Latest / Beyond Fat Loss / Should You Follow a Diet Plan? Coaches Reveal the Pros & Cons
Transcript
- Katie & Sean Darlow: Welcome to the Beyond Fat Loss podcast. Where we don't just stop at fat loss, you learn all about the good stuff that follows. How to build muscle, how to enjoy more food and how to stay lean without going to extremes. We're your hosts, Katie and Sean, and today we're going to be sharing our opinions on diet plans. In this episode, you'll learn the pros and cons of following a diet plan. You'll have a better understanding of where they are most appropriate for you and whether we would recommend them for your particular circumstances or not. Our opinions have changed about diet plans since we first started culture. So if you've ever wondered whether or not you should be on a diet plan, this should help answer that question for you. If you enjoyed this episode or you'd like to support the podcast, drop us a like, follow or subscribe on whichever platform you're listening on. You can also tag us on your socials or share it with a friend. If you want to connect with us and see what we get up to on a day to day basis, you can find our Instagram links in the description. So pop down there and drop us a follow. You can put some faces to the voices, probably get more benefit from that by putting Katie's face to the voice and putting mine to the voice, but there we are. You can do it if you want. So diet plans. Let's start by giving a quick bit of background. What sort of diet plans will we see in the fitness world? I think the term I'm most familiar with in the fitness world and always have been is cookie cutter plans. What's a cookie cutter plan? when it's one diet that's set out to achieve X result. For example, follow this 21 day template to drop 20 pounds or whatever ridiculous things out there. That is just one set diet plan that you can follow, which ultimately is just going to put people into a calorie deficit, right? But it's claiming to be this magic diet. If you follow this, the letter, you're going to get X result. Yeah, it's the same for everyone, isn't it? It doesn't matter who you are, what height you are, what age you are, what gender you are, how often you move. None of that matters. It's just, this is your diet plan. It's the same for everyone. Normally they have a name, don't they? They have a name in front of them. The Carnivore Diet, the Keto Diet, the Atkins Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, whatever the hell the bloody diet is. Sometimes it's someone's particular method or approach and... Yeah, it's a made up name, yeah. Yep, somebody will decide that they've invented a new form of diet, which is basically just picking and choosing some things to restrict from your diet, which then if you eat those things on a regular basis, by removing them, you'll be in a calorie deficit and the coach puts their name on it and calls it their diet. You can basically, I think anyone can make up a diet, couldn't they really? Like you could just start removing something from your diet this week, Katie. What's the non-chocolate diet? I hope you can fat chance me signing up for a non-chocolate diet. Dalo diet. Katie lost six kilos in 10 weeks by removing nothing but chocolate from her diet. She has also murdered her husband. Yeah, be careful what you wish for, Be careful what you wish for. So anyway, yeah, these cookie cutter diets, I mean, they work for one purpose, they create restriction, that restriction leads to consuming less calories. It can sometimes work for a period. but that's all they're good for really. And if you're going into that diet with that awareness, then you know, it can and probably will get you a result, it's knowing that it's... That's not the main reason you're getting a result per se, because of this particular diet. It's because that particular diet is set up to put you into a calorie deficit so that you do lose body fat. I think if you can go into it without awareness, that is very important. But unfortunately, a lot of people don't go into a cookie cutter plan with that awareness, which can make it hard to transition out of it without feeling like you're absolutely failing or you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, or without having some long term damaging viewpoints on what particular foods will do for your body fat levels and your body composition. For example, if you do a low carb diet and you lose weight, then naturally you would assume that it was the carbohydrates that are causing you to maintain or gain weight. But it's not the carbohydrates. It's just the fact that the calories in those carbohydrates are a large bulk of what your total daily intake are. So when you remove those calories from your diet because you cut down on the carbohydrates, then naturally you put yourself into a lower calorie state, quite often in a calorie deficit, and you'll see weight loss. Like this stuff has been kind of debunked by scientific literature. We know that all calorie deficits work regardless of where the calories come from. As long as you're in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight, you will lose fat. But. It's really important for your relationship with food and your long-term kind of diet system. So your lifestyle diet, it's really important that you understand where those changes are coming from in your body. It's not because of a particular food, it's because of the calories that are in that food. Absolutely, I think the cookie cutter plans can lead to... guess biases towards certain foods and also skew your judgment or knowledge on particular food groups, which can impact your relationship with food or it can impact how your life outside of