Too Strict, Too Soon

By Rachel Cosgrove

Frustrated because she was stuck at 18% body fat and wanted to drop to 16% by her birthday in 2 weeks, one of our clients asked me for help on what to change. Up until this point she had been following the Base Phase Nutrition Principles from my book which are what we recommend for clients at Results Fitness and had dropped from 22% to 18% over 4 weeks. This was excellent progress.
It was time to dial it in these last 2 weeks so I recommended she make a few tweaks including following the nutrition rules in my dial it in and fine-tune phases of my book. Two of these changes were to switch out the fruit she was eating for green veggies instead and swap out her protein sources to be from more fish.
Her house started to smell of fish, which meant she was on the right track to “dial it in” and reach her goal…2 weeks later she measured in at 16% body fat and had successfully dialed it in and looks great! At this point she can go back to the Base Phase Nutrition Rules and maintain allowing herself 10% splurges and when another photo shoot or event comes in “dial it in” again.
Another client overheard that this first client had stopped eating fruit and started to panic – maybe I need to eliminate fruit too…And asked me – should I stop eating fruit? No, not yet because you are still losing body fat doing the base phase.
One of the biggest mistakes many people make is going too strict, too soon leaving you no where to go when you do want to dial it in for a big event, a photo shoot or a night out. Instead stick to the rule in my book – If It Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It Rule. Keep your nutrition as easy as you can while still losing body fat and then when you get to where you want to be you can step it up and “dial it in.”
The problem is that if you come out of the gates sprinting…eating extremely clean with zero splurges and working out 6 days a week…
…Where are you going to go when your body adapts?
And your body will adapt.
And then you’ll have to figure out how to put a new demand on your body.
So relax and enjoy a splurge…unless you are “dialing it in” which I am these next two weeks so yes my fruit has been swapped out for green veggies, my protein is coming from fish and my splurges are over for two weeks until my photo shoot…
Play time is over…time to dial it in!