DietCategoriesNutrition

Diets Don’t Work: Why Restrictive Eating Plans Fail (and What You Can Do Instead)

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Minneapolis based personal trainer and nutrition coach, Megan Schall. Megan’s been a distance coaching client of mine for a number of years (I write her training programs), but is someone I’ve referred many other clients to when they have any nutritional needs or questions.

She’s an awesome coach.

I’m always excited when I can provide sound and accessible nutrition based content on the site and I think you will appreciate Megan’s down-to-Earth approach and tone.

Enjoy!

Diet

Diets Don’t Work

According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, the word “diet” has a few different definitions:

  • Food and drink regularly consumed
  • A regimen of eating or drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight
  • To eat according to prescribed rules
  • (Added by TG) Doing everything in one’s power not to throw their face into an ax after avoiding carbohydrates for a week.

I’m guessing for most people, hearing the word diet brings up thoughts of the latter two definitions (excluding Tony’s brief interlude) – eating and drinking according to certain rules and/or with the aim of losing weight.

And when you have goals relating to your health, wellness, physical performance, or aesthetic appearance, what you eat is certainly a key player.

It would seem that if following a certain diet is going to help you reach your goals, you’d be motivated and excited to hop on board, yes? Shouldn’t it be easy to stick to a diet, see results, and keep it up?

Um, no.

If you’ve ever followed (or attempted to follow) a diet before – whether that means eating or avoiding certain foods, counting calories, points, or other numbers-based programs, or eating according to a specific schedule, you’re probably well aware of the challenges that come up.

Close Up Of Man Using Fitness Tracker To Count Calories For Post Workout Juice Drink He Is Making

(Of course, some people will need to follow certain “diets” to manage conditions or diseases, or for ethical or religious preference – being gluten free if you have Celiac for example, or avoiding animal products etc. For the purpose of this blog post, I am NOT referring to these kinds of diets. There will always be exceptions to any rule!)

So, why do diets routinely fail to produce results? And what can you do instead?

In my view, diets are problematic for several reasons:

1. Diets Are Inherently Restrictive and Create a Deprivation Mindset

As I mentioned, the very definition of the word diet is to eat sparingly or according to rules – to restrict your eating.

When you create restrictions or try to follow a rigid plan, your brain is in a state of stress and anxiety.

And when your brain is feeling stress and anxiety, it’s not just an uncomfortable place to be, but it’s also extremely difficult to make or sustain change.

Plus, restrictions – and the stress and anxiety they produce – usually result in a feeling of deprivation. Which creates more stress and anxiety.

Have you ever had the experience of trying to avoid a certain food, only to find that all you’re doing is thinking about the food you’re supposed to avoid?

Your brain is in a negative feedback loop: Restrictions  –> anxiety and stress –> deprived –> anxiety and stress etc.

When you’re caught in this negative head space, it’s a pretty miserable place to be. And being miserable does not bode well for forward progress or positive change.

2. Diets Take Away Your Autonomy

Diets are telling you what to do. No one likes to be told what to do. And when you are told what to do, what usually happens? You rebel and do the exact opposite.

Individuality going a different opposite direction

Having a sense of autonomy and control over your choices is key when it comes to behavior change that lasts. Giving away your autonomy to a diet plan is almost always going to backfire in the long run.

Not only that, you’re essentially outsourcing your hunger and fullness cues and food enjoyment to your diet plan.

You’re letting a diet dictate what you eat or when you eat or how much you eat, and it’s easy to lose touch with what your body really wants and needs.

This often leads to less enjoyment of food and eating, and you may feel unsatisfied even if you’re consuming more than enough.

It’s a lose-lose situation.

3. Diets Are Unsustainable

I think we’ve established that there isn’t a lot of enjoyment in a diet. And when there is no enjoyment, there is no sustainable, lasting change.

You might be able to follow a diet for a certain period of time – and you might even see great results – but eventually the restriction, stress brain, and lack of autonomy is going to catch up with you.

The whole idea of being “on” or “off” a diet makes it clear that these approaches are not built for the long haul. They may provide a quick fix, but they’re not helping you create long-term strategies that last.

5. Diets Don’t Factor in Your Real Life

This is a big one that I think gets overlooked: Diets are not meant for the actual life you are living.

Diet plans might work when conditions are ideal – when you don’t have a lot of other stressors going on, when your life is fairly stable and routine, and when you can put a lot of energy and effort into it.