a diet is run. Which in my eyes I don't particularly like. I don't particularly like. think it can keep people back from really living a life that they enjoy and feeling in control of their nutrition. Yeah, I think it often masks the truth, doesn't it? It masks the truth about energy balance and how that works. It's a fundamental law. Energy balance is a fundamental law. It's something that you can argue until the calories come home about how you get to a state of being in the calorie deficit, but you cannot argue based on the overwhelming masses of evidence we have that you will... that you will lose weight when you're in a calorie deficit and if you're not in a calorie deficit you can't lose weight. It's just been tested so many hundreds of thousands of times that we just can't deny that fact. It's so extensively studied. everything when it comes to being on a diet plan. for weight loss in particular and for fat loss will always be determined by... reduction of calories to get you into a calorie deficit. And how you go about that can be done in many different ways right? It can be but that's what the cookie cutter plans are set out to achieve most of time. And most of the time cookie cutter plans are designed for people that are looking to lose weight or lose fat I think is probably fair to say. I would go as far as saying most diet plans are undertaken with the purpose of losing fat but As we'll get to later, there are a few different variations of that that can be used outside of fat loss goals. Yeah, another type of diet plan, which you'll see, is like a meal template. So a meal template is something that you would use for ideas. It could be something that you follow somebody on social media for. You copy their day of eating, for example. It could be something that you ask ChatGBT to provide for you. Depending on how much input you put into that, AI can give you a really decent personalized meal plan or meal template as well. these meal templates basically just give you ideas of what to eat and can help to put together a meal structure which you can repeat, which is followable. It's not necessarily as restrictive. It doesn't necessarily have to be ⁓ designed to remove particular food groups or particular food sources from your diet entirely. It's more a case of having an outline to follow, isn't it? Absolutely, absolutely. And it depends what level of meal template then, isn't it? Whether it's just a generic meal template or some more personalised meal template, that would probably dictate how restricted or not restricted you find it, how helpful you find it for yourself. But they can be helpful because... You don't know what you don't know about nutrition, right? So sometimes it can be simple swaps you wouldn't even think of when you put a meal template together for yourself, even if you have a decent knowledge of nutrition. There may be certain things that you're just not aware of. And sometimes having ⁓ a meal template that's maybe a bit more bespoke to you, that can just open your mind to what possibilities ⁓ are there to help you in a fat loss phase, for example. And that leads us onto the other type of plan, right? A more bespoke diet plan. And even these should only serve a certain purpose of your journey. Diet plans. You're giving too much nuance at this stage, babe. We've got all these questions to get through to discuss all the nuance. We're just trying to bring the audience into a state of awareness where they know what the different options are out there, OK? OK, cool. You're going into too much. OK. It's meant to be a brief intro. And that introduces the other type of diet plan, a bespoke diet plan. And if we ever make a diet plan, this is what we do, Yeah, so this is much more personalized. This is something which often is supported with regular changes and adaptations. It evolves as you go through the process. This is not just a copy and pasting. This will be a diet plan made specifically for you, your lifestyle, your... ⁓ current body composition anthropometrics it's Why are you looking at me so blank? Sorry, I don't know, with body competition, do you just mean by goals by that, is it? No, babe, you would base a diet plan when you calculate the calories and the protein. mean. Okay. Oh, God. Yeah, I know, sorry. I'll start again. Yeah, I didn't understand where you were going with that. Okay, sorry. Jesus Christ, this is... I didn't even use my luck enough, I was trying to understand where you were going with it. Here we go again. Carry on, carry on. Yeah, so this is a very heavily personalized variation of a diet plan. It's most likely going to evolve and adapt over time. This is something that is often supported with regular guidance, with regular checkpoints and reviews, often provided by some sort of coach, nutritionist or dietitian. It will probably change throughout time as your goals change, as your results are experienced. This is probably the best application in my opinion of having a diet plan rather than just having a template or a copy and paste program. This is where you're more likely to get the best results and you're probably going to find this easier to stick to in terms of adherence as well. I agree fully. But even then, isn't it Sean, even then. diet plans will serve a particular part of the journey for a particular goal or section or... ⁓ Even then, Sean, diet plans will only be part of a journey, not the whole journey. Because ultimately, we shouldn't be relying on a diet plan for the rest of our lives. No, I'm going to explain why as we go through the podcast now. Just before we go any further, think it's important to note that... Most people providing diet plans on the internet are not actually