Diets are like cardio machines, they keep you fat.

Boom! Shots fired.  We have this real chicken and egg situation going on with diets here in America.  The people who are always on diets are typically several muffins overweight.  Is this because only people with extra muffins are wanting to diet or are diets actually causing that extra fat to accumulate? It’s time to stop dieting.  I’ve got a better solution for you: The But First Method.  Before we get into that, let’s look at why diets don’t work.

The main problem with diets are 1) they’re awful, and 2) they’re unsustainable.

People who diet are in a constant yo-yo of losing 15 pounds while hating life, overcompensating by eating an entire pan of brownies, gaining 20 pounds back, feeling bad about themselves, and starting the whole process over.

Oh, about the cardio machines keeping you fat:  In a nutshell, you burn more calories, and will lose fat faster, by lifting weights rather than running on a treadmill.

You Should HAVE a healthy Diet, Not be ON a Diet

It’s time to get off the hamster wheel of continual weight loss and weight gain.  Stop dieting.  Change your relationship with food so that instead of being ON a diet you HAVE a healthy diet.  Being on a diet takes a lot of mental energy and puts you in a deprivation mindset.  You always feel like you’re missing out.  Eventually your willpower diminishes and you revert back to old habits.

Having a healthy diet means you change your relationship with food altogether.  While you’re at it, change the way you view success.  Diets are great for getting you to lose a bunch of weight quickly.  Unfortunately, as soon as you stop the diet you gain all the weight back.

It would be way better long term to routinely lose a single pound of body fat per month than it would be to lose 30 pounds one month and gain it all back over the next six months.

Our goal is sustainable weight loss and weight management.  Don’t get discouraged if you try this method and only lose a few pounds.  My guess is you’ll lose a lot more, but even if you only lose a few pounds per month that doesn’t mean you’re failing if you’re able to sustain that loss.

I have a two question survey for you:

How many diets have you tried in your lifetime?  How do you feel about your body right now?

This brief questionnaire is designed to get you to decide if the rest of this article is for you.  If you’re happy with how your body looks, and doing the latest diet works for you, then I’m not trying to change that.  If you’re frustrated with the cycle of weight loss and weight gain then I think this will help.

I’ve been using a combination of what I call The But First Method, Intermittent Fasting, and consistent exercise.  I’m very happy with how my body looks and feels and I want to spread that to as many people as I can.

The catch-22 is people don't want to listen to someone who looks like me because they think my body just metabolizes food differently and I can't understand their situation.  Those people also wouldn't want to listen to me if I was 30 pounds overweight because who wants to listen to a fat guy about weight management? It's a real bugger.

The One-Two-Three Combo I Use to Lose Weight and Keep It Off

For the last year or so I’ve been experimenting with Intermittent Fasting. By experimenting I mean I’ve been drinking black coffee in the morning and then sitting on my hands refusing to eat any actual food until at least 12pm, sometimes much later than that.

The second punch of my one-two combo is The But First Method. More on that in a minute. The third punch is exercise.  Regular exercise is important for overall health and for not looking and feeling like the Pillsbury Doughboy.

Benefits of Intermittent Fasting:

Intermittent fasting has a host of health benefits. It allows your body to heal itself and gives your internal organs a break from constant digestion.  The basic idea is to keep your eating window within about an 8-hour range and your fasting window within about a 16-hour range.  This means no calories during your fasting window.  Some people choose to fast from early evening until morning and some choose to fast from late evening until early afternoon.  I fast from late evening until around noon the following day.

Ex: 4pm-8am or 8pm-12pm

Here’s a few other health benefits I’ve noticed:

1) My waist keeps getting smaller

Since starting Intermittent Fasting I’m down between three and four belt notches and can see my abs again for the first time in several years.  With this newfound success, I’ve started eating healthier.  It’s like a vicious cycle, but the good kind.

