and the most common over given answer is “a calorie deficit.” But that alone doesn’t help anyone, and it definitely doesn’t explain why so many people try to diet and end up frustrated.

The real issue isn’t the deficit itself it’s everything that happens around it. Most people jump straight into restriction without ever preparing their body, their schedule, or their habits for what a diet actually demands. Then they wonder why they burn out or stall.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all diet, but there is a way to approach this that works on almost everyone: breaking the process into phases. A pre-diet phase where you build stability, a diet phase where you make intentional changes, and a post-diet phase where you actually give the same attention to detail as the other two phases.

When those phases line up, fat loss doesn’t feel like this out of your hands phenomenon only some can actually obtain. It becomes something YOU can control and repeat in YOUR life.

I love science. I love real advancements. I don’t love when simple, effective principles get twisted for clicks.

A lot of people hyper-fixate on, the actual diet, and ignore the other two. Those two are just as important, if not more. I want to give you the basic principles that make success predictable. After we cover each phase, I’ll walk through an RCT by Dr. Bill Campbell on energy restriction.

This is the stage-setting phase. Most people jump into dieting with some salad swaps and extra treadmill sessions and wonder why nothing changes.

Objective of the pre-diet phase:
Maximize your future fat-loss success while minimizing physiological resistance.

“Physiological resistance” sounds dramatic, but it’s simple. A deficit will always be the rule for fat loss, but how effective that deficit is in a fat loss feels phase depends on the state of your metabolism, digestion, hormonal environment, and ability to know your own minimums/ cycles/ routines/ habits.

If you jump into a new lifestyle from a not-so-healthy one, you’re usually starting with:
— suppressed metabolism
— sluggish digestion
— hormones that are out of balance

So the pre-diet phase creates a foundation to optimize, not restrict. This alone often leads to fat loss or adaptations that lead to feeling better overall.

10 rules of thumb for any diet

Now a really important note about this phase before we move on. This phase is all about consistency and learning how to keep trying even when it is hard and the consistency streak has to start over multiple times. This can be a really substantial change from your normal routine and you are going to fail some days.

THIS IS NORMAL

Rather than trying to do every single pillar above perfectly and being discouraged when you get overwhelmed and inevitably miss the mark on a day, just work on one at a time.

Show yourself you can do each a majority of the week and when you feel you have one pillar pretty firmly under your belt add another. So on and so forth and once you unlock the understanding of how to make each fit in your life and your schedule THEN you are in a really good spot to graduate to an actual diet run.

(I am happy to curate and map out this entire process for you to make it more digestible than ever so the results happen in excess and more importantly they hold because we do more than diet together… we craft a new identity for you through proof of consistency at your own pace and all it takes is a click here)

This is the actual diet, the “go time.”

Key insight: the goal is to lose as much fat as possible in a short, controlled window.

Short-term restriction works. Long-term restriction invites metabolic adaptation, hormonal issues, plateaus, and unnecessary suffering.

A pretty good rule of thumb → 6–12 weeks is a dieting sweet spot. Unless you’re in bodybuilding prep, there’s no upside to dragging a cut out.

I prefer a push-pull method over linear dieting and so do my clients. Meaning pushing into deficit and then strategically inserting higher calories or restorative days when needed (key phrase) to offset any negative metabolic adaptations.

Not to say that linear dieting is inherently worse but success rate of people going full overhaul extreme zero wiggle room diet more often than not end up unsuccessful.

Dr. Bill Campbell ran a study comparing calorie cycling to linear dieting across 7 weeks:

— Both groups trained 4 days/week
— Both consumed 1.8 g/kg protein
— Both matched weekly calorie deficit

The cycling (refeed) group:
35% deficit for 5 days → 2 days at maintenance.

The linear group:
25% deficit every day for 7 weeks.

Results:
Both groups lost weight, but the refeed group:
— retained more muscle
— in some cases gained muscle
— preserved resting metabolic rate better
— enjoyed having two higher-calorie days for more flexibility

I worked in Dr. Campbell’s Physique Lab, and one of the biggest projects I helped with was the world’s first reverse diet study. The main takeaway? No two people respond the same way once the diet ends. Everyone has a slightly different physiological “signature” coming out of a deficit, and that’s why a rigid formula rarely works.

Even with that variability, the goals of this phase are surprisingly consistent:
restore hormonal balance, unwind metabolic adaptation, stabilize hunger signals, and keep fat regain controlled while you rebuild intake.

A lot of people think the diet ends when you hit your goal weight, but this is the phase where your discipline is most tested. Hunger goes up. Dopamine from food spikes. Training feels better again. Your metabolism starts firing after weeks of being suppressed. All of that can tempt you into “earning” big meals and sliding into a binge rebound cycle that erases the progress you just worked for.

This is why I tell clients the post-diet phase deserves the same level of attention as the diet itself

Right now, there’s no gold-standard protocol for increasing calories after a cut. Research is still early, and most practical strategies come from decades of coaching experience:

What matters most is responsiveness. The scale isn’t your best metric here but rather your look, hunger patterns, mood, strength, and digestion tell the real story.

That’s why I use a visual and feedback-based approach with clients: increase intake just enough to support performance and hormonal recovery without creating an unnecessary surplus

Done correctly, this phase becomes the launchpad for your next growth cycle! better training, better recovery, better physique outcomes. Done poorly, it becomes the chapter where people slide back into old habits and start the whole process over.

The one that works with your physiology AND lifestyle.

Do not get so compressed in the goal that you do not take a second to realize this process should be life long. Constant learning and adjusting to feel as good as you can to show up yourself and the people around you.

When you step back and look at all of this, the truth is pretty simple

Most people don’t fail because they “can’t diet.” They fail because they were never taught how to set the stage, how to read their own signals, or how to adjust without spiraling. And none of that is a character flaw it’s just skill, and skills can be learned.

When you really sit with all of this, it becomes clear that most people don’t stay stuck because they “can’t diet.” They stay stuck because they’ve never had someone help them make sense of their own patterns, how their metabolism responds, how their stress shows up, how their habits either support them or work against them. That’s not a discipline issue; it’s just a lack of clarity. I actually am dropping a full hour podcast with an IFBB Pro on my YouTube Channel this Sunday with physique building strategies!