qualified to be providing those diet plans. This is a little bit of a gray area, isn't it, Katie? Because... It's not actually within the scope of practice of a personal trainer or even an online coach to be providing bespoke diet plans to individuals. You would question whether, know, ethically, you should be able to do that. I think unfortunately, because of how accessible so many of these diet plans are now, we almost feel like we have a duty and an obligation as an online coach to provide forms of diet plan because people will come into our space, we'll get clients that, members that come to us or, you know, people that find our page will... outright ask us, you do diet plans? Would you be able to do me a diet plan? They're looking for that solution. They're looking for that particular element of coaching. And if you don't provide that, then that individual could then go and work with somebody else that could provide a copy and paste plan with no real consideration for this individual's needs that won't support them through making those changes, that won't help to adapt their plan around their lifestyle, around their circumstances, around their events. So they give half the level of detail and support that we do, but yet they will go to that person because that person says yes to something which they shouldn't really be providing. So it's a real gray area, isn't it? And it's a real challenge for, I guess, conscientious coaches like us that really want to provide a good service and give people the standard of coaching which they need. Yeah, I agree fully. It is a grey area. And you're spot on by saying that it's not in a lot of people's scopes of practice to be able to even provide a full hog meal plan to follow. And let's be real, it goes bigger than just a meal plan, isn't it? People think they need a meal plan and I'm not arguing that there's certain scenarios that it does help, but people think they need a meal plan and that will solve all of the problems, the issues that they've got going on. It's not quite that simple. It's not quite that simple. It needs coaching, it needs support, it needs adjustments as you go along because there is never one size fits one size approach for it all. And even for yourself. You evolve, you change, you grow, your needs, your goals, your lifestyle, all of that changes as well as time goes on. Yeah, pretty frequently. Like it can change day to day, change week to week. And being able to... Understand nutrition and manage your nutrition around all of those is what's really going to empower you and allow you to get the most out of your nutrition for the rest of your life. That will never be solved by just having a diet plan and a diet plan alone. Katie, you're going too far ahead with this conversation. You're going into all the reasons why you should think beyond the diet plan. I did not mention about going beyond the diet plan. It's got nothing to do with this conversation. I was saying to you about the ethical side of things where coaches should not be delivering diet plans as their regular practice. Like average PT's, average coaches should not be doing that. You're completely, you're going to like 0.6, 0.7 of the podcast. Like you're going way further ahead here. I'm just responding to what you're saying. You're not responding to what I'm saying, babe. did not have like nothing that I said that anything to do with what you're saying it did. Did I have anything to do with it? Like you don't need to be telling people about one size fits all diet plans right now. I'm saying ethically, like it's difficult for us as coaches because people will come in and ask for a diet plan, but we're not actually qualified to deliver diet plans. You learn this on your course. like dieticians are qualified to give diet plans. Like quali, like nutritionist isn't really a formally recognized qualification in academic spaces. So like Technically we shouldn't be doing it, but we're forced to do it because people will go somewhere else, they will buy it off someone else, they will go on ChatGVT and get one, and they're not actually getting what they need out of those things. our hands are tied behind our backs a little bit because again, we could do a better job with this than what somebody else will do, but they're gonna go and get it from anyone if we don't provide it. That's what I'm talking about. It's got nothing to do with what you're saying. How do I misunderstood what you're referring to then? Are you present with this conversation today? really am. I really am, Bib. OK. I really am. I just didn't say what you expected me to say, that's all. Yeah, I agree, Sean. It's a real grey area. It's a difficult one to navigate. Like correctly you said, dieticians are really the only ones qualified to give diet plans out. But let's be real, every Tom, Dick and Harry who's ⁓ an online coach seems to be giving them out at the moment. probably have a bit of a rant and talk about this all day because it does grind my gears. It really does. But I know we're going to cover a lot of this naturally now throughout the podcast as we as we run through some kind of pretty nice questions and we go through the process. our opinions have changed many times on diet plans over the years, haven't they? Because there was a long time where I was absolutely against doing them. I was absolutely against handing them out for many of the reasons that we're going to talk through about where they aren't suitable for people because of the dependency that people can form on having a diet plan. I actually believe that for individuals to get the most out of their nutrition, there needs to be some form of education and autonomy based learning where they're able