Get lean and stay lean!

You probably know the theory of how you should lose weight and the subsequent maintenance or lean-bulk phase - how fast you should lose and gain weight, how many calories you should eat, how best to distribute your macros, how often you should eat, and so on.

If this is new territory for you, it's best to check out our previous articles on the subject.

Today, we're going to talk about how you can follow through with the diet in your head and then stay lean or not gain weight too quickly afterwards. This is much more difficult for most people than planning a diet out on paper.

Diet

Let's start with dieting. Before we can try to stay lean, we first have to become lean! You already know: For this we need to be in a calorie deficit. Unfortunately, it's not so much fun to eat in a calorie deficit. You are tired, irritable, and hungry, and probably aren't having a good time. But you have to get through it to achieve your goals.

Most motivational goals (like having a more defined body) come with some degree of struggle. You have to come to terms with that. However, you will be all the more proud when you have achieved the goal.

It is often said that motivation must come from within and that motivation from outside is useless.

Although motivation from within is extremely important, a little motivation from the outside is also beneficial - simply as a small addition to increase the chances that we will achieve our goal. After all, we don't want to leave it to chance!

To increase the motivation from the outside: Make your intentions public and show your commitment!

Tell as many people as you can that you will lose, for example, 20 lbs in 4 months - Not "trying to lose 20 lbs" or "want to lose 20 lbs" or "lose 20 lbs if everything goes well." No, tell them that you "WILL lose 20 lbs"!

Then you'll step on the gas a lot more, because you won't be able to make the excuse afterwards that it was just an attempt and that failing your goals is no big deal. That's the way it is with attempts. Sometimes you fail. But you will not fail, because you are not trying, but actually going through with it.

This phrasing issue may seem like a small thing at first glance, but it makes a world of difference!

Who should you tell everything about your diet project? As many people as possible - not just your best friends!

If you only tell your best friends about it, then you already know while dieting that your friends will react as follows if you don't reach your goal: "Yes, it's not bad at all! You have other qualities: you're a good cook, you're easy to talk to, and you look good anyway!"

Yeah, great... It's not exactly motivating when you know that your friends will cheer you up if you don't reach your goal. Then you have no external pressure at all to reach your goals for the diet.

If you have friends who are really disappointed and tell you so when you don't reach your goal, then of course that's something else. Unfortunately, very few people have friends like that.

Therefore, it is best to tell your enemies that you will lose 20 lbs in 4 months. By the way, it's also best to be specific with the end of the period and say directly "I'll lose 20 lbs by May 20, 2020." Then you can not later give the excuse that the 4 months have not even begun.

Do you have a colleague at work who you don't like at all and who doesn't like you at all either? Great! That's exactly who you should tell your specific goals.

How happy do you think you will make your stupid colleague when he sees you on May 20 without physical change and asks you cynically, "I thought you wanted to lose 20 lbs?" He will be overjoyed!

And you will hate him even more - especially because he will also tell your other colleagues (maybe even your boss) that you have failed. That is good! It gives you pressure to go through with the diet. You don't want to embarrass yourself.

What also works well is if you make a post on Instagram or Facebook and write there that you will lose 20 lbs by May 20, 2020.

Many people will read it - mainly your friends, but there will certainly be people who don't want you to succeed, and you know that very well. That's why a social media post like this also provides good external motivation.

As I said, the external motivation is not more important than the internal motivation. Nevertheless, it helps! So commit yourself publicly - even in front of your enemies - to your plan and be as specific as possible with the wording: "I WILL lose 20 lbs by May 20, 2020! Exclamation point!"

Another important thing to remember when dieting is that hunger is not your enemy. Many people think that something is wrong if they feel hungry during a diet. This is somewhat logical, because with all the food surplus in this day and age, most people are hardly ever hungry.

As soon as you feel like eating something, you eat something. Often there is no true feeling of hunger. Accordingly, it is unusual and unpleasant when you really feel hungry for a long time while dieting. But that is quite normal.

You can eat as many cucumbers as you want and fill your stomach with them, but if you eat in a calorie deficit for long enough, you will eventually feel hungry. You will probably also be a bit more listless and irritable.

The only thing that will help is distraction (e.g. an exciting hobby or work project), and you will have to put up with it. As stupid as it sounds, look on the bright side when you get hungry. Hunger is a good sign that you are in a calorie deficit and losing weight. That is exactly what you want.

By the way, you will also become accustomed to getting hungry more often. At the beginning of the diet hunger is unfamiliar, but at some point it simply becomes a part of everyday life.

So don't think that something is wrong if you get hungry during a diet. Look at hunger positively, because it is a sign that you are getting closer to your goal, and thinking positively will help you get used to this, let's say, "interesting" feeling.

The most important thing when dieting is that you test strategies on how YOU can manage to stay in a calorie deficit for the dieting period. Dieting is always hard, but it doesn't have to be unnecessarily hard. If it is too hard, then you may give up. Of course, we don't want that to happen.

