Another Shitty Diet Won't Change Your Life

I suspect I’ll cop some shit for this, but honestly, I’m ok with it. I have coached over a hundred people by now who ‘just want to lose some weight’. After watching them get incredibly upset over, and over, and over, and over, and over again because they:

• gained a little weight, one week, while dieting

• were ‘bad’ this evening/weekend/week

• lost the weight, then gained it all back immediately after

• lost the weight but their confidence is still in the shithouse and they feel lost because losing the weight should have solved all their problems

… I want to get really fucking real with you.

That crash, carnivore, vampire, unicorn fart, whatever the fuck kinda diet those Barbie and Ken dolls you see on Instagram (seriously, are they AI generated?) are promoting WILL NOT CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

It will very, very likely not change your weight long term either.

Oh and by the way, you can NOT lose weight in a specific place, so please don’t fall for the ‘lose tummy fat fast’ marketing manure. You can lose weight for sure, but it does not magically come off your belly and stay in the areas you like. Goodbye, my precious boob fat, I guess I’ll have to do with my ping pong paddled chest now 💔

There was a period in my twenties where I did it all. I became utterly obsessed with calorie tracking, ‘metabolism boosters’, leaving out entire food groups etc. I also developed a cute li’l eating disorder (it was not cute, nor little).

Did I lose weight? Oh yes. I also lost the ability to enjoy food for years and somehow felt even less sexy than before, because my body still wasn’t ‘perfect’.

Food in my culture, and my family, is EVERYTHING. But most important of all, food is love and connection. It felt like I was trying to control love, and in some way I was. I will probably write about this a little more in 2025.

Eventually, I made friends with food again. I shifted the focus and started working on a balanced diet without demonizing foods. But more importantly, I worked on a better life and a lot more love for myself. This whole shift took years.

Before my comment section blows up: no, I am not against weight loss... obviously. Being overweight carries health risks. But, recent studies seem to be favoring fitness training over dieting to manage those health risks, partly because weight cycling (lose - gain - lose - gain) is so common and carries plenty of health risks itself.

Of course people don’t just want to lose weight to be healthy. It looks like most people want to be attractive (and feel confident), and being attractive in the Western culture generally means having a toned body, ideally with an hourglass or inverted triangle body shape.

That’s why a lot of people will still want to lose weight, and that is ok. IF it is done in a way that doesn’t compromise your physical or mental health and leads to long term changes.

So, if you would like to lose weight healthfully, here are a few tips based on what I learnt from countless conversations with my clients.

• Clear motivation: make it clear for yourself why exactly you are making these changes. The people who quit the earliest are generally the ones telling me they want to lose weight to look hot for their cousin’s wedding/high school reunion/… I can guarantee you that, if that is your sole motivation, you will very likely not reach your goal, and even if you do, it won’t be for the long term.

• KISS: keep it simple, stupid snoogums. You don’t need fucking protein shake number 1.000.000.000, you don’t need a fucking mystery powder to substitute a whole meal, and you sure as alien-fucking fuck don’t need activated charcoal in everything you eat. Instead, you could focus on including all the food groups in your diet, eating food that is as little processed as possible and having treats in moderation. Is that easy to do? No, but at least it is uncomplicated, sustainable, and doesn’t leave you with nutritional deficiencies.

• Small steps: if right now you are eating hyperprocessed foods for breakfast, lunch and dinner, what do you think will happen when you change all of that in one go? That’s right, you get stressed, grumpy, burn yourself out, think ‘Fuck this shit’, then go right back to your old food patterns. Step by step, one travels far. Tranqui.

• Exercise: as I mentioned before, exercise is important for your health and can help you to lose weight too. But for the love of fuckweasels, find something you actually enjoy or at least don’t hate and DON’T OVERDO IT. I don’t exercise for hours. I do 2 short but intensive workout sessions per week, and I walk whenever I can. I loathe severely dislike going to the gym, so you will never find me there.

• Celebrate your accomplishments: I see a lot of people trip up because they don’t take the time to feel proud about their accomplishments (and I’m not talking about the number on the scales). They only look at the mountain ahead, then end up quitting because they feel overwhelmed. Related to this, be nice to yourself. Beating yourself up has never helped you.

• Create a ‘change environment’: if you’re not sleeping enough or are incredibly stressed, it will be much, much harder to make your changes stick. Work on these things the best way you can to make it easier for yourself.

• Manage expectations: remember that just losing weight will not change your whole life. You will still need to work on your mental health, social health and other health domains if you are unhappy with them.

I hope this helps someone out there. And if anyone would like to work on their life with me, I am offering a 15% discount on my 6-week Life Booster package (now $510) and a 20% discount on my 10-week Life Changer package (now $640) if purchased before January 5th. We can have a free half-hour discovery call first to see if we match.

I also launched Hold My Beer Accountability, a chat-based coaching package for $100 per month.

You can see everything my packages include here. Send me a message or an email if you’re interested, so we can work on a better life for you together. One that doesn’t include unicorn farts for breakfast.

The unicorn fart diet. This fella really likes smelling his own shit.

PS: I can’t get paid via Substack for the work that I do because of where I live, so you can become a paid subscriber or… buy me a coffee via my Buy Me A Coffee profile. Thank you for your support!