to learn how to manage things for themselves. People need to improve their ability to make the best decisions for them and to think and to plan. And I don't think that this is encouraged with a diet plan per se. But my opinion has changed a number of times and I've gone full circle with this because I've seen how many people look for diet plans. I've seen where they can be useful in certain stages of individuals' journeys, like you've mentioned, Katie. And I feel like... It's not a, if you can't beat them, then join the mentality. It's more a case of. People are gonna go and do this anyway. So if they're gonna go and do it from somebody else that's potentially gonna give them a really poor version of what you could provide them, then why not do something to a high standard that you know you can deliver well, and you know that you're gonna be doing it from a good place, and stop that person from having a few really poor experiences of using a diet plan or having coaching. Because eventually, like many of our members, people will come back around eventually to try and find a better solution for them when they've had bad experiences with all this other stuff. So if we can just cut out all that stuff, if we can just cut out all that negativity, cut out all that really harmful, shoddy diet plans, copy and paste diet plans, terrible coaching advice, feeling like a failure all the time, on or off plan mentality. several years of wasted time. If we can cut out all of that, then I would be prepared to do something that I'm not entirely a strong believer in, if that makes sense. There's a lot of what you said that I fully agree with and my view on them have changed a lot over the years as well. And I think I'm very much ⁓ of a believer that... I think it's very important for individuals to have the education and the experience so that they can build that long-term autonomy, be able to make decisions for themselves and just feel in control, right? And for me, diet plans alone don't do that. And that's why I was against them for so long because diet plans can't, they're not allowing you to make decisions, they're not allowing you to make mistakes. they don't give you that experience, which is so valuable for your learning and your development and your growth when it comes to your nutrition. So very much like you, wasn't, didn't, used to like them or not, but now I understand why they serve a purpose. And it's not so much as a diet plan that serves a purpose. It's the template. It's a template that allows an individual to see how a day can be structured pretty well, including all the foods that they love, to hit the calorie goal that meets their sorry, the calorie target that allows them to meet the goal that they want to achieve. It's giving that structure to build upon. So even now, I wouldn't say I'm still a full hog believer of diet plans. I'm a believer of a meal template, a structure that allows people to build from. Yeah, really well explained. I don't think it's as simple as just saying yes or no. Do you need a diet plan? Yes or no. I think there are different stages and different timeframes and different individuals that a diet plan could work well for. I think it's about understanding that individual circumstances. what is the best course of action for them to be able to manage their nutrition more effectively for this period of time. And sometimes that best option is a diet plan temporarily. I still stand by the fact that there needs to be a level of personalization to it, a high level of personalization, and I still stand by the fact that it needs to be adaptable. But think it's wrong to take a hard stance. And this is something that I've got better at doing over time as a coach, as I've got more experience, as I've acquired more knowledge. I tend to sit a little bit more in the middle ground and not just take like a hard stance one way or the other. Like I used to, it used to be a hard no to diet plans. Whereas now I'm more aligned with this may be a good option for this individual for this period of time, but I'm gonna consider all the different options first and then we'll go from there. Absolutely. So let's chat about some of the benefits of having a diet plan then. You mentioned the first one, didn't you? You mentioned about a clear structure and routine. I think that's the most obvious benefit, isn't it? Yeah, because whenever you start something new, it's like you have all of these thoughts running around your mind, decisions to make. It can be quite overwhelming when you start something new. There's usually more than one variable to think about. And being able to have something streamlined for you can be really helpful. We all look for examples to follow, we? Anything that we want to be successful at, we look for an example to follow. So if you have an example to follow, it automatically provides some peace of mind and some clarity that you're going to be doing the right thing. And like you mentioned, it's less decision making. Decision fatigue is very real. It's something which has a big impact on adherence to any sort of nutrition goal. being able to stick to something consistently for long enough to get the result you want. If you're having to think too much about what you need to shop for, what you need to cook, what you need to portion out, what you need to put in your trackers, all of this stuff adds up and you kind of add the multiplier of being in a calorie deficit and feeding like... your brain isn't firing on all cylinders, feeling like you're a little bit tired, you're a little bit fatigued, you might be a little bit irritable, a little bit more mood swing comes in. All of that stuff combined with having to do all the