But this is not reality for most people most of the time. Not everyone has the luxury to be able to make free range kale smoothies made with organic acai berries grown using unicorn tears and almond milk harvested from Jesus’s belly button.

Healthy Smoothie

You have jobs and families and responsibilities and crises…and that’s on a good day!

Real life is not counting calories or macros. Real life is work lunches and dinners with friends and family barbeques and birthday parties.

Diet plans don’t tend to fit seamlessly into real life. And if something doesn’t fit naturally into your reality, it’s not going to last.

6. Diets Ignore Underlying Factors

Another important consideration that diets miss are the many underlying issues that prevent people from making better nutritional choices, or really just implementing any change in the first place.

For example, if you’re chronically sleep deprived, it’s going to be extremely difficult to make the choices you want to make around food and eating, or movement, or whatever else in your life.

If you’re unable to manage stress appropriately, it’s going to affect those choices as well (not to mention make it hard to get good sleep! Cue the vicious cycle).

Diets work on the assumption that these other key factors of your health and well-being are taken care of, but at least in my experience, that is rarely the case.

Just like you can’t out-exercise a poor diet, you can’t out-diet poor sleep or stress management.

Addressing the foundational principles of good health needs to happen first.

Ok. Diets Don’t Work. Now What?

Perhaps you’re wondering:

If diets don’t work, what am I supposed to do? What are my other options?

I’m so glad you asked!

In a nutshell: You want to find what works best for *you* and fits into *your real life*, by developing skills and strategies that you can implement consistently over time and adapt as needed.

Instead of relying on a diet plan to tell you what to do, you can learn how to create your own path by building your toolbox and practicing the steps that move you in the right direction.

Learning and practicing the skills you need to get you where you want to go will be far more valuable -and get you far better results – than following a set of strict rules ever will.

  • Instead of trying to follow a certain diet plan, you could practice eating more slowly and noticing your own hunger and fullness cues.
  • You could try noticing and naming other factors that affect your food choices (sleep, stress, exercise etc.), and see if making changes in those areas is an effective way to change your eating habits.
  • Instead of counting calories or macros or points, you could experiment with what portion sizes work for you, and learn how to adapt depending on your hunger, appetite, or activity levels.
  • You could take note of how different foods make you feel or perform, whether that’s in the gym, at work, or just life in general.
  • Instead of restricting foods, you could practice enjoying meals without feeling guilty or overeating.
  • Instead of following a meal plan, you could develop planning and prepping strategies that fit into your life – so you can create your own meal plans that adapt to life’s ups and downs.

Meal prep concept. Glass airtight containers with cooked food veggies

Obviously, this all takes time and effort, and may feel like it will be way harder than being given a set of diet rules or a meal plan to follow.

But by making small changes over time, you can build the skills and strategies you need to make the best choices for you, your lifestyle, and your goals. (Hint hint: having a coach can come in handy!)

This approach is the opposite of an extreme diet: It’s sustainable, it gives you autonomy, it’s not restrictive or depriving, and it takes into consideration underlying issues and the context of your real life.

Ditch the diets.

Build skills that will last for the long-term.

Get results without hating life.

Dominate the world.

(Ok, I can’t guarantee that last one – but if it works…you’re welcome.)

About the Author

About the Author

Megan Schall is a certified nutrition coach and personal trainer located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Through her customized online nutrition coaching programs, Megan helps you clarify your goals and take action to address all aspects of well-being: nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement, mind-body awareness, and more. By building skills and routines that fit into your real life, Megan will help you make changes to your nutrition and self-care habits to meet your health and wellness goals and create sustainable, lasting results.
YouTube: HERE

 

 

 

CategoriesFat Loss Nutrition

5 Myths Killing Your Fat Loss Progress

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Boston-based strength coach and trainer, Ryan Wood. Ryan’s made a cameo appearance on this site in the past writing a two-part series on lessons he learned preparing for his first powerlifting meet. You can check those out HERE and HERE.

Switching gears, today he’s discussing lessons learned and myths he avoided in losing 25 lbs. and dropping down to 10% body fat. Like a boss.

28110314 - loosing weight, close up of muscular built man wearing too large jeans isolated on white background

Copyright: rangizzz / 123RF Stock Photo

5 Myths Killing Your Fat Loss Progress

Today I’m going to outline five fitness myths I avoided to lose 25lbs. (I previously wrote a post talking about seven things I learned dropping to 10% body fat which you can read HERE.)

