Sorry, there’s no magic bullet. You gotta eat healthy and live healthy to be healthy and look healthy. End of story. What’s the best diet? If you have read my content for any length of time, you might remember that, in simple terms, a good diet to gain muscle involves a caloric surplus, whereas a good diet to lose fat involves a caloric deficit.
Any diet can be great as long as it accomplishes either task, depending on your goal. A more effective question would be: What’s the best diet for you? In this article, I am going to outline some benefits and downsides of three of the current most popular dieting approaches, so that, if you are considering any of these, you can make an informed decision. The dieting strategies I will touch upon include:
I would like to clarify that perhaps none of these methods will be appropriate for you in the long term. In fact, I would rarely implement them with my own clients. However, these diet trends still exist, and I thought that writing this post instead of ignoring their popularity might help people realise that none of these are “special” or in any way superior to others. When it comes to a long-term way of eating, these are signs that the particular diet you are thinking of will work for you:
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To eat is necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art. Updated in September 2023.
In my previous article, I outlined the basics of flexible dieting and focused on one approach that I believe to be a stepping stone to more complex ways of flexible dieting: counting calories and macros. In this piece, I want to cover some guidelines on how to design a diet for either fat loss or muscle gain, including a proposed diet duration, macros and calories calculations, and how to transition away from dieting. It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well. Following a maintenance phase, in the last month I have resumed high-volume training and a calorie surplus to induce hypertrophy and gain more muscle.
I feel like I am in a better mental place to welcome this process than ever before, as I find myself better equipped, from a psychological standpoint, to deal with the inevitable fat gain and the increasing number on the scale. Sharing my thoughts on the topic on Instagram, I received some great comments about the relatability of the fear of weight gain. So, in this article, I aim to provide some strategies that have helped me and might aid others in the mental struggle against the scale and the mirror. Trust the process. To complement last week’s article on fat loss, this week I aim to cover three of the most common reasons why you might be struggling to gain muscle despite your best efforts.
Useful Links: One Month Update | Three Months Update Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do. In June 2019 I celebrated my first lifting birthday after years of endurance work and cardio-based fitness classes. So I felt it was time to write a bulk update.
I made several changes to the way I train, taking advantage of knowledge gained since the last update. So this one is going to be a little different. Instead of simply outlining what I’ve been doing, I will focus on what’s new or more recent and the rationale behind my decisions. Without further ado, let’s get to it! |
Nikias TomasielloWelcome to my blog. I’m an online fitness coach with a passion for bodybuilding, fantasy, and bread. Want to work with me? Check out my services!Archives
March 2024
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