Fat Loss: A battle or a war

This goes against the current somewhat, but the more I see, the more I have come to believe that fat loss should be an all out battle.  It should be fought hard until won.  I've never before run across someone who likes to "diet."  And if you want to lose fat, like it or not you are going to be in a state of calorie restriction, which means you will be hungry.  So why not just gun it for a limited time and get the results quickly through a hard fought battle instead of dragging the process out in a lengthy war?

Now, do not get me wrong, once the battle is won, if you do not have a long-term strategy in place to hold on to the territory you have gained, you will just end up gaining all the weight back in short order.  Let's call this the "Peace Keeping Mission." Keeping the peace (maintaining your fat loss) involves understanding the habits of healthy eating and having a strategy for implementing those habits on a regular basis.

Implementation requires sustainability.  If you set yourself up with a strategy that you are not really willing to follow, then your mission will fail.  It's as if you committed troops to your Peace Keeping Mission but did not organize supply lines and logistics to support them.  Sustainability can grow from the use of many different tools including the 90/10 rule (if you are following the rules 90% of the time you can probably get away with reasonable rule breaking the other 10%), the use of Intermittent Fasting, the manipulation of macro-nutrient ratios to suit your metabolism (how many carbs, proteins, fats you eat) and many more.

But back to the original motivation for this post.  I really believe that for most people the best way to lose fat is to engage in a full frontal assault until the goal body composition is reached.  Being in a calorie deficit sucks anyway, so you might as well make it suck only a tiny bit more (proportionately) and get motivating results that build momentum.  Then you can figure out how to have fun keeping the peace.

Cheers,
Adam

Photo: by CharlesFred (Flickr)

Comments

[Jason Socci]

I work with all ladies in an office environment and there always seems to be at least one person who's on a diet, has some results and then she's back to her old eating habits and all is lost...or i guessed gained. I admire their dedication to a diet and yet suspect they need better eating habits to go back to or in other words a peace keeping plan. There's actually someone on their last day of a no carb/high protein diet as I type. I'll have to forward your blog post to them. I'll have to be careful though, weight loss can be a touchy subject.
I also enjoyed it because on a micro level I have been trying to come up with a means of keeping the peace after an intermittent fast. If i don't have something in mind to eat i just end up snacking on peanut butter until I figure it out. Okay, so sometimes it is downright gorging on peanut butter. So I try to be more deliberate about my choices if I really want something while I'm preparing a meal after a fast. This is usually some greens or fruit which is much lighter than PB and my body appreciates that. Thanks again for the thoughts.