03/09/2026
Fat loss requires a calorie deficit, that part hasn’t changed. But when you stop starving yourself suddenly you might not have an overwhelming urge to smash 4000 calories over the weekend.
In other words, sometimes the way you’re trying to create that deficit is exactly what’s making it so difficult to maintain.
Eating as little as possible.
Skipping meals because you’re “being good.”
Cutting out bread, chocolate, takeaways and anything remotely enjoyable.
Choosing the lowest-calorie option regardless of whether you actually want it.
Skipping the carbs at meals and white knuckling it through the hunger that follows 20 minutes after eating.
Going to bed hungry because the scales are the priority.
Then comes the weekend.
You’re hungry. You’re fed up. You’ve spent all week thinking about the foods you “can’t” have.
So a takeaway turns into a takeaway, sides & dessert.
A few snacks becomes an entire evening of picking.
Saturday becomes Sunday because you’ve “ruined it anyway.”
And suddenly the huge deficit you worked so hard to create through the week has disappeared. You are left feeling like you are spinning your wheels with all the feelings of dieting, restriction & rules but none of the progress you feel like you should have.
The answer isn't necessarily to restrict harder next week... Sometimes, it’s to eat more.
When you're satisfied with a meal you don't go searching for something half an hour after finishing it.
When you aim to include the foods you genuinely enjoy you might not have that overwhelming urge to eat anything that's not nailed down so often.
Having flexibility and frameworks for meals out, eating on the go or for when unplanned things crop up because nothing will propel you off track more than feeling compelled to always order a dry salad at a restaurant.
If you can actually maintain a way of eating for weeks & months (without regularly feeling the need to eat thousands of calories at the weekend) it becomes far more useful than a restrictive deficit you can only tolerate for three days at a time.
The goal isn't to eat as little as possible. It's to eat as much as you reasonably can while still making progress.
