I get asked about what I eat all the time lately. It makes me a little uneasy…
Since The Fat Burn Revolution landed on bookshop shelves I don’t think a day has gone by when I haven’t been asked a question about diet.
Although TFBR has a chapter containing “eating guidelines” for people wanting to shed fat, it was only ever meant to be a fitness book – detailed dietary advice was beyond its scope. Clearly more advice on eating for fat loss is something my readers would like from me now though and I’m working on that.
I’ll share more info soon – but I will say right now that it’s not going to be a diet plan, but rather tools you can use to take control of your own diet and bring in healthier eating habits that suit your tastes and lifestyle.
I actually don’t mind people knowing what I personally eat at all. I just hesitate to post exact details online because it’s really important for people to understand that everyone’s diet should be different. If I share my daily menus, people may try to use that as their own “diet plan” and it might not be the best way for them to eat.
The right diet for you depends on lots of variables – the amount and type of exercise you’re doing, whether you’re looking to change the composition of your body (i.e. lose or gain fat or muscle), your tastes and preferences, the type of cooking you like, the state of your health… and many more factors.
It’s such an individual thing.
It’s really important to realise that if you want to switch from a diet that was causing excess fat to accumulate on your body to a diet that will get you lean and promote better health you absolutely need to think of making changes for life.
However, It is equally important to understand that once you’ve got the excess fat off your body you will probably be able to, and probably should, eat a little differently in order to stop reducing body fat and maintain your healthy body composition.
I’m definitely not talking about going back to how you ate before, but you will need to increase the amount of energy you put into your body so that fat stores can be maintained at a healthy level, preserve muscle tissue, and to stay in good shape and good health for the long term.
This time last year, in the weeks leading up to the photoshoot for The Fat Burn Revolution, my diet was similar to what I eat now, but different. My priority then was to look lean in the photos – we all know the camera “adds pounds”! (I talked in this post about why I intended to maintain a slightly higher body fat after the shoot.)
Over the last few weeks I’ve been training to take part in the Fisherman’s Friend StrongmanRun as part of ‘Team GB’, so I’ve been eating (mostly) with performance as my top priority. I may have to record some videos in a few weeks and if that happens, I’ll probably change my diet to get my body ready for that.
I’m learning to manipulate my diet to suit my current my aims. Not everyone needs or wants to do that, personally I enjoy it.
Getting to the point where you can adjust your diet to fit with where you want to be at various points in your calendar takes a lot of practice and trial and error – no one gets it right all the time. It also takes confidence in your ability bring in and maintain changes and, for many, confidence in your ability to keep making reasoned choices about food and not to slip back into previous undesirable eating habits.
It’s very common for people to worry about how they’ll cope once they’ve got rid of the fat they want to lose. Their previous diet caused them gain fat. Their recent diet has caused them to shed it. But what does a diet which maintains their current body composition look like? It can seem like a whole new challenge.
If this is a concern you have, please be reassured that it’s nowhere near as challenging as bringing in the changes that helped you shed fat were (so long as you lost your fat in the optimal way, by following the principles in TFBR for example).
I quite often get people coming to me saying “I need healthy recipes”, but we both know that millions of those are available at the click of a mouse on the internet nowadays. I do intend to include some suggested recipes and maybe even a suggested 1 week menu on my website soon, but my main aim is to address the real issues that make eating well a challenge, which are more are often more about mindset and habits. More on that coming soon…