The 5 things you should do when you STOP a diet!

The 5 things you should do when you STOP a diet

It’s very easy to focus on your diet and just doing that however when you stop dieting or come off your diet what you do next is more important than the diet itself, as what you do next can have disastrous effects on all your effort and hard work you have just put in.

Some people will lose a lot of weight, look and feel incredible but deep down believe they are still a fat person, that they don’t deserve the body they now have, that they’re lying to themselves and everyone else being this weight, I come across this feeling A LOT in my role, people believing that they just shouldn’t be happy, that they don’t deserve it for some reason.

Knowing people have the chance to be truly happy and comfortable in there ‘new’ body but feel like they don’t deserve it makes me feel sad!

If you have done the work, you have got the results and you love the way you look, you NEED to make sure you keep it, beat your mental demons and stay happy.

So when you come off your diet what you do now is essential to keeping your ‘new’ body and newly found confidence.

Here’s the top 5 things to do now:

• Write down 3 things that you’re grateful for every evening, it can be as simple as I have a bed to sleep in, a roof over my head, a flushing toilet, these are small things we sometimes take for granted, so writing down things like this helps us to keep things in perspective, essentially now in the age on #instaPerfection
• Create a new diet plan with your new maintenance calories, so you know what meals you are having throughout the week and if you go over your calories one day because of a work do or birthday etc you know that through the week you have accounted or that, also make it so you can really easily add and take things out of, my base diet is incredibly simple, loads of low calorie veg, lean meat and some fat, for example flavoured chicken breast with mixed green veg which was cooked with butter, it sounds boring but the base of all your day-to-day should be simple, it should be plant based, all your meals should start with a mixture of veg, fats and then just chuck a chicken breast or 2 on top, or some lean mince burgers, turkey meat balls, whatever but the base of your meals should be based on the above points. Then from your base, you can add things like sweets, crisps, biscuits, chocolate whatever you want, because they are just extra, you cut these first if you need to diet again in the future, I know my base diet is roughly 1400kcals, then I add extra carbs and everything on top of that, so if I want to drop fat all I do is cut some extra foods out, but my base is always the same, always consistent, which makes meal prep incredibly easy and quick, it’s easier to work out where to cut calories. I have found it too be easier in every aspect of your diet.
• Keep Training consistently, your training shouldn’t vary that much when you’re on or off a diet, so create a plan for that, this is the reason I hate giving clients extra cardio sessions, you shouldn’t have to do 5 or 6 extra hours of cardio a week just to lose weight, maybe add in an extra 30 minutes at the end of your session 2 times a week, fine but this cardio should be focused on Cardio improvement and burn as many calories as you can in that time, so not like walking, like hill sprints, like on the rower, stair master, cycling, things like that.
• Don’t reintroduce any trigger foods yet as soon as you’re off your diet, for example a trigger food for me is crisps, I’ll eat a bag of crisps which isn’t too bad, 500 calories max, won’t really make a difference to my overall weekly weight, but what happens after that is the crisps open a Gateway for me, they are the lynch pin to then having a pack of biscuits and ice cream and sweets so that packet of crisps then becomes a 2000-3000 calorie binge over the weekend or even an evening! You need to reintroduce these foods slowly and with a plan to not let them open a gate away of calories to come crashing through
• The last one is another mental one, but it’s very challenging, the best way to introduce this is by giving an example, when you ask someone who smokes to identify whether they are a smoker or not they will most likely say’ My name is Dan and I smoke’ (I don’t, just an example), it the same with fat/obese people, you can’t identify as a fat/obese person anymore, you can’t say things like, ‘I’m Dan and i’m toned but I still have that fat Dan instead me’ or ‘I’m still the same old fat Dan deep down’ No, it should be ‘I’m Dan, I’m toned because I eat well and train’ or ‘I’m a new Dan, who works hard and put my health first’ you are those habits, you can longer identify and link yourself to still being fat, it can lead to thinking that you don’t feel right in your new toned body, it could lead to you thinking you aren’t good enough for it anymore and although your there now you still the same old fat person instead so fuck it you can’t escape being fat what’s the point?! And you then gain 10- 20kg. You were fat but now you aren’t NOW, now you are healthy and activity try to stay healthy, NOW you are a new person, NOW you are toned and can keep that weight off, NOW you have done the work you deserve to reap the confidence boost and sexy feeling again (or possibly for the first time).

Losing weight is SO easy that’s why so many people do it every year, but 95% of diets ‘fail’ that failure rate is that high because people lose weight and a week later put it all back on, people lose loads of weight feel like they aren’t them selves anymore, even there friends will say dumb stuff like I preferred you being fat, you were funnier, FUCK THOSE ‘FRIENDS’ any friend who stops liking you because you want to become healthier, leaner and aren’t the same as before isn’t a real friend, they are a selfish person who wants you to be the same old person so they feel good about themselves that they can’t change but you can, and it’s the exact same with office colleagues, who say things like ‘you don’t need to lose weight you look good now’, ‘you should enjoy yourself while you can and lose weight in the future’ or ‘you do you bother going to the gym, you aren’t a gym person, just be yourself’

FUCK THEM!

YOUR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING, PUT YOURSELF FIRST - I’m sorry if you lose friends because of your weight loss I really am, but now you have the opportunity of better overall health, find new friends who put theirs and you health first but don’t take the world too seriously like vegans do.

Fitness isn’t a cult, don’t be draw into one.

Sorry for the rant!

Good luck with your diets! Keep the weight off!


Be Happy and Be Strong 💪

Dan