Possible strategies could be: to start eating only after 12 o'clock, to eat only one piece of chocolate a day or to avoid chocolate altogether, to limit alcohol to 4 birthdays of best friends a year or to never drink alcohol, to go for a walk after every lunch, or to count steps and complete at least 10000 per day.

Note from Benjamin: Personally, I successfully maintained my calorie deficit during my last diet by drinking only one shake in the morning and not having my first big meal until noon. Before the diet, I had a more substantial breakfast instead of the shake.

In addition, I only had a small pre-workout meal consisting of 300g of frozen strawberries and chocolate whey. Otherwise, my pre-workout meal was also higher in calories.

In addition, I ate pretty low fat and went for a 20-minute walk not just once, but twice a day. This brought me to a calorie deficit of about 600 calories per day. It wasn't easy, but it was as easy as I could make it.

What I definitely wouldn't have been able to keep up with is if there was only a small meal in the evening. I just love eating a big meal in the evening. Without that big meal, I would lose so much quality of life that it wouldn't have been worth the strain for me to build the kind of body I wanted.

Some of you are probably thinking: "No, that's not the case for me at all. I don't need to eat much in the evening. But no one's going to take my big breakfast away from me!"

This is a very individual matter, and that's why you have to find out for yourself which strategies work best for you during the diet in order to stay in a calorie deficit.

Lean bulk

So, what happens now when you have finished dieting? Then of course you don't want to gain weight too quickly again. Maybe you want to keep your low weight or maybe you want to go into a slow building phase, which is often called a "Lean Bulk".

The difference between diet calories and maintenance or lean bulk calories is hugely overrated! If you were in a 500 calorie deficit, you should now be eating only 500-700 calories more per day to maintain or build.

That's quite a few calories more than during your diet, but if you divide that up among your e.g. 4 meals per day, then that's only about 150 calories more per meal. This corresponds to about one large banana more per meal. That's nice, but not really such a massive change.

So your diet shouldn't be radically different than it was while you were dieting.

Since most people overdo it after the diet - especially if they are trying to gain weight easily - remove the word "mass phase" from your vocabulary. It is best never to mention it again in connection with your diet.

Because what do you think of when you hear the word mass phase? Not vegetables, fruits, complex carbohydrates, healthy fats, and lean protein, but rather pizza, burgers, fries, and ice cream, and as much of these foods as possible.

After all, immoderate eating behavior is exactly what you have been trying to avoid the whole time you were dieting. In order to not provoke this type of eating unnecessarily, you should start with your vocabulary and delete the term "mass phase".

Instead, say "muscle building phase." And if you don't want to gain weight, then of course you won't have that problem in the first place. The phrase "maintenance phase" is already quite neutral anyway, so you can continue to use it.

By the way, we are only talking about those who tend to gain weight too quickly after a diet (so most people...). But if you instead have problems with gaining weight, then say "mass phase" as often as possible! You must do everything you can to reach your calorie goals.

Of course, avoiding the term "mass phase" is not the end of the story. After the diet you are lighter than before the diet and therefore consume fewer calories. So you must not eat as much as before the diet; otherwise you will quickly gain weight again.

That is, you must continue one or more diet strategies even after the diet. Of course, not all of them, as otherwise you will continue to diet. That is not the point. Choose the diet strategies that are easiest for you.

Note from Benjamin: For example, I have found that it is VERY easy for me to just drink my whey shake early in the morning, have my coffee 60 minutes later (it suppresses my hunger pangs), and then not eat my first major meal until 12 noon.

As I have mentioned before, this allows me to push back my eating window and thus eat properly again in the evening about 2 hours before going to bed, just as I like it. This limits me very little and I can keep it up for many years - maybe even forever.

Besides, I hardly mind continuing to eat low fat even after the diet. "Low fat" for me means about 0.25-0.35g of fat per kg of body weight. Since I prefer carbohydrate sources anyway, this is also not a big restriction for me.

But what I don't want to maintain in my current lean bulk is the small pre-workout meal. I've noticed that my performance in the gym increases tremendously when I eat something more like 600 calories before a workout, rather than just 250 calories.

Since high performance in the gym is instrumental in muscle growth, I think that's a smart decision for me to not skimp on calories at the pre-workout meal.

I also switched back from walking twice a day to once a day. That was perfectly okay for the diet period, but is simply too time-consuming for me in the long run. I prefer to devote the time to further optimization of the Alpha Progression App with Marwin.

What I have learned from previous diets is that a very low meal frequency is also not for me in the long term. For example, if I eat only twice a day, I develop a huge food focus and eventually completely overdo it.

So I just keep eating the first big meal only at 12 o'clock and continue to eat relatively low fat. That's perfectly fine, because it puts me in a surplus of about 150 calories per day and I gain about 150g per week. That is my current goal.

Which diet strategies you use after the diet can of course be completely different from my favorite strategies. Choose the strategies that you find easiest to stick to, or to put it more positively, that you even find fun, such as going for a walk 2 or 3 times a day or doing more sports.