Wondering when the best time to start a diet is? We dive into the details so you can see the results you deserve.
Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of clients unsure of when to start a new diet. Some decided to wait until January, only to find they were a stone heavier having indulged over Christmas, making it a real struggle to achieve their goals in the New Year.
We’ve also seen women who decided to get started over winter, only to find it was impossible to stick to regular “diet plans” because they didn’t fit in with their Christmas social calendar.
This meant many of these women were trying hard, putting in the effort, but ultimately failing to see the results that they wanted. So what is the best thing to do at this time of year? And when is the best time to start a diet?
In today’s blog, we’re going to reveal our top strategies which we’ve used with thousands of women inside our Fit Over 40 plan, to ensure they succeed no matter what time of year it is.
With these tips, you’ll be able to drop a couple of dress sizes, fit into all your favourite clothes, and feel incredible wearing anything you like! We also speak about this in our podcast.
The problem with waiting
Most people’s logic is to wait until the diary is completely clear, then to start a diet plan. Now’s a common time to wait, with the mindset of starting in January. This sounds sensible in theory, but it doesn’t work for people who want to lose weight and not regain it all again every time they get busy or something goes wrong.
The problem with this mindset is that there’s always going to be the same things to contend with every year:
- Birthdays
- Easter
- Summer holidays
- Kids parties
- Weddings
- Cold dark winters
- Christmas
And, in our experience working with thousands of women over 40, their life is going to always throw up the same curveballs:
- Deadlines at work
- Family illness
- Ageing parents
- Work disrupting home life
- Christmas parties
If you always stop every time these things happen, you’ll stay on the same yo-yo dieting path forever, gaining and losing the same stone, but ultimately going nowhere.
So, it’s actually important you DO have things going on whilst you are losing weight, so that you know how to tackle them.
How to make sure you succeed at any time of year
In order to succeed at any time of year, you need to do something that’s right for you and your hormones. Otherwise you won’t see any results, no matter how hard you try. This means it doesn’t matter when you start a diet, because you’ll always succeed.
Do something that’s flexible
Having a flexible plan means you’re more likely to see results. Flexible workouts mean you can move them around to fit your schedule, and you don’t have to spend ages commuting to and from the gym. Our clients have 30 and 45-minute options that they can do from home, even in a lunch break, and succeed.
A flexible nutrition approach means that, if you have to do something like cut out carbs entirely or starve yourself, it is going to be impossible to succeed. This is why almost everyone who follows a traditional diet regains all the weight again within a year or less.
However, as long as you’re on track 80% of the time, you can see good results, typically 1-2lbs a week. A flexible nutrition approach will mean you can still eat what you want and succeed.
We get clients to figure out what we call their Festive-Fun Formula, where they add up all the social events they have between now and the new year, and divide this by 90 (3 months), then times by 100 to get a percentage. The essence of this is that if you get over 80%, you can see good progress, 70% is enough to see slow progress, and 60% enough to maintain.
Every client we’ve spoken to said it was above 80%, so for most people, social events are not as much of an issue as you’d think!
Face it head-on
In order to lose weight, it requires a mindset shift. If it’s ever going to happen again, you need to learn how to tackle this situation once and for all, otherwise you’ll never keep the weight off.
One thing we’ve learned, having coached over 6,000 clients, is that regardless of the situation, there’s ALWAYS a way to still see good results. The problem is, most diets make people feel like they need to be perfect.
In reality, dieting is a sliding scale and there’s always a better choice. For example, a tuna sandwich is miles better than a slice of cake from a canteen.
What can help with this is having a coach who’s helped people in a similar situation to you. We’ve seen every problem 1000 times over, so we know exactly what to do to make it work.
There’s always a way!
If you knew how to handle these situations, you already would have reached your goals. It can really help to have someone give you some new strategies and perspectives.
What we know is that most of the clients we work with don’t have much spare time. They don’t have hours a day to research the best food choices for every situation. Instead, we’ve spent all the time figuring this out, so they don’t have to. We know exactly what they need to do to succeed in any situation (without missing out)!
