The reason most diets fail is that they never address the whole picture. They focus on the aspect, e.g. losing fat, maximising health. The problem is no one diet can ever serve two goals optimally. Either your diet is maximising your health yet producing limited fat loss or it is helping you lose fat yet never focuses on maximising your health. Some diets try to combine the best of both worlds by having it focus on clean, whole and healthy foods with a low calorie intake. However, this is still doesn’t serve you optimally. The only solution that works is the one every fitness model on the planet uses and that is having different plans to achieve different objectives.
Through using different diet days you will cover all bases and be able to create the body of your dreams both inside and out. Let’s take a look at further look at the four types of diet used within The Fitness Model Diet.
The Fat Loss Plan – Time to get lean!
This plan can be applied for literally 1 -2 days only or a period of weeks to months. The sole goal and focus of this phase is for you to lose fat. The phase uses reduced food intake (calorie) alongside movement/exercise to target fat loss. The key to its success is developing the plan so that –
– Fat loss occurs
– You still feel ‘ok’ so that you are not suffering strong hunger, cravings or severe low energy.
– You enjoy your meals to the extent you can follow the plan.
– You still have some treats within the diet to keep you from going off the rails.
– You accompany the diet with exercise and/or daily movement to accelerate fat loss
The diet needs to be simple enough for you to stick to as consistency produces fat loss. To do this the diet needs to give you enough taste and comfort from foods to be able to be able to follow. It does not necessarily need to be the “best” diet ever as the key is you being able to stick to it. That is the one, only and overriding factor behind what is the best diet for fat loss.
You can help yourself greatly by ensuring you eat with the ideal ratio of protein:carbs:fat for your body as this could mean the difference between feeling full on 1500 calories or feeling really hungry on that same intake amount. How many calories you need is discussed later as well as your ideal ratios
The Freedom Plan – Recharge Mentally and Physically
Long term and consistent dieting is not very good for the body nor does it help your metabolism. The more depleted the body becomes of its energy stores the more difficult it is to follow the plan, lose fat and find motivation to exercise. A way around this is to use the freedom plan in rotation with dieting phases. The freedom plan focusses on recharging yourself both mentally and physically. The freedom plan has two different types of days, the cheat day and re-feed day. The keys to success are –
– You recharge both mentally and physically
– You eat more food than your fat loss days to spike metabolism.
– You enjoy the freedom and increased food intake
– You get the ratio right for results (5 fat loss days to 2 cheat days per week is the “standard” FMD ratio)
The cheat day (or cheat meal) is where you purposely eat more than on dieting days and eat whatever foods you want. The aim is to recharge metabolism and refill your depleted energy stores. It allows you to refresh mentally. On a cheat day you eat freely and whatever you want. You should not think about food and just relax. This may include eating all sorts of “bad” foods from cake to chocolate etc
A re-feed day has the same philosophy as a cheat day, it is designed to recharge your metabolism and depleted energy stores. However, a re-feed day uses “clean” foods to do this. So instead of eating cake and chocolate you are still eating much more food but from healthy food sources.
The Maintenance Plan – Break even when life gets hectic.
The goal here is to fit in with the world or get through a current hectic or stressful situation without undoing all your hard work. This may mean Christmas, your summer holiday or the busiest time of the year in work. The plan has all the freedom you need yet also uses other techniques to “balance the books”. The goal at the end of the period is to be pretty much where you were at the beginning. The key to this plan is –
– You do enough compromise and rebalancing of behaviours to roughly break even.
– You accept you are going to be “bad” in certain areas (similar to the freedom plan)
– You accept you have to make up for the “bad” with enough “good” to break even
– You are open to using techniques and methods to create balance that are not what “you normally do”.
The maintenance plan should mean you never really back track too much with your body whatever is going on in life. This means it is much easier to pick it up when your life is back on an even keel, e.g. that busy work period finishes, the holiday ends, the stressful period is over etc.
The Optimisation Plan – Supercharge your metabolism.
This plan is designed to optimise health and supercharge your metabolism. It also creates the environment for optimal muscle development. Contrary to popular belief, no one diet can achieve all goals. Your fat loss diet may have very clean foods and be healthy but if it is helping you lose fat then you could probably eat 30-50% more of this same food and not gain fat. This extra energy is used by the body to supercharge its functioning. It will raise your metabolic rate (important as losing fat reduces it), your body temperature and almost every aspect of health. The key to this plan is –
– You are eating “clean” foods stacked with vitamins and minerals as well as your ideal macro ratios.
– You more than meet your minimum requirements for protein, carbs and fat.
– You are eating significantly more calories than during the fat loss plan.
– You do not eat so much that you start to gain body fat.
This phase is used by almost no one yet has by far the biggest and most beneficial impact upon your health. For most people they just cycle between phases of bad eating to undoing this damage with a dieting phase. Fitness models use this phase to develop muscle tone and mass. Also known as a bulking phase, what separates fitness models from bodybuilders is they do not gain much fat during this phase. You are eating more but it is not unlimited amount of food you are consuming. If you do this you will gain fat rapidly and then have to spend time dieting it off. Fitness models stay lean all year round.
The Fitness Model Transformation Diet
Apply all the above diet options by getting hold of a copy of The Fitness Model Diet>>>> The ready made plans and behaviour change and fitness plans will transform your body to new heights!
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