Hey fitness nerds!

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I used to cycle on and off dieting.

It was the most miserable period of my life. I felt tired and weak 60% of the time.

This is what I do now, and it makes my life so much more enjoyable.

Read 🔽 below! 

🥛

IN LESS THAN 10 MINUTES WE WILL COVER:

For almost 10 years I repeated the same pattern. Diet hard, lose weight fast, feel exhausted, rebound, bulk, repeat. At 18 it felt normal because that is how everyone around me talked about fitness. You diet until you cannot anymore. Then you undo the diet. Then you start again.

The early years were rough. I would cut for 16 weeks on 1600 calories. Hunger was constant. My energy dropped. Training felt heavy. My metabolism adapted to the low intake and held on to every calorie I ate. I did not understand at the time that this was expected biology. When intake stays too low for too long, your body protects itself by slowing down. Once the cut ended, gaining weight was guaranteed.

That cycle made eating stressful. I avoided meals out because I could not estimate calories. I felt anxious if I missed a macro target. None of this improved my health. It only made food harder to manage.

Over the years, the approach changed. Not because of a single insight, but because you can only repeat the same mistake so many times before you start to pay attention. What changed everything was shifting from rules to systems. Systems you can follow even when life is busy. Systems that do not depend on willpower.

Below is what actually worked. These are the tools I wish I had a decade ago. Nothing extreme. Nothing is built on suffering. Just practical habits that keep metabolism steady, hunger manageable, and progress predictable.

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Protein is the most reliable way to control appetite and protect muscle during weight loss. When I stopped micromanaging macros and instead focused on getting enough protein, everything else became simpler. For most people the target is 1.6 to 2 grams per kg of bodyweight. That number does not need to be perfect. It just needs to guide your day.

Useful habits:
• Build every meal around one clear protein source.
• Use protein shakes or bars as backups when the day gets busy.
• Eat protein first when you sit down for a meal. It keeps portions reasonable without forcing restriction.

This one habit prevents most of the overeating that used to follow strict dieting.

The mistake I made for years was treating dieting like a project. I would drop calories sharply and hope discipline would carry me. It never did. The reason is simple. Big calorie swings destabilise hunger hormones, slow metabolic rate, and make binge episodes more likely.

A better method is to keep daily intake consistent and adjust movement instead of food.

Useful habits:
• If you want to lose weight, add a morning run or extend your walk by twenty minutes.
• Keep your meals the same while cutting to avoid metabolic drop.
• Judge progress on weekly averages, not daily fluctuations.

This keeps the system predictable. Predictability prevents rebound.

Fasting became one of the more helpful tools once I stopped trying to use it daily. A one day fast per week is enough to create a full weekly deficit without lowering the average intake so much that metabolism slows. It also removes the mental strain of dieting every day.

On the fast day:
• Drink water, electrolytes, and unsweetened tea or coffee.
• Keep activity light.
• Resume normal eating the next day without compensating.

This approach works because it protects the rhythm of your week. It avoids the “always dieting” mindset that drains willpower.

Bulking used to be a free for all. Large calorie surpluses, constant eating, and quick fat gain. It felt productive but created more cutting cycles later. Now I only add two small items on days I want extra calories. Usually, 2 protein bars or a shake and a bar. That adds 200-300 calories, which is enough to build muscle without forcing overeating.

Useful habits:
• Start with a modest surplus.
• Keep your meals the same. Add small snacks, not large meals.
• Increase your intake by another one to two hundred calories only if progress stalls for several weeks.

Small additions beat large surpluses.

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One of the biggest challenges in on off dieting is social eating. When your diet depends on precision, eating out becomes a threat. That creates fear, which then drives rebound eating.

A simple framework works better:
• Eat a high protein meal before you go out.
• Drink a glass of water when you arrive.
• Choose a protein plus vegetable option.
• Accept that perfect accuracy is not required for progress.

Consistency across weeks matters more than accuracy across single meals.

Strict diets usually fail because they remove foods people actually like. I eat a lot of steak because it makes meals satisfying. Satisfaction prevents late night snacking. A sustainable diet needs enjoyment built into it. The more you enjoy your meals, the less willpower you need to manage the rest.

Useful habits:
• Identify 3 or 4 high protein meals you genuinely like. Rotate them.
• Keep meal prep simple. Protein, vegetables, something starchy if desired.
• Avoid meals that leave you hungry an hour later. They never save calories in the long run.

Enjoyment predicts adherence better than discipline.

One of the most important shifts was paying attention to my own responses. Hunger signals. Energy levels. Training performance. Mood. When these dip, the diet is too aggressive. When they stay stable, the approach is sustainable.

Useful habits:
• Rate hunger on a simple one to five scale.
• Note how you sleep on days with different calorie levels.
• Track weekly step count and weekly protein averages rather than daily numbers.

You learn more from watching your own patterns than from any macro app.

Metabolic adaptation is not a failure. It is the body’s safety mechanism. The goal is not to “beat” metabolism. The goal is to work with it by avoiding long periods of low intake and high stress.

Useful habits:
• Avoid staying in a calorie deficit longer than eight to twelve weeks without a planned maintenance break.
• Increase calories by two to three hundred for one to two weeks after a long deficit before starting again.
• Sleep seven hours or more to stabilise appetite hormones.

These simple habits keep the metabolism responsive.

Movement is easier to adjust than food. If you eat similarly each day, you can guide weight loss or weight gain by managing how much you move.

Useful habits:
• Aim for eight to 12000 steps per day when cutting.
• Keep resistance training sessions steady across the year.
• Use running, cycling, or swimming as flexible tools to adjust energy expenditure.

Movement gives you options. Options reduce stress.

The biggest mental shift was treating diet as a long term pattern instead of a timeline. When dieting is a “16 week project,” the brain waits for it to end. When it is a long term pattern, ups and downs feel less dramatic and easier to manage.

Useful habits:
• Think in seasons instead of strict phases.
• Plan breaks from dieting in advance.
• Keep food choices stable year round.

This removes the “on or off” feeling that drives rebound cycles.

Looking back, the early struggles were not caused by lack of motivation. They were caused by methods that worked against the way the body prefers to operate. Extreme cuts, large calorie swings, strict rules, and fear based restriction only make metabolism less flexible.

When you build a system around stable habits, predictable meals, steady activity, and simple adjustments, the pressure goes away. You stop fearing food. You stop fearing weight fluctuations. You stop fearing failure.

The goal is not to diet harder. The goal is to create an approach you could follow during busy hospital shifts, stressful weeks, holidays, and normal life. Once that is in place, on off dieting does not return because the system is stable enough to guide you without effort.

Ten years of mistakes lead to these conclusions. They work not because they are clever, but because they match how the body prefers to function. Slow adjustments. Steady intake. High protein. Enjoyable meals. Consistent movement. Predictable rhythms.

Once these are set, progress stops feeling like a fight. It becomes a routine that fits into your life instead of taking over your life.

If there is one message to take away, it is this. You do not need a stricter diet. You need a calmer system. And once the system is stable, everything else becomes much easier to maintain.

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