do to make it easier for yourself?
Spend time understanding your food habits
One of the reasons people struggle so much with nutritional adherence is because they haven’t taken the time to actually unpack their food habits. There’s so much information out there about macronutrients, food labels, and calories, but ultimately, if you do not understand your relationship with food and your eating patterns, nutritional adherence is going to be incredibly difficult.
Of course, this takes both courage and honesty – spending a few days or even a week observing and noting everything you eat and drink can be quite insightful, and yet upsetting if you realise that you rely on food to help you self-regulate or manage emotions as they emerge. However, doing this will reveal important information that will support you in your journey towards more healthy nutrition, as it will help you address the specific challenges that you experience, rather than bury your head in the sand and expect another strict meal plan to work.
Be realistic
Often, we can be fooled into thinking that eliminating foods we love (typically foods high in carbohydrates and fats) will be the solution to achieving our physique goals. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. Although you will have to be more mindful about your food choices, telling yourself that “this is the last pizza I’ll ever have” is pretty unrealistic. You already know that’s never going to happen, so why fall trap into using such a black and white approach, designed to inevitably fail?
Being realistic and ensuring that what you eat reflects your values and your goals is incredibly important. This might mean still incorporating “unhealthy” foods into your weekly plan, in a more calorie/portion-controlled manner, to ensure that you’re balancing out your choices. You don’t have to eat cardboard to achieve your health and fitness goals. In fact, being able to have “same same but different” meals which are actually in alignment with your goals will make the transition to a balanced and goal-supportive diet far easier to adhere to!
Make sure you’re focusing on your priorities
It’s so common to hear people moan about being on a diet, and list all the things they’re not allowed to have – it’s no wonder that this then leads to poor dietary adherence, as we all want what we cannot have! In my opinion, if you feel deprived you’ve either not designed your meal plan / approach to nutrition in a realistic way, OR you are focusing on the wrong things.
The reality is that you have unconditional permission to eat whatever the hell you want. Honestly, nobody will care, nobody will die, and your food choices are – at large – completely inconsequential (other than to yourself, of course). As such, dietary choices are that – a choice! And so it’s up to you whether you want to make a choice that moves you closer towards a valued direction (e.g., health), or whether you want to make a choice that pulls you away from it. But the choice, really, is yours.
Interestingly, when you reframe a calorie deficit as a choice, it feels a lot more empowering: “I can have a takeaway for dinner if I want to, but is that really what I want?”. Adopting this mindset will allow you to consider your options – and if you chose to make a choice that isn’t aligned with your values, you can often do so with less shame and guilt, when it feels like a choice, than when you feel compelled to.
In summary, although dietary adherence can feel difficult, it is far from impossible and there are many ways you can make it easier for yourself: spend some time learning more about your food habits and the patterns you might need to be attentive to; be realistic with your approach (nobody ever said they’d stop eating cake and actually stopped for ever!); and remind yourself of the fact that this is a choice that you get to make.
