Is "Sustainable Dieting" an Oxymoron or the Key to Lasting Results? | Quick Wits

Transcript

Philip Pape: 0:00

Sustainable dieting. Is that an oxymoron or is it the key to lasting results? Join me on today's QuickWits as I reveal the hard truth about why dieting itself can never be truly sustainable and share a more flexible, realistic approach to achieving your physique goals for the long haul. Welcome to the Wits and Weights Podcast. I'm your host, philip Pape, and this twice-a a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry. So you can look and feel your absolute best, let's dive right in. So you can look and feel your absolute best, let's dive right in. Welcome back to another raw, real, unfiltered episode of Quick Wits, where we separate the facts from the fads and help you navigate those murky waters of health, fitness and living your best life. And today I want to talk about a concept that gets thrown around a lot in our space, in the nutrition space, especially the flexible dieting space, and that's the idea of sustainable dieting. And this is the notion that you can somehow achieve your fat loss goals by finding a way of eating that you can stick to indefinitely without ever feeling restricted or deprived. Huh, isn't that exactly what you're saying all the time, philip, that you can eat in a way that's going to work, whether you're in fat loss or not. Well, hear me out, okay. I get the appeal of this idea. We want to believe that there's this kind of magic set of foods and macros, a perfect type of diet that will allow us to effortlessly shed fat, build muscle, maintain our dream physique, all while enjoying our favorite foods and never feeling like we're missing out. But let's examine this realistically and honestly, okay.

Philip Pape: 1:56

When we talk about dieting dieting, by its very nature being in a calorie deficit for a specific period of time to lose a certain amount of fat that itself is not sustainable, meaning that's not something you want to be doing forever. And anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying to you or lying to themselves, or trying to sell you something. Because when we're talking about dieting, what we're really talking about is creating that calorie deficit. We are consuming fewer calories than our bodies need to maintain our current weight right Less than our maintenance calories and while the deficit is absolutely a hundred percent necessary, okay, energy balance is actually a real thing for fat loss to occur.

Philip Pape: 2:35

It's also an inherently stressful state for our bodies to be in, because when you're in a calorie deficit, your body is trying to claw itself back to homeostasis, back to normalcy, right? It's getting less energy than it needs to function optimally, so it starts to make adaptations to conserve energy and hold on to this precious energy stored. You've got stored there in the form of your fat cells. So your metabolism slows down, your hunger signals ramp up, your body becomes more efficient at extracting every last calorie from the food you eat, and so, in other words, the longer that you diet, the harder your body fights back against your efforts to lose fat. And of course, that doesn't even take into account the psychological element here, the mental, the emotional toll dieting can take, not just from the process itself. Because, yes, you should be probably tracking and measuring things and now you're going to be making some hard trade-offs and choices with your foods, a form of restriction. Okay, true, you're restricting something, right? Even if that's just calories that you're restricting and allowing yourself to eat whatever you want within those calories, you still have to restrict something and you are very prone to food obsession, to feeling like you are falling off the wagon and then in the extreme if you're not really doing it the right way yo-yo diet and weight regain, all of that stuff but even when you're doing it the right way, it's not really sustainable, even though you can make it as quote-unquote easy as possible, right?

Philip Pape: 4:07

When I work with my clients, the goal is to make fat loss as easy as possible, where we focus on high you know, highly filling foods, high satiety foods, using the proper balance of macronutrients, right, lots of protein to keep you full, training the right way, getting enough sleep, all of that stuff, so that achieving your goal is completely possible, reasonable and, in many ways, a lot easier than it is for most people. And this still, though, causes us to shift our focus from the short-term, quick fix version of dieting you're probably used to, where it's like let's just cut calories and let's maybe cut out food groups, to a more flexible, realistic approach that prioritizes what is my long-term goal, what is my long-term progress that I want out of this? And, within that long-term progress, I'm going to punctuate that with these temporary periods of fat loss, okay, and in that case, you start to accept that, yes, there will be times when you need to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat, but they should be strategic, intentional, limited in duration and not a permanent way of life, and that is why they're not quote unquote sustainable, even though those phases are part of an overall sustainable philosophy. So I think it's important to understand the difference, because then what that means is the rest of the time and by that I mean nine or 10 months out of the year, once you get past the first or one or two fat loss phases, to kind of lean out a bit. The rest of the time you should focus on eating in a way that supports your goals giving yourself enough energy, probably being at least at maintenance, but even better yet, building muscle. And that's where all the flexibility, the enjoyment, the sustainability comes in, because now, most of the time you are living in this world, you're still focusing on whole, nutrient-dense foods. You're making room for treats and indulgences, which, yes, you might have done during fat loss, but again, we were more strict or restrictive because of the calories. It means you can tune into your hunger and fullness cues, you can learn to trust your body's signals rather than relying on some sort of external rules or restrictions right and you view nutrition as one piece of the overall puzzle, alongside your strength training, your stress management, your quality sleep, all the other habits and practices that contribute to a healthy, happy life. And there we go At the end of the day.

Philip Pape: 6:30

Sustainable living, sustainable progress, isn't about this perfect diet or turning on the diet switch or never indulging in your favorite foods. It's finding a way of eating and living that allows you to pursue your goals and still enjoy your life and feel like the best version of you. And within that, occasionally you go after this very specific short duration goal we call fat loss. So if you're tired of the traditional dieting hamster wheel, right, if you're tired of feeling constantly like you are just starting over and I hear this all the time, with people, potential clients, who come in and say, well, I'll just go do this other diet that worked for me before I'll do my metabolic reset, I'll do my you know four week program and help me lose, or my six week program and help me lose fat before, but that that's as as unsustainable as it gets.

Philip Pape: 7:18

When you feel like you have to go do this other, completely different thing to lose weight, that's where it starts to become a problem and that's where you don't really make progress.

Philip Pape: 7:30

Right, you kind of take a step forward and a step back, maybe a step forward and two steps back, and you're in this all or nothing mentality in that moment, rather than this flexible, sustainable philosophy of life. All right, nourishing your body, challenging yourself in the gym, having a mindset of self-compassion and resilience, and then trusting yourself, that consistency, patience, continuing to show up even on those hard days, that's where you're going to achieve way more than just some crash diet. So let's say goodbye to that unsustainable way of living. Let's say hello to a life of vitality, joy, strength, energy, where, again, you occasionally go after these slightly more extreme temporary goals within that context, and you'll be golden.

Philip Pape: 8:14

All right, keep choosing sustainability over deprivation, progress over perfection. You've got this and I'll see you next time. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.