WARNING: There will be lots of quotations and uses of sarcasm in this blog

You know those headlines that just seem to stick out to you, personally, that you can’t resist? You scroll by them, but then as you keep scrolling you just keep thinking about that title? Or you go by it, and you’ve clicked or seen something similar, and just think “nah, I’ve been to those sites, they’re all the same?” I was, and still am a sucker, for those articles. When it comes to fitness and getting healthier, I have found that people don’t actually want to work towards their goal. They want a quick fix, a simple answer, a tell all about how to drop “35 pounds in 15 days.” I am that girl that has clicked on, and completed those “meal plans” and “workout routines.” Here is my story and my view for those “quick fixes” and “fast track to healthy” ways to go.

My whole nutrition journey started when I found an article on losing 10 pounds in one week. I was overweight, completely unhappy, and ready to make a change. You can see more about my background in my first blog post –>HERE

Here is what this diet did. It was low calorie, low carb, and low fat. Nothing wrong with that, when it is done in moderation. I was eating 1000 calories per day, not eating beyond 7 at night, but working my @$$ off in the gym. I would go in for a weight training session, which always incorporates lots of supersets with very minimal rest in between, followed by 20-30 minutes of high intensity cardio – at that point is either spring intervals on the treadmill or intervals on the stair master – then followed up by a 15 minute sauna session. Six days a week in the gym with that regime, and this “miracle diet” I was on. Being on this diet for so long my body started using any means for energy that it could find, which meant that muscle was being burned instead of fat because my body needed protein, which also resulted in a lower metabolic rate, making it more difficult for me to lose weight. Now looking back it completely makes sense!

So how do you fix this?

Everyone will react differently to these situations, for me, reverse dieting was key! I am still fixing what I caused with my “miracle diet,” and we’re talking almost two years later. From 1000 calories I have slowly started adding calories back in my diet, I stay on this calorie intake until I start to feel my body plateau again, then I increase again. The problem with my mindset is I have been so afraid of carbs, I lost quite a bit of weight with no carbs, so carbs were forever an enemy of weight loss for me. So instead of trying to incorporate them in my diet every day, I started carb cycling. So I would eat really low carb (about 5% of my daily intake) five days out of the week, and on my two heavy days, which happened to be my leg days, I would have a high carb meal (about 45% of my daily intake). This helped me pack on muscle, I was maintaining my weight, and I was feeling better about food and myself. To make an extremely long road of nutrition findings short, we will fast forward to my present nutrition. I am still working on adding calories back in, because for the amount of physical activity I do, I should be eating quite a bit more calories than what I am. I have started to add carbs in to my DAILY nutrition in the mornings, to give me the boost of energy that I need. My carb intake is all complex carbs, in the evening I will usually eat a piece of fruit, but other than that my carbs come from vegetables, beans, and whole grains. I keep my protein intake high, and with the newly found intake of carbs in to my daily nutrition I have seen some amazing results in the gym! I also have amazing energy, I sleep better, I am not angry all of the time, and so much more!

After being the “victim” of a “miracle diet” I like to tell others that are interested in these sort of things, to be very careful! It seems amazing that you can lose that much weight in such a short amount of time, but in the long run if you stick to a diet like these you will be doing more harm than good. Not only that, most of these “Lose X amount of weight, in X number of days,” they put you on such a restriction when it comes to food, that once that time frame is up, you’re going to go right back to your old eating habits. And guess what?! That weight that you just starved for, comes right back. I know, it sucks to hear! But it happens, and so often! Do yourself the favor and take the long way to get your results. You will be healthier in the end, have the results you have been looking for, your knowledge will grow so much, because there is SO MUCH TO LEARN when it comes to nutrition and the gym, and best of all you are more likely to keep your results!

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