If you search for the best diet in Google, the search engine generates more than 7.5 million options for you in 0.52 seconds. You may have even found me that way because I used the best diet as keywords for this blog.

But what is the best diet, really? I mean for you. How will you decide which one to choose, which one to discard, and which one to have as a plan B? There are so many people out there who want to sell you a diet! Whether it is a book, a program, or a supplement, they all think their solution is the best diet. It is as simple as that!

• Their diet will help you reach goal weight fast!
• Their diet will help you eat the healthiest food (with recipes!)
• And it will be their diet that will allow you to have cookies and cheat days (hmm, yes please!)

How to find the best diet

It is so hard to make up your mind, so what do you do? You listen around and find out what others are talking about – on Facebook, on Instagram. You walk into bookstores and look at the presentation table for health-related books until you see one book or one program (whether in-store or online) that keeps coming up over and over again. To be honest, I did the same thing. I listened to others to find out what I should do because I had lost confidence that I would ever reach goal weight.

One thing that all those best diets have in common is that you need to eat less than you burn, how will you lose weight any other way, right? If you eat more than you burn, you put on pounds, and here in the Netherlands, we have a saying Every pound goes through the mouth.

Macros and calories

But how high is your metabolism really? Are you the average Jane who maintains her weight at 2000 calories a day? I’m not! I do not have a metabolism like that. When I eat 2000 calories every day, I gain weight as fast as lightning!

And what about macros? Do you follow the high-fat, low-carb thing? Are you a high-protein person? Why? Why have you chosen what you chose to work with? Because they told you to? If there is one thing that makes people diss each other in weight loss-land, it is about what to eat. I have seen so much discussion or even fighting between nutritionists in the past few years that it is not even funny anymore. Like, a good conversation about why’s and how’s is okay, but dissing a colleague because they advise their clients to eat 5% more protein or fat? No, that is not my way of having a good discussion. And while everybody tries to make a living in the weight loss industry, some people do this in a way that does not align with me.

The truth about the best diet

The truth is that it really does not matter which diet you follow. You need to follow the diet that feels best in your body – the diet plan that creates calm and balance sustainably. So, whether or not you want to implement an intermitted fasting strategy or rather follow a six small meals a day plan, it is all right, as long as your body lets go of the weight and it does not cause squirrelly thoughts and habits. It is these habits that make you gain back the weight.

Dr. Frank Sacks of the Harvard School of Public Health found out that the discussion about the best diet is meaningless. All diet types performed excellently as long as the subjects ate less than they burned. The only thing that did jump out of his research was that people who got coaching did way better than people who just got instruction and sent home, only to be weighed again by the time the research period ended.

Your body’s different needs

What I  quickly found out when I became a weight loss coach was that virtually everybody can read a few pages of what to eat and what not to eat. It is not about understanding what we put out there, it is about the behavioral change, that is so hard.

Besides that, you also need to have the guts to change your plan, away from what your coach tells you to eat and build your own program. This asks for trust in your own power and judgment. Especially when weight loss takes a long time, your body needs to have some change now and then. That is why I do not believe in eating the same thing over and over. It may be easy for you, but it lulls your body to sleep and turns your metabolism down. I believe, from my own experience, that you need to listen to your body and become aware of what it needs throughout the year.

This means that you need to keep noticing how your body reacts to what you eat. Besides that, you also need to listen to how your body’s needs change throughout the year. In Spring you will need different food than in Winter. If you live in a cold or cool environment, you will need different food than when you live in the tropics.

How I can help you

Then who are we nutritionists on the other side of the world to tell you what to eat to lose weight? Who are we to say to you that what you are doing is wrong if you do not lose weight? The only way we can help you is to help you find out what triggers you to overeat and eat more than you burn. Besides that, we can help you to implement the habits that need to become automatic, so you can repeat them over and over again without lulling your body to sleep.

The only way we can tell you what to do is when you give away your power to us and become the victim of your circumstances. It is time to take back control and create a collaboration with a weight loss coach because you can feel what is right for your body!

What is right for me may not be right for you. Your body is a wise and knowledgeable instrument, and you must start grounding your experience. You need to listen to it and trust it that is wise enough to tell you what to do. This is not something you build overnight, but it comes through experimenting, making mistakes and going back onto the original program and start all over again until you tweak it to something that makes your body and soul hum.

Sabotage

If you find it hard to follow a list of instructions and keep on sabotaging yourself into a weight gain, then you must find out what triggers you to cross the lines in the sand that were described as rules in your food plan. Why do you break your promises to yourself all the time? What is there in your life that makes weight loss so hard to just –excuse my French- follow the fucking plan?

It is the emotional and mental stuff that clogs up your clear channel with your body. The cloudy water and stormy skies keep messing up your days, and you need to find out why you keep eating your stuff away. It is not because your body does not object – it does. It is your heart, your mind, and your soul that are also opposing to what you are doing because you apparently do not want to listen to what they are telling you. The only way that makes you pay attention is when you see the scale go up. You create your own weight gain by not listening to what your mind and soul are telling you.

Stop that eternal quest for the best diet

So, while you are looking for the best diet in the world, you can stop the eternal quest. Just look back over what worked best for you in the past and gave you the best experience of freedom. Just choose one. There is no perfect diet, you know. Research shows that there is no difference.

You need to tweak your focus – from searching outside of you to looking within because that is where the answer to what your best diet is. As long as you think that you only need to focus on what you eat and do not align your strategy to what your real problem is (your big fat why of overeating), you will probably lose weight and gain it all back again over and over again. This is because your inner world needs to be heard when it is sad or hurt – even if that sadness and hurt started years ago. It will stand in your way if you do not address it. I am sorry to be such a party pooper if you ended up on this page to find the best diet, but this is just what it is.

Weight loss is not about what you eat, but how you look at yourself and how you align your actions with your real needs.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Photo by Daria Shevtsova from Pexels