When I was having a drink or two every night, and eating ice cream several nights per week, I started to develop a dad bod despite the fact that I am not yet a dad.  This made it easy to say yes to eating food that I knew was exacerbating the problem.  I didn’t feel awful about myself but I didn’t feel great.  I’ve always exercised so I never gained an ungodly amount of weight but I didn’t look and feel my best.

2) Our monthly grocery bill is significantly less.

I’ve become accustomed to being a little bit hungry.  By not eating until noon I’m forced to learn to be okay with not constantly feeling full.  This has lead to less snacking and making healthier decisions when I do eat. The best part is it’s not hard to do.  Your body adapts so those hunger pangs and cravings aren’t nearly as strong as they are when you were eating around the clock.

We’re able to splurge on healthier food because our overall grocery bill is less.  This means it’s easier to buy organic, splurge on meat, and try to be more conscious of where our food comes from.

3) I have more energy in the mornings.

This one is a big surprise for me.  I’ve always eaten a fairly healthy breakfast and then had to eat again around 10am.  If I didn’t eat I’d get hangry and shaky. Now that I don’t eat breakfast I don’t have the same crash.  I feel barely hungry during the mornings but not enough to even be annoying.  Around 11:30am or so I start to notice myself getting hungry, most days.  Some days I look up the clock and notice it’s 2pm and I still don’t feel the need to eat.

4) It allows me to eat whatever I want more or less guilt free using a completely made up eating protocol I’ve named The But first Method.

I’m not a namer of things, in case that wasn’t obvious.   Basically, what my strategy has been is to eat whatever I want but first I have to eat something healthy.  Hence the name.  If I want some ice cream I will have some ice cream, but first I eat some mixed nuts or make a burrito bowl to curb my hunger.  Then I eat the ice cream.

The net effect is I end up eating less ice cream in that sitting because there isn’t nearly as much room in my stomach for it.  Often times I end up not even wanting the ice cream.

This approach has worked well for me so far.  I’m not the type of personality that does well when being told I cannot do something.  If I tell myself no ice cream period, then all I think about is wanting that delicious frozen sugar.  I know my desire for ice cream is 100% mental.  When I give myself permission to eat the ice cream with the caveat that first I have to eat something more substantially beneficial, I find I don’t crave the ice cream nearly as much because it isn’t the forbidden fruit.

Burrito Bowl Wrap-Up

See what I did there?  Burrito.  Wrap-up. Never mind.  If you’re someone who struggles with diets and losing belly fat I’d highly suggest trying Intermittent Fasting combined with The But First Method and an exercise program.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the results.

If you’ve struggled maintaining diets, Give The But First Method a try.  The beauty of this method is it’s sustainable.  You don’t have to constantly tell yourself ‘no’ in order to be successful.  When you’re finding it much easier to stick to a diet while you lose a bunch of weight, feel free to get in touch with me to thank me for my heroic eat-whatever-you-want-method.

The longer I’ve done The But First Method the less I find myself wanting to fill my body with unhealthy food.  When you see results it motivates you to keep going.  If I were to tell myself that I’m not allowed to have any ice cream I’d rage against my self-imposed sugar shackles.

As it is I haven’t had ice cream in several weeks and I don’t miss it.  Every time I’ve wanted ice cream I eat a bunch of cottage cheese or something else healthy.  Then, If I still feel like it, I’ll have some ice cream.

Often times I didn’t even want ice cream I just wanted to eat something.  The cottage cheese filled me enough that I ended up forgoing the ice cream altogether.  The key is to eat enough of something healthy that you’re only eating the unhealthy food for flavor, not to get full.   When I DID want ice cream, after eating a bunch of cottage cheese, I’d have as much as I wanted, guilt-free.

Keep in mind I’m not a doctor and I pretty much just made this method up on the fly.  It seems pretty common sense though.  Fill your stomach with good food so you’ll have less room for not good food.

Related Reading:

Intermittent Fasting for Beginners- The Basics

A Bunch of Weird Things We’re Doing to Be Healthy

9 Deadly Myths About Exercise

Easy 4-Day Gym Rotation to Help you Impress Strangers and Kids