How To Diet At Your Desk
One of the biggest problems with the diet industry is the refusal to recognize that there is more than one solution to the obesity epidemic. Whether it’s veganism, paleo, intermittent fasting, keto, or the newest fad, every diet book or guru touts one strategy as the “end all be all” of diets. They quote their idolized MD’s dogma with religious fervor and rarely stop to consider another’s point of view.
Let’s look at the big picture.
The world is a big place, and many people eat in many different ways. There are diets we’ve found to be healthy (like the Mediterranean diet) and diets we’ve found to be unhealthy like (the Western or American diet). Unfortunately, as a consequence of improved technology and globalization, the Western diet has been spreading across continents like Genghis Khan. Wherever the Western diet goes, obesity and heart disease follow.
Doctors, dietitians, and intelligent individuals alike view this epidemic as a bad thing for obvious reasons and have been combating it ever since with an ever-increasing confusion of diets. These diets and lifestyles that were created for the greater good have turned into warring factions that have totally forgotten who the true enemy is. What vegan zealots and paleo partisans no longer recognize is that they are on the same side. They both were created to help people live healthier lives. Certain lifestyles may resonate more with you as an individual: perfect—lean into that.
If you don’t like eating meat, don’t eat it.
If you think breakfast is a waste of time, skip it.
There is a diet plan that fits your predisposition; there is even a guy who promotes an ice cream diet. You can watch his YouTube videos as he slowly becomes malnourished; it starts off funny but then gets a little sad.
Choosing your own adventure is about recognizing your preferences, not joining a cult. Establish your why and reach your goals.
Why diet?
Why limit ourselves? Why not enjoy every moment by scarfing down candy?
In terms of dieting, the most important step is establishing why we are doing it in the first place. Do you want that beach bod? Do you want to decrease your risk of disease? Have more energy? Have better sex? Play with your grandkids?
Eating healthy helps you improve your body composition and look super sexy; it helps you sleep; it reduces your risk of diabetes; it lengthens your life; it improves your mood, and it does the immeasurable: it makes you feel good. Not good as in happier, or good as in stronger, although it is capable of doing both. It makes you feel good (as in healthy). The feeling of health is an intangible one that you’ll have to experience in order to reference. However, feeling not good is something that resonates with everyone.
You should come up with your own reason for improving your diet. Write it down and stick it to your fridge or pantry to help you stay on track. A healthy diet isn’t something you try for a few months and then go back to your usual routine; a healthy diet is how you eat for the rest of your life.
Choose your own adventure, and do what works for you! You don’t have to strictly adhere to it every single day, but you must create a framework for yourself in order to have long-term success. A major reason most fad diets fail is that health professionals are trying to fit your life into their framework. It is your life, so you need to choose the framework that you can live with indefinitely.
A healthy diet isn’t something you try for a few months and then go back to your usual routine; a healthy diet is how you eat for the rest of your life.
Remember that if a program costs money, you are being sold something. These programs make money by preying on people’s insecurities. They want you to get fantastic results in an incredibly short amount of time so they can better advertise this success on an infomercial.
That is not to say that there is anything wrong with wanting to lose weight quickly. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to lose weight fast? You just need to understand that once you’ve dropped the weight, you must maintain most of the habits you’ve adopted to achieve that goal in order to stay at your current weight. Ninety-five percent of diets fail because people regain when the diet “ends.” The truth is that the diet can never end, or your weight will yo-yo forever.
The changes must be permanent. Failing to understand this crucial fact has led to the prevalence of cleanses, fads, and otherwise unhealthy or unsustainable diets. Programs based on rapid body transformation have become revered as the gold standard. Their appeal is that they work wonders in the early stages of losing weight.
However, allow me to let you in on a little secret of the strength-and-nutrition world. Every program works at the beginning. Changing your diet in any way that is slightly positive works. In order to achieve long-term success in a fat-loss program, the only thing you have to do is maintain a calorie deficit. There are many ways of achieving that and no one-size-fits-all solution. However, there are a few concrete rules that every fat-loss program needs to follow to be successful. Regardless of your diet strategy, you must do these four things.