thinking is just a recipe for people to just go, fuck it, I can't be bothered. I'm just going to order a takeaway or I'm just going to grab something on the way home from work or I won't eat tonight. And then the next day they can't stop eating all day. All of these things happen. All these things can happen off the back of having to do too much thinking in the first place. So if you can remove that barrier straight away and eliminate some of the decision fatigue, that can sometimes help people be a lot more consistent with getting the result they want. Absolutely. When you first start something, you're even thinking down to the details of, how do I even get enough protein in this meal? Am I getting enough protein throughout the day? You know, am I getting enough fiber in my diet? Am I eating enough fruits, veggies, whatever? All of these questions and thoughts are there and they're very real. And they're things that you actively have to think about when you first start your nutrition journey, right? You are actively thinking about these things. Whereas for me now, and I probably can speak for yourself here, Sean, and many of our clients who are way further into their journey, eating protein three times a day, for example, it doesn't even cross their mind. It's not even a consideration of thought. It just happens naturally, but they don't have... Those things don't happen naturally at the start of your journey. So they are decisions you've got to actively make. And there's more of those that you've got to actively make that tie you out and can be a potential barrier. it's having a diet plan or a template in place can help eliminate some of those decision fatigues at the start so that you can evolve with your nutrition plan. And as those habits become more autonomous, then you can involve and do more of the thinking for yourself because it's space to do more of that thinking. Yeah, we would always encourage one step at a time wouldn't we and building up with one main goal at a time. like, if you've got absolutely zero autonomy on your nutrition, or let's say you've got zero structure at all, and you're going to try and build a structure from scratch, you might start off by just going one meal at a time. So what am I going to choose for my breakfast? What am I going to add as a protein source to my breakfast? Then you might look at protein with every meal for the day. Then you might have a look at adding a fiber source. That's before you've even got to the point of thinking about what you're going to be tracking. You might do that even before you start to weigh in everything out. You're literally just building from scratch here. But think about how many weeks it's going to take you. Every week you're going to be improving, but think about how many weeks it's going to take you in total before you've got really accurate and precise nutrition. and achieving potentially optimal or close to optimal rate of results. Let's say it's fat loss. It's going to take you a number of weeks to build up your nutrition structure and nutrition system. Yes, you might get results in the short term, but a diet plan might enable somebody to just go plug and play from day one. They get set up with a structure. They get set up with a routine. They can actually see how these meals get constructed. It's not like you're completely oblivious to what you're eating. You're to know what you're eating. You can look at your diet plan and go, ⁓ interesting. I've noticed that it's got this with every meal for my lunch, or I've got this for my evening meal three or four times a week. What is the protein source in that meal? What is the fiber source in that meal? What's the carbohydrate source in that meal? So it can give you some basic understanding over how those meals are constructed. It's not dependent on the calorie tracking element. It's not dependent on having to. You will have to weigh things out. You will have to weigh your foods because otherwise that kind of defeats the object. No point giving somebody a diet plan to try and get them to lose weight and put in a certain amount of carbohydrates into the diet. Let's say it's 200 grams of potato with a meal and 150 grams of chicken breast, for example. If somebody's serving up 300 grams of chicken breast and 400 grams of potato because they're not weighing it, then they were consuming twice as many calories. So that diet plan is going to get them very far for their fat loss goal. So you still have to weigh stuff, but it's not as dependent on the calorie tracking element. this diet plans can actually work reasonably well with people that for whatever reason have a be in their bonnet about calorie tracking. It can, think it can help that element and also gives you a visual of how much protein or how much chicken equals the amount of protein that you need, for example, or what an actual serving of rice is for you. So it can help start build up that knowledge without having the pressure of you making that decision initially. So yeah, I do agree. And it can help you just build up that consistency from the start, right? And if you can build up that consistency, you start seeing the results and that will help you buy in more to the process overall. So there are advantages to using a diet plan. And being specific, these advantages are probably more noticeable when you have more of a bespoke diet plan for you. One that's been made specifically for you and it's gonna evolve with you over time. But there are also some disadvantages to diet plans. So what comes to mind for you, Katie, when we talk about? the disadvantages to having a diet plan. If your diet plan is your only method, then they're not necessarily going to teach you enough.