Fitness myths run rampant, and, unfortunately, steer many people in the wrong direction. If fat loss is your goal then follow along closely as I discuss five of the most common fitness myths killing your fat loss progress.

Myth 1- You’ll Lose Strength

A lot of people fear losing strength when they begin a fat loss diet. Common belief says if you cut calories your strength has to suffer.

While you shouldn’t be too concerned about hitting one rep max personal records, you certainly don’t want to risk losing strength.

So what should you do?

The answer is carbohydrates. Too many people drastically cut carbs when beginning a fat loss diet. This usually results in quick weight loss but also a huge decrease in performance and strength. Carbs are your main energy source and fuel your training sessions. If you’d like to retain as much strength as possible while shedding excess body fat then keep your carbs in your diet for as long as possible.

I believe when fat loss is the primary goal you should train with higher volumes to help retain muscle mass as calories decrease.

Because of this, I suggest aiming to hit new 8-10 rep maxes

The higher volume training will help you preserve muscle, which when you transition back towards building strength, will be imperative for improving your top-end numbers.

Here’s me hitting some sumo deadlifts towards the END of my diet:

 

My best all-time sumo pull is 510lbs which was done at a powerlifting meet after months of prep and peaking.

It’s definitely possible to keep most of your strength, if not improving it slightly, albeit in different rep ranges.

Take home points:

  1. Keep carbs as high as possible to help fuel hard training sessions.
  2. Focus on improving 8-12 rep maxes, not maxing out.
  3. Keep the goal the goal. Don’t worry if you can’t hit your all time best at this exact moment in time. Focus on your fat loss goal if that’s your priority.

Myth 2- You Must Eat Clean And Avoid Certain Foods

The gurus say the only way to get leaner is to eat clean or only eat gluten free, organic, dairy free, or sugar-free .

This is what I think of when I hear ‘clean eating’:

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think eating whole foods the majority of the time is a great way to get leaner and in better shape. It’s what I do *most of the time.

But eating clean 100% of the time is not a requirement for fat loss. Nor is avoiding entire food groups or demonizing certain foods.

Why?

Because I love ice cream too much.

And burgers.

And ice cream. Oh, I said that already.

You can and certainly should be able to enjoy a treat every now and then while still reaching your fat loss goals.

I did it and you can, too.

You just have to be in a calorie deficit, which means you’re consuming fewer calories than you’re burning.

If you’ve got room to spare in the calorie department, enjoy an ice cream. Just make sure you’re still under your calorie allotment for the day.

Remember, calories are your number one fat loss priority. No amount of clean eating will help you get results if you’re consuming 1000 more calories than you should be.

Take home points:

  1. Create an energy deficit by taking away 250-500 calories from your baseline diet.
  2. Eat a balanced diet of whole foods but don’t fear or avoid certain foods because someone tells you to.
  3. Enjoy treats every now and then provided they fit into your calorie goals.

Myth 3- You Have to Diet For A Set Amount of Time

About a week and a half left on my 12-week diet I hit my goal weight and felt pretty good with my physique and the progress I had made.

So I ‘ended’ my diet.

what the what? GIF – wut tinafey 3orock GIFs in wut

Basically, I went from continuing to try to lose any more weight right into a maintenance phase.

You can set goals to diet for 8,10, or 12 weeks but that doesn’t mean you HAVE to diet the entire time.

If you hit your goals early, then by all means, stop the diet and move into a more sustainable diet.

You’re the only one that can determine if you’re happy with your progress and if you should stick out your diet for another couple weeks.

I’m not saying this to give you an excuse to end your diet a month early. I’m simply saying if you’ve put in 8 or 9 weeks and have hit your goal weight OR better yet, feel phenomenal with how you look, then stop your diet.

Dieting is not a sustainable part of fitness. It’s a somewhat brief period of time in the grand scheme of things to help you reach your goals.

Put in the work, be consistent, and end your diet early if you’re happy with where you’re at physically and mentally.

Take home points:

  1. You can end a diet early if you’re happy with where you’re currently at progress wise.
  2. Once you end your diet, slowly add calories back in to stabilize your weight and give yourself some diet ‘relief.’
  3. On the flip side, don’t extend your diet week after week because you aren’t at your final end goal. Sometimes it takes several 10 or 12 week periods to reach your goal. As a point of reference, my progress took about 7 months.

Myth 4- You Must Do Cardio to Lose Fat

I’m not a cardio hater, I promise.