1. 50 percent of what you eat should be vegetables
If 50 percent of your diet is vegetables, then at least 50 percent of your diet isn’t crap.
Vegetables are the best carbohydrates. I know that carbs have essentially become viewed as weight loss’s kryptonite, but think about them like this: There are two main types of carbohydrates—fibrous carbs and starchy carbs. Fibrous carbs are very filling and low in calories; they include foods like broccoli. Starchy carbs, like rice, are probably what you think of when you hear carbohydrates. These are also pretty filling but not quite so low-calorie. For example, three cups of broccoli and three cups of brown rice take up the same amount of space in your stomach. You’ll feel full after eating either option. However, the broccoli contains about 90 calories, and the brown rice about 650.
Easy Action Step: Make 50 percent of your diet vegetables.
Add vegetables to every meal. Some people struggle to add veggies to breakfast. Try a veggie omelet, a green smoothie, or a breakfast salad.
2. Sleep!
No matter how good you are about your diet and exercise, inadequate sleep will significantly hinder your progress. Sleep helps regulate the hormones that control your metabolism and appetite. If your appetite increases and your metabolism slows down, you are in trouble. So guard your sleep like the precious commodity it is!
Easy Action Step: Get sufficient sleep.
The average adult needs between six and eight hours. Find out what you need to function at your best, and obtain it every night.
3. Stay hydrated
Everyone knows that you should drink water, but a lot of people don’t know why. First off, your body is 70 percent water; it makes up a large portion of your blood, organs, and even your bones. Water is necessary to regulate body temperature, transport nutrients, and build muscles; it also plays a role in digestion, respiration, and even reproduction. Water is the most essential nutrient there is. It also happens to be the cheapest and most abundant.
Easy Action Step: Start every day with a large glass of water!
Drinking a big glass of water first thing in the morning helps you in multiple ways:
It fills you up
It kick-starts your metabolism for 0 calories
4. Track your intake
This one isn’t a must; not everyone is going to diligently track their intake. However, this is one of the most effective tools for weight loss when starting a strength program. Food diaries are beneficial for weight loss for two reasons: first, because writing down everything you eat makes you conscious of what you consume, like that handful of nuts or those five grapes. This practice takes all your snacks into account.
Second, if your goal is weight loss, you won’t want to write down unhealthy entries in your diary, which will make you less likely to eat them. On the other hand, you’ll be pretty excited about logging that salad.
The best part of a food diary is that it helps give you a clear picture of the most important thing when it comes to weight loss: calories in versus calories out.
Easy Action Step: Create a food diary!
Not only is it the most commonly neglected step, but it also often has the most significant impact. On top of that, it’s easier than ever nowadays. Multiple free apps on your phone can track your calories and macronutrients for you.
If you do only these four things and skip the rest of the diet information in the world, you already have the framework necessary to achieve a far better diet than the average American. I’ve had a few clients who never needed any dietary help beyond these four impactful lifestyle changes.
A specific case that stands out is my client Jim. He came to me with a desire to lose ten pounds for summer. I asked him to do these four things, and he lost five pounds in ten days. He is undoubtedly an outlier, but he hated writing in the food journal so much that he found it easier to eat only three meals, remember all of them, and write them down before the day ended. He said, “I stopped snacking because I didn’t want to remember it.”
In addition to these four easy steps for your nutrition, I suggest you follow one of these easy-to-implement diet frameworks: flexible dieting, paleo, or intermittent fasting. It doesn’t matter if you are a vegan, a pescatarian, or a carnivore; these frameworks fit all lifestyles. Every living human is an omnivore by definition, regardless of what you choose to put in your body. You have the equipment for digesting plants and meat. Surviving a desk job requires more than just the correct equipment; it requires discipline and a plan for regulating birthday cake intake.
