Be honest – how many diets have you tried in the last 5 years? How about the last 10 years?

If you’re anything like most women, it’s probably too many to count. Women are under immense pressure to look a certain way and it results in this toxic, unhealthy yo-yo diet culture we’re all so painfully familiar with.

The typical diet story starts with us cutting every morsel of pleasure from our diet that we can possibly think of. We exist on bird seed and dust, as long as it doesn’t have too many “syns” in it.

Next, we punish ourselves through endless hours of mind numbing and soul-crushing cardio. The treadmill becomes our tool for self-flagellation in our own private version of a “Rocky” cutscene.

Finally, as if that wasn’t enough, we jump on the latest trend of whatever pill, injection or supplement is flavour of the month for weight loss.

The result?

We lose weight, sure. But we end up miserable, starving, zapped of energy and exhausted all the time.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the weight loss eventually slows down. Leaving you with nowhere to turn. What are you gonna do, eat even less dust than you were last week?

I’m being hyperbolic here but only a little bit. The truth is that this is the reality for a LOT of Doncaster women. At the end of each diet, they end up with a slower metabolism, worse hormonal profile, horrendous physical and mental health, AND a heavier bodyweight than before they’d started. It makes you wonder why you bother.

Inside our over 40s ladies program at DC Personal Training, we teach our ladies a better way. We ditch the diet culture and focus on creating a lifestyle and a way of eating that not only protects your health, your hormones, your digestion, your sleep and your energy, but helps you to lose weight without turning your life upside down. We build an approach to your nutrition that maps as closely as possible onto your existing habits, your meal times, your sleep and wake times and everything in between – meaning we change as little as possible while getting the best possible results.

If it feels like a short-term diet, it will be a short-term diet. If it feels like you could keep this up for the next 10-20 years, then chances are, you will.

So, how do we do it?

Well, here’s a few of the principles we focus on inside our ladies only over 40s fitness group:

You may have been expecting to read about how calories are really important, or avoiding certain foods like the plague is key, but the truth is we can’t help you until we know you. That’s why when we take on each and every new woman into our group, we take the time to find out about her life. We learn about her sleep and wake times, we learn about her job or lifestyle, we figure out what time of day she’s able to eat each meal, how many meals are sensible for her around work, kids, grandkids or other responsibilities – and we use this information as our starting point.

We don’t expect a busy and stressed out woman to follow a rigid and inflexible diet plan. We understand that life gets in the way and this all or nothing mentality isn’t the answer. That’s why we build our approach around you, not the other way around.

Now, let’s talk nutrients. Generally, I don’t focus on calories with our ladies. Not that calories aren’t important, but we’ve all been lectured to death about counting calories and quite honestly it’s boring. My view on the matter is that if you can revitalise your health, your body will start sending the right hormonal signals to tell you to stop eating at the right time, meaning you don’t overeat on calories. After all, your great grandparents never counted calories, and it’s unlikely they struggled with their weight.

The first part we do focus on, however, is protein. Protein is an incredibly important nutrient for many reasons. The key one we’re interested in, however, is its ability to build and repair muscle mass. Because our ladies come and work out with us 2-3 times per week, they’re working their muscles really hard. This damage needs repairing and if they eat properly, their muscles should respond by growing bigger and more shapely than before. This is important because a higher muscle mass demands more blood flow, oxygen and nutrients than a smaller muscle mass, meaning your body has to work harder to supply these essential resources. This has an energetic cost.

In English, you burn more calories by having more muscle.

But you can’t grow more muscle unless you have sufficient protein in your diet. I tell my ladies that it isn’t a meal unless you have 30g of high quality protein in it. Anything else is just a snack. Ideally, you want to be shooting for closer to 40g of protein in each meal, but the reality is most women aren’t hitting 30 – so we can start there. To give you an idea, 30g of protein is roughly the equivalent to a medium sized chicken breast.

Generally, the best sources of protein come from animal foods (meat and fish). These are the most bioavailable and nutrient dense sources of protein, but you can add in plant foods if you’re a vegetarian (you just need to check labels more often).

Once we have a good amount of protein set in our meals, the next thing we need to concern ourselves with is the balance of carbohydrates and fats. In case you’re not sure what these words mean, here’s a quick overview:

Carbohydrates are the starchy foods that are broken down in the body into glucose, and require the hormone insulin to allow entry into each cell to be used as energy.

Fats are the nutrients found in fatty animal meat or fish, nuts, avocados or dairy products that provide essential roles in the body (such as making up components of cell membranes).

Let me be clear: neither fats nor carbs are “bad”. Both are extremely useful in the right situation from the right source. It’s just food and we shouldn’t be scared of it.

The key to which nutrient to eat at which time lies in the timing. Let’s look at carbs first.

Carbohydrates, while useful, have the effect of increasing blood sugar and spiking serotonin.

When blood sugar spikes, the body works hard to bring it down and as a result, blood sugar can drop below baseline. This leads you to have an energy crash and feel like you need to reach for something sugary to pick you up again. Not a great cycle to be on.

When serotonin spikes, it has the effect of making us feel sleepy and relaxed. Great before bed, not so great in the morning.

In contrast, avoiding carbs keeps blood sugar stable and allows dopamine (the chemical responsible for motivation and drive) to take centre stage. Which is ideal for daytime activities (work, gym etc).

So to simplify: carbs promote relaxation (and lethargy in large quantities), and fats protect energy and drive.

For these reasons, I recommend most of our ladies to stick with fats and protein for breakfast and lunch, and introduce carbs in the evening after they’ve finished work and been to the gym.

Finally, we can’t finish this article without talking about consistency.

If you have the most perfect diet plan in the world but you can’t stick to it, your perfect diet plan isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Everything we do in the ladies program is geared around long-term sustainability. We work with you to create a way of eating that you can sustain for months, years and even decades into the future. Anything less than this is a crash diet and just another part of your yo-yo cycle.

If you’re dieting right now, ask yourself if you’d be comfortable eating this way 90% of the time for the rest of your life. If not, you should probably reassess your approach, as it’s probably not going to work long-term.

I really hope this article has helped you in some way or at least shed some light on what actually matters when it comes to setting up a nutritional approach that actually works for weight loss, health and wellbeing long into the future.

If you’d like to learn more, or you could use some help with this, consider applying for our ladies only over 40s fitness group on Wheatley Hall Road in Doncaster by clicking here:

Here’s to your health and wellness

Andy