But the truth is, cardio is not the magic to fat loss.

33301123 - sport, fitness, lifestyle, technology and people concept - men exercising on treadmill in gym

Copyright: dolgachov / 123RF Stock Photo

Better yet, it’s 100% not required to lose fat.

Can it help? Of course, it can.

But it’s definitely not something you have to do in order to trim up. As long as your diet is in order, you will lose fat doing pretty much anything. I prefer a heavy dose of resistance training combined with a calorie deficit.

Cardio is a tool that can be used to enhance progress but I wouldn’t rely on it as your only form of exercise if you can help it. Check out THIS piece where I discussed why I prefer lifting over cardio for fat loss.

Take home points:

  1. Cardio is not a requirement for fat loss. A calorie deficit is the number one most important. Period.
  2. If you like or enjoy cardio then include it in your programming. Try to have more lifting days than cardio if possible. This will help you retain more lean mass while losing body fat.
  3. Cardio is not magic. Don’t rely on it to make up for a poor diet.

Myth 5- You Shouldn’t Get Hungry If You’re Eating the Right Foods

Yea. I know. It’s crazy to think some people believe that eating the ‘right’ foods will keep them from getting hungry during a diet.

The truth is, if you aren’t getting hungrier the further you get into your diet, your results are probably pretty crappy. Hunger is a fact of dieting. Eating less (calorie wise) is required to lose body fat.

There are no magical foods that will alleviate your hunger when you’re 10 or 11 weeks into a fat loss diet. Sure you can increase food volume by consuming more low-calorie foods like dark green veggies, but hunger is real and very important.

It tells you whether or not you’re headed in the right direction. You should be experiencing hunger as you progress week to week in your diet. At the beginning of your diet, you might not be super hungry. However, every time you make an adjustment to your plan, you will feel hunger rumbling deep down inside your stomach.

Use this as feedback that progress is being made. Don’t get tricked into believing that you shouldn’t get hungry after losing 10, 15 or 20+ pounds. Anyone that says you won’t be hungry during your diet is completely crazy or has never dieted before.

Remember, you won’t starve. Being hungry is completely normal during a diet so try your best to embrace it.

Take home points:

  1. Hunger is a normal part of dieting
  2. While still controlling for calories, eating lower-calorie, volume-dense foods can help with hunger a little bit.
  3. Use hunger as feedback that you are making progress

Wrap Up

If you can avoid these five fitness myths you’ll likely be off to a good start. To help you set up your own fat loss diet, grab your free copy of ’10 Commandments of Fat Loss’ HERE.

Remember that progress, especially fat loss, takes time and lots of hard work. It won’t happen overnight that’s for damn sure.

About the Author

CategoriesNutrition

Losing Fat and Building Muscle With a Simple Lifestyle Diet

Note from TG: Today’s guest post comes courtesy of Ohio based personal trainer, Collin Messer. Collin wrote an interesting guest post a few weeks ago HERE, and afterwards proposed a post on how to help people develop a simple lifestyle diet. I like simple. Simple works. Enjoy.

As the saying goes, the best diet is the one that you stick to. Some people have the capacity to stick to intense or complex diets and they get great results. But that’s not me. I prefer a nice lifestyle kind of diet that I can just tweak here and there to burn some fat or grow some muscle.

Usually my clients resonate with this too after they’ve wrecked their metabolism doing all kinds of crazy diets and detoxes. This led me to take the most simple approach I could. I start with a general foundation, then make small adjustments as I go depending on the client.

This is how you do it…

The Foundation

First I start with a simple foundation that all my clients can adhere too pretty well. There are five rules that I have found to be fairly painless for most people to follow.

  1. Eat well 90% of the time and don’t worry about the other 10%.
  2. Eat 2-3 meals per day.
  3. The majority of your diet should be lean meats and vegetables with occasional intake of fruits and carb sources like white rice, quinoa, or oats.
  4. Avoid processed foods, food products, and sugar as best as possible.
  5. Try to only drink water, tea, or coffee.

Usually when I give new clients these foundational principles they drop a few pounds of water weight and lose some of the bloating they didn’t even realize was there. I’ll have people build good habits and focus only on these rules for 1-2 weeks before doing anything else.

One thing to notice here is that I didn’t give any recommendation on calorie intake. I have found that by cleaning up the food choices people tend to eat in normal amounts and their body adjusts to a healthier lifestyle.

