As with the ‘Fitness Continuum’ mentioned above, the ‘Diet Continuum’ is a lifelong pursuit, or at least it preferably should be if you have aspirations of maintaining a body devoid of excess fat and weight. How much is excess fat and weight you may ask? That is for you to decide, because you are in charge of your life, your fitness, the self-image you are comfortable with.

Since I have been cognizant of ‘Diets’, which precedes by far my years as a trainer, then through my 3 decades of actual private training, and up to the present day, I do not exaggerate when I claim that while researching the literature, I have heard, seen, and read about 100s upon 100s of diets! Then there are all the magic pills which I will not even lower myself to berate here.

As you read Go30 and my philosophy, you will come to realize that I support simplicity in all my endeavors and body related goals. Simplicity means better adherence- to anything in life really! You have read earlier (I hope you didn’t skip around), that I like to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator! I also subscribe to the KISS principle (keep it stupidly simple), or put another way, make it a ‘No brainer’!

Asking myself, over the years, how to make anyone successful at weight loss and management, regardless of their knowledge of food selection, I finally found the simplest and most successful answer there is. And the reason it is simple and anyone can succeed at this, is because it is not a diet. It has nothing to do with food. It is in fact the absence of food. It is the method of ‘Fasting’.

It is not about food, it is about restricting food (calories), over a period of time. I have found a 24hour fasting window to be all that is needed to attain success; be it for me or my clients. It is specifically this ‘KISS’ component that insures the adherence to this method; there is nothing to know besides not eating! 

It is precisely why this method can be used throughout your life. It is highly successful, especially when enhanced by a limitless caloric deficit created by athletic training of some type. After all, fasting for 24 hours only creates a deficit of average individual metabolic requirements (2500 cal for men, 2000cal for Women). Training however, can result in 4000-6000 calorie deficits, or even greater!

So there you have it, the most brain-dead simple way to lifelong weight management. I get to eat all the ‘forbidden decadent foods’ for the rest of my life, as goes for my clients, and as will go for you in the ‘Continuum’ of your Journey through your life to come!

Journey well my Friends:)

In view of those 1000s of diets that have risen to prominence, then fallen into the abyss of forgetfulness, do you honestly want to explore which diets actually have any merit, do you want to try them all to see which work? Not only can you not do it, you don’t have time in your lifetime to do it ! It is an exercise in futility, and beside, you have better things to do with your life, am I right?

No, since there is no answer to the Diet question above, perhaps you need to ask a better question that will yield an acceptable answer! And so, that is precisely what I did, and perhaps what you should consider as well. So I came to realize that It just should not be as complicated as the following:

• Calorie counting,  weighing food, or relying on inaccurate food labels (boring)!
• Educating yourself about macro and micro nutrients, vitamins, or the gut flora (excruciating)!
• Cleansing, juicing, or consuming everything in a raw state (Yuck)!
• Recording everything you eat on some app so you can obsess about every morsel consumed (MaxStress)!
• Denied everything that tastes good (Demoralizing)!

No I screamed in revolt! What is so simple that caloric restriction, which is the goal of all diets, is insured? What can I present my clients with that will insure success no matter what they know or don’t know about food? And just as important, what can I do that will work for me? Well, turns out it is really simple, dead-brain simple in fact.

I wholeheartedly embraced ‘Fasting’. It skirts all the bullet points above, it insures no one can fail. Not eating for periods of time will restrict caloric intake, that is a fundamental truth and cannot be denied. This makes the process of caloric restriction, the object of any diet, as simple as it can be made.

How can you fail at this? By not fasting- simple as that! Every human being has been fasting since they were born, you do it every night, between dinner and breakfast, a period of 12 to 18 hours, provided you don’t raid the fridge at midnight. It is no stretch of the imagination to envision 24 hour caloric restriction timeframes.

That is what I have adopted to lose weight. I don’t need to fast for longer periods to lose fat and accomplish my goals. I view longer periods of 36, 48, or even longer periods as skirting starvation. This is not healthy, and in my experience, entirely unnecessary.