Have you ever had a goal of losing body fat and began dieting only to end up more frustrated and overweight by the time you gave up? Chances are that you suffered from something called diet fatigue, a term used to describe the mental and emotional fatigue accrued when following a diet but not seeing results or progress.
If I had to guess every person who has ever gone on a diet before has experienced this tragedy. You begin your diet with high motivation levels, extreme passion to achieve better health, and of course a plan to eliminate poor food choices while adding in better food choices. Some move faster than others. Some will slowly eat all the poor food choices left in the fridge and begin to purchase better foods over time. Others will strip the fridge and pantry free of all poor food choices in a blink of an eye. However, both will ultimately set themselves up to succeed by removing the triggers of the past and adding in nutrition that matters. As the days go on you begin to see some results, again some faster than others. These results can motivate you to continue your efforts.
You are now less bloated and feel a little better until the “devil on your shoulder” starts to speak. This inner demon has evil intentions as it makes them into demands: “You deserve a treat, look how good you have done”. The subconscious mind, which harbors your anxiety, fears, and most importantly memories, is asking for something familiar in seek of comfort. You have lived your life on processed, delicious, irresistible food. This extreme change is beckoning a war between your conscious and subconscious, the known vs. the unknown. The war is going to start here with this battle and will continue on for a substantial amount of time until you begin to form habits around your new behaviors. The first battle is the most important. This battle if lost may result in developing diet fatigue and failing once again. As you reward yourself with a “treat” you are momentarily pleased, however you have just unlocked the door to past (over-glorified and delicious food) memories that will begin to ask for permission to return into your diet with increasing intensity.
“It’s just a cheat meal tho, everyone has cheat meals?”
Cheat meals are not harmful to your overall progress unless you let them become a problem. Unfortunately many of us have strong emotional ties to food which is the biggest barrier to sustainable long term weight loss. When dieting we also have strong emotional ties to our results. We are working hard to achieve the desired outcome and not seeing any progress while working hard is defeating. One issue that can lead to diet fatigue is cheat meals. Due to these meals and sometimes “cheat days” the total calories are much higher than expected. I had a client who wasn’t seeing progress for this exact reason. When we did further calculations we discovered that in her cheat meals (which occurred 2x/week) she would have upwards of 1,700 calories a meal or 3,400 extra calories a week. That is an added total of 486 calories a day. This completely negated our 500 calorie deficit we had been achieving consistently on the other days. If you were in her shoes putting in this much work to keep track wouldn’t you be mentally and emotionally defeated as well? She sure was and the diet fatigue had set in due to her high perceived effort and low perceived results. She needed a diet break (discussed later below) and we did just that in order to re-engage her focus.
Another reason people develop diet fatigue is due to a lack of awareness around calories. Most people when making a transition to get healthy will begin to eat “better” food choices. There typically isn’t any sort of transition phase, nor is there any tracking done. This usually results in people going from eating a large amount of calories, say 3-4,000 a day and suddenly dropping the total calories to 1,500-2,000. Initially the person can tolerate this dramatic swing in calories because they were over-fed in the first place. But after the digestive system begins to clear and your biology recognizes your new calorie intake the cravings begin. This refers back to our demon analogy before. The second thing that can happen when someone isn’t aware of their total calorie intake and lacks a transition phase is they may begin eating healthy but not low enough on calories. This is something I personally experience often. When I am not tracking calories but still eating good food choices I can easily eat 3-4,000 calories without realizing. This same phenomenon occurs with many clients of mine. Although they eat great food choices, the portions are not properly monitored. This can lead to a large amount of excess calories. My main culprit is peanut butter and almond butter. If untracked I can consume 3-4x the serving size which would result in 600-700 more calories! So although you don’t have cheat meals, your portion sizes are drowning your daily calorie deficit goal. In my opinion this is even more frustrating than the cheat meals. With cheat meals there was a clear cause and effect, whereas oversized portions (although healthy food) can leave you blind to where your lack of results is stemming from, thus creating diet fatigue. This lack of cause and effect can even drive someone to believe dieting isn’t effective and it has no merit because “it didn’t work”.
Diet fatigue is a real issue that many people encounter. Diet fatigue is ultimately caused by a lack of understanding your total caloric intake. In order to avoid diet fatigue you must build awareness around calories. There are several ways to do this, the most common being tracking your total intake via an app or journal. It is hard to be mentally and emotionally fatigued by something you comprehend. If you track your calories and you recognize that you didn’t hit your target, you should not be expecting a result (of course you’re still frustrated, but you can try again rather than succumb to the pressure that it is not working). The most effective way to go about dieting is to track your total calories prior to making any changes for at least two weeks while you monitor your calories and weight week over week. This will give you an understanding of how much you consume regularly and how it impacts your body weight. From here you would simply adjust your calories according to your goal (500 calorie deficit from maintenance calories to lose weight is a good place to start). For example let’s say you tracked for the two week and you ate an average of 2,700 calories and your weight did not move for the two weeks. You would reduce your total calories to 2,200 to begin your diet and see tremendous results!
“What if it’s too late? I’m already in diet fatigue?”
This is a chance for a diet break, a diet break is defined as a set amount of time where you will not be tracking your caloric intake and instead will be focused on how the food makes you feel, how your gym performance is, your energy levels, and your digestion. A diet break allows you to release yourself from the pressure of the diet’s constraints. This freedom will oftentimes reinvigorate you to begin your diet again but with increased retention and commitment. The key is you must remain conscious of your actions and how they impact your body. Don’t become blind to the signals that are going to be sent to you when you eat those poor foods. This information is a valuable part to engaging in a lifestyle change as it brings the unconscious aches, indigestion, acne, diarrhea, etc. to the conscious mind that can connect what foods produced what symptoms. The diet break should not be seen as a “failure” but rather as an endeavor to develop consciousness around food’s effects on you physically, emotionally, and mentally. Be aware when you reach for the foods you do, understand what is driving you, and enjoy the food with freedom and reflection afterwards. Upon returning to your diet I recommend that you only return when you are completely compelled to, if you return without being fully committed expect to develop diet fatigue again.
Cantrell Coaching LLC 