 

Building Upon The Foundation

After I establish a solid foundation with the client then I’ll start to build upon it and tweak things depending on the person’s goals, habits, and lifestyle. There are a lot of things you could do from here but I have a few adjustments I routinely make.

Note that I only add one or two adjustments at a time and it always depends on the client. Not every option is good for everyone, use your own judgement and you’ll do just fine.

Intermittent Fasting For Fat Loss

If the client is focusing on fat loss then I like to work in some intermittent fasting. I really like the 16/8 model found at LeanGains.com. It’s essentially a 16 hour fast followed by an 8 hour eating window. The easiest way to do this is to just skip breakfast and have your first meal at a your regular lunch time. So you would have a normal lunch, a normal dinner, and a meal or snack in between as necessary.

At this point I still don’t tell clients to try and eat less. For most people, the “diet” part is the fast in the morning. If you try to lower calories and skip breakfast then you’re probably going to be drastically undereating and clinging to that body fat for dear life.

Note From TG: for more information on Intermittent Fasting, I’d highly recommend checking out THIS resource by the peeps over at Precision Nutrition. Easily one of the best resources I’ve ever come across on the topic. It doesn’t make your head hurt with big words and it’s free. So there’s that.

Carb Back Loading For Fat Loss

Some people just don’t like skipping breakfast. It gives them a reason to get out of bed and not hate the early morning life. And that’s just fine because I can work with that. My go to solution here is back loading the carbs to later in the day.

By shifting the carbs later in the day you body will stay more sensitive to insulin for a longer period of time (one of the goals of intermittent fasting). Depending on the person and their lifestyle then I’ll have them eat their first carbs at lunch, post workout, or dinner. So, they’re eating breakfast but still taking advantage of the low levels of insulin that the.

My go to breakfast option that won’t spike insulin is a few eggs with a fatty meat like bacon or sausage. Top this off with some black coffee and you’ll be good to go.

IF or Carb Back Loading For Muscle Gain

While these strategies are great for fat loss you can definitely use them for muscle gain. I’m currently using the 16/8 IF strategy to build muscle myself. The main difference is to make sure you’re eating above maintenance on the calories. So if you can’t fit in all of you calories in 2-3 meals in an 8 hour window then this isn’t the method for you.

The reason why I skip breakfast even though I’m building muscle is because I feel it helps me stay leaner while still building muscle. More muscle with less fat is always a good goal. Plus it fits my lifestyle well as I feel very clear headed and focused in the morning, so I get a lot of writing and programming done.

Refeed Meals

With the foundation I laid out, it would be easy to find yourself eating a pretty low carb diet (less than 100g carbs per day). Though that’s not exactly the point of the foundation, it usually benefits people to reduce their carb intake a bit.

After the initial 1-2 week adjustment period, if the person seems to be continually eating lower amounts of carbs then I usually advise to up their carb intake at dinner. A sweet potato or some extra rice will work well here. If they have hit a fat loss plateau then we’ll usually break through it again.

This works well for some people, but not everyone. They either think they’re upping their carbs when they really aren’t, or they just still need more. This is where the gift of a refeed meal comes in. For one dinner, I want them to significantly ramp up carbs and whatever sugary dessert they want.

The refeed is going to really help kickstart more fat loss and provide more energy. Plus it’s always a great mental break for them to enjoy their favorite dessert again.

Be careful with these though. The refeed doesn’t mean you can go on a weekend binge fest while watching the entire Lord of The Rings trilogy in one sitting. Usually just having a big bowl of ice cream at dinner is going to work well.

Putting It All Together

There you have it folks, this is the template for building a successful lifestyle diet. You start with the foundation and then adjust it as you go to maintain steady progress towards your goal. Once you reach your goal, its as simple as adjusting your calorie intake to maintenance level and you’re good to go.

Sometimes the most simple things are the most effective.

About the Author

Collin Messer is a Personal Trainer at MesserFit Strength and Conditioning in Lebanon, OH. He primarily works with younger athletes and weekend warriors. When he’s not crushing deadlifts or back bends he’s writing at CollinMesser.com about all things life and fitness.

CategoriesUncategorized

Simple Is a Simple Does

Check this out.

It all started with my girlfriend and I deciding to head out for a nice romantic evening of steak tips and watching some baseball at the local tavern, when out of no where eight time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman decided to show up and hit on Lisa.

In no uncertain terms, I told him to step off.  Words were exchanged, punches were thrown.  I don’t have to tell you the rest.

