According to the data, 46% of women and 30% of men go on a diet each year. That’s 76% of people. Period. In 2012 alone, 108 million adults were dieting in America. Awesome, right? So it would seem. But 90–95% of all dieters regain weight lost within 1–5 years. In other words, most—nearly all—of those 108 million have already gained it all back. Why? Because the fitness industry rarely talks about what to do after you finish a diet.
We’re constantly bombarded by everything we should do to lose love handles and sculpt six packs—this workout program, that nutrition advice, these supplements. It’s all useful stuff and a proper regimen gets results. Yay. But what’s next?
You’ve followed your plan, finished your program, and made great progress. Well done… Now what?
Most people know what to do to get results, but not how to keep them. There’s a disconnect. And considering 90–95% of dieters erase whatever progress they make, it’s a serious one.
We’re getting results, but not maintaining them. If they don’t last, results don’t really mean a thing. And if you don’t know what to do after you finish a diet, they won’t last.
I don’t want your results to last a few months or even a few years. I want your results to last a lifetime.
That’s why I’m about to show you exactly what to do after you finish a diet (and what not to do). What to do when you’ve made progress, but finished your program. What to do to maintain the results you’ve earned—the results you deserve.
What to Do After You Finish a Diet: Things You Could Do, But Shouldn’t
After finishing any sort of nutrition plan, most people do one of a few things. None of them are inherently bad. Some of these tactics even make logical sense.
But there’s a problem—they’re not working.
These post-diet strategies, though well-intentioned, don’t lead to long-term success. Not for the vast majority of people, at least. Here are three of the most common approaches I see and why they don’t work:
1. Rinse and Repeat
“The program worked once, it’ll work again. I’ll start over from the beginning.”
It’s not a bad idea. And it’ll work—kind of. The tricky part here is that your results start slowing down. Eventually, they’ll come to a screeching halt. Probably sooner rather than later.
Fitness progress is simply a manifestation that your body is adapting to a stimulus. Training and nutrition provide that stimulus, your body adapts, and you the results in the mirror.
But once you adapt to the stimulus (read: get results), you reach an equilibrium and the same plan won’t keep working.
That’s why plateaus happen. It’s also why the rinse and repeat approach isn’t a great idea after finishing a diet. Your body’s already adapted to that specific stimulus and there isn’t much—or any—room for more adaptation.
Usually, it only takes a month or two for you to reach a new equilibrium and a diet to lose its potency. At that point, your results drop off. Even if you’re still putting in the effort, you’re not seeing the change. So you try harder. Still nothing.
It’s the insanity cycle of fat loss. And it leads to frustration, discouragement, and eventually complete abandonment of the plan.
Before you know it, you’ve erased all of your hard-earned progress.
2. Same Same, But Different
“Time to mix it up, try a new program, and keep moving forward with my goals.”
This is a much better approach than rinse and repeat. Unlike starting the same plan all over again, these people opt to use a different plan to achieve the same overarching goal. (Hence the title. It’s the same end goal, but a different approach.)
Again, this can work. But only for so long.
Your body isn’t the only thing that’ll adapt during a diet. Your metabolism adapts as well. And while losing inches off your waistline is the kind of adaptation you’re looking for, negative metabolic adaptation is not. In fact, it makes it harder to lose fat and easier to gain it. Not cool.
Chronic dieting, or jumping from one diet to the next over and over again, leads to negative metabolic adaptation.
In other words, your metabolism slows down when you diet. And it slows down even more when you have back-to-back dieting. The sad truth of the matter? In a seemingly perpetual effort to lose fat, most people stack diets back-to-back-to-back-to-back. And there’s a compound effect on their metabolic rate—instead of being just a bit slower, it ends up downright sluggish.
Over time, the down-regulation of your metabolism leaves you stuck starving yourself more and more. Without the right program to reverse metabolic slowdown, you’re setting yourself up for inevitable fat gain.
Just like that, you’re part of the 90–95% of people who regain lost weight.
3. Where’s the Pizza At?
“I’m done. Finally. That was awful, but I made it. Time to go eat everything I’ve been craving.”
Of these three, this is probably the least helpful. It’s also the most common.
If you swing a pendulum one direction, it eventually swings back the other way. That’s simple physics. When most people start a diet, they’ll push that proverbial pendulum to an extreme. On its own, this isn’t necessarily a problem. It can even lead to great results.
But it becomes a problem when that pendulum inevitably swings back.
The further to one extreme it goes, the harder it’ll be on the backswing. In the case of an unsustainable diet that heavily relies on rules and restriction, you’re reaching for everything you’ve been craving the second your diet’s over. Pizza. Ice cream. Burgers. Fries. All of the things.
Any plan can be followed for 30 days—even the strict ones. But it’s what happens on day 31 that really matters.
After an overly restrictive diet ends, most people rush off to eat their favorite foods again. To eat the things they’ve dearly missed while they stuck to the plan. To go back to “normal.” It breeds an unhealthy relationship with fitness that never ends well.
Unfortunately, “normal” undoes whatever progress you’ve made. Fast.
What to Do After You Finish a Diet: One Thing You Should Do
In a perfect world, there would be no official end to a diet. It’d be a lifestyle change that, once started, stuck with you forever. But the world of fitness is far from perfect.
And sometimes you just want to look extra awesome for a wedding, vacation, high school reunion, or summertime at the community pool. No matter what the it’s-a-lifestyle crowd says, that’s totally okay.
Most of us approach diets acutely, meaning they last until a specific goal is reached or beach season celebrated. Then the diet’s over.
Hitting your goals is great and I’m all for looking better in a bathing suit. But I don’t just want to help you get results. I want to help you keep them. What’s more, I want you to be able to say goodbye to restricting calories and eat like a human being again—without losing your hard-earned progress.
For that, you need to know what to do after you finish a diet.
Enter the Reverse Diet
With the right strategy, you can start eating more food without gaining fat. Without joining the majority of dieters that erase whatever progress they’ve made. And without repeating the yo-yo dieting that cripples long-term success for so many people.
How? Reverse dieting.
A well-programed reverse diet will steadily increase the number of calories you consume to facilitate the following:
– A seamless shift from fat-loss programming to maintenance, putting you in control of the pendulum’s backswing.
– Recovery from the negative metabolic adaptation that comes with chronic dieting, reviving your sluggish metabolism.
– Strategically eating more food—even your favorite foods—without undoing the results you’ve worked so hard for.
– Lean mass development without gaining unwanted body fat.
– Increased strength.
– Superpowers.
Okay, I made that last one up. But if you’re anything like most people, being able to eat more food and keep the fat-loss results you’ve earned is as good as having a superpower. Losing weight and keeping it off? That’ll put you in the fortunate minority of dieters that enjoy long-term success.
It’s time to not only get results but keep them too. Now that you know what to do after you finish a diet, you can. But I’m not done helping.
I also want you to be able to start implementing your own reverse diet. Like, today. Right now. That’s why I’m giving you everything you need to know about reverse dieting.
Want to lose fat and keep it off once for all?