Dear Kayla, How do I avoid temptation and stay in a caloric deficit?

Dear Kayla,

I was doing good for 2 or 3 days then the temptations got me. I really wanna do this but I don’t know how to stay in a calorie deficit. How do I do that?

Sincerely,
Emily

Dear Emily,

I’m sorry you’re having trouble! But this is just part of your journey. You can overcome these obstacles. You’ve got basically two different challenges here, so let’s take them one at a time.

Challenge #1: Caving to temptations

There are basically two main reasons why food looks overpoweringly tempting in the fasting window.

You’ve jumped into a fasting window that is simply too long for your current fasting skill level.
You aren’t letting yourself eat what you love in the eating window.

If your issue is that you’ve jumped to a long fasting window, dial it back until you have a fasting window that you can absolutely stick with. Make sure it feels easy. Work on consistency first. Then slowly push your window out, as you feel ready. It’s okay for this to take a while. You’re building your fasting muscle.

If you’re restricting what you’re eating in the eating window, try getting rid of those restrictions. Eat the stuff you love, but just train yourself to wait until the eating window opens. When you know you can eat this stuff in the eating window, the fasting window becomes much easier, and you’ll probably find that you have stopping power.

Challenge #2: Don’t know how to stay in a deficit.

A caloric deficit of some sort is necessary to lose weight, but you don’t have to count calories. You can pay attention to how full you feel after each meal, and whether or not you’re feeling any hunger at all between meals. You need to feel full at the end of the meal, but you do want to feel at least some hunger in the fasting window. That bit of hunger is your body letting you know you’re in the deficit. Most importantly, you can watch what the scale is doing over about 6 weeks of time. If you’re staying in a caloric deficit overall, the scale will trend down.

This takes trial and error. Just keep working at it until you find that sweet spot!

Sincerely,

Kayla

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