Then, on top of that, once outside the restaurant I spotted some orphaned kittens being harassed by a street gang.  Predictably, I stepped in armed only with a roll of quarters and Ronnie Coleman’s jawbone, and saved the day.

Long story short, while walking home afterwards, I rolled my ankle on the sidewalk, and subsequently I’m pretty banged up as a result.  And while I could sit here and continue to pretend that all of this actually happened, I’d be lying (but I think you figured that out already).  In reality, this was just a long-winded way of saying that I’m not writing a blog today.

Instead, I have a guest post from Jason Bonn who did such a good job of filling in a few weeks ago, that I had no reservations when he asked if he could give it another go around.

Enjoy!

Ockham’s Razor

William of Ockham. “Who is that?” you ask. He’s likely the solution to your problems. Let me explain.

I’ve said it before how fortunate I am to be working with the crew at Cressey Performance. They’re always more than helpful to assist me in any way—whether it’s personal or professional. A recent conversation with Tony found us talking about, among other things, the deadlift.

The conversation started with me looking over Tony’s plan to get to a 600 lbs pull. This was of particular interest to me because I’ve been stuck at about the same pull for a while now and have a goal of getting to 500 lbs. Given the importance of this goal, I started to pick his brain a bit on things like: the role/purpose of specific assistance exercises, set/rep schemes, foot placement, etc…

Tony was more than helpful in explaining those relatively detailed things. However, what I failed to realize initially was that there was a repeated theme. He kept stating something that I didn’t pick up on until the end of the conversation: “More 90% lifts”.

Basically, what Tony was saying was that in order to lift heavier, I needed to start lifting heavier. You see, I had been lifting relatively heavy for a while, but using reps mainly in the 3-5 range. Once every few weeks, I’d go into 2 reps—that was about it.

To lift heavier, I needed to practice lifting heavier. So simple, but for whatever reason I kept missing it.

So why did I keep missing this seemingly simple answer? I honestly don’t know. I actually think part of me actually wanted some intricate answer to my obstacle.

Maybe it was because I wanted to think I was ‘different’ and that I needed some special protocol. Or that normal “rules” didn’t apply to me. Perhaps I thought I’d feel like an idiot if that were all it took.

But now that I really think about it, I don’t want a complex solution.

Who the hell wants complexity?

Consider this, would you rather have some sort of illness with the only remedy being some magical plant grown on top of Mt. Fuji? Or would you rather have the ‘cure’ be some rest & relaxation?  Preferrably with Mila Kunis feeding me grapes. I know what I’m choosing.

It all got me to thinking about what other areas of my life I had been bypassing the simpler solution for a more in depth one.

  • Perhaps the last time I struggle to drop fat, I didn’t need to get worked up over the insulin response of certain foods. I probably was just eating too much. (You can overeat quality food, ya know?)
  • Perhaps all I needed to do was just say “Hi. I’m Jay” to that girl. Maybe then the subsequent kick to my shins would’ve never happened.
  • Perhaps that student didn’t have a short attention span or a learning disorder. Maybe I just needed to move them closer to the front where they could see/hear better.

What you should do now:

Consider the places in your life where you seem to be stuck/having trouble. Now look to the simplest possible solution to fix it.

For example:

  • Not losing any weight? Maybe it’s not a thyroid issue. Maybe you don’t need carb/calorie cycling. Perhaps you’re just not in a calorie deficit via intake and/or expenditure.
  • Having a tough time going to sleep? Maybe you don’t need to supplement with Phosphatidylserine and/or ZMA. Maybe all you need is to stop watching TV and/or being on the computer directly before going to bed.
  • Can’t seem to get through to your co-worker? Maybe they’re not just being a jerk and/or ignoring you. Try speaking to them at a time when they’re not swamped with work.
  • Can’t get your client to respond? Instead of emailing them when their inbox is already constantly flooded try picking up the phone and calling.
  • Strength going down? Before constructing the “perfect” workout drink and knocking back 80g of sugar in a 4:1 ratio with hydrolyzed protein, look at how much volume you’re doing. Perhaps you’re missing the concept of competing demands.

Ockham’s Razor—with competing theories, the simplest one is best. Does this always hold true? No. There are definitely situations that can’t be fixed with a little tweak. However, I know that the next time my cable TV isn’t working, I won’t immediately throw a hissy fit and call the cable company to complain. I’ll check to see if it’s plugged in first.