If you are anything like me, you would be inclined to think that diets are all about physique. I thought that the only people who would benefit from going on a diet were those looking to lower their body fat.  As a trainer I think that it is important not to ask your clients to do something that you yourself would not actually do, so I tried my hand at a variety of different diet options. The nature of the different food constraints is not the interesting thing here, though as all diets work  — given that they put you in a caloric deficit and so long as you can adhere to them for a prolonged amount of time. As it turns out, physique change is only ONE of the side effects of what a diet can do for you. What it did for me, was it REVIVED ME.

        I have had ambitions for a long time to work on projects that extend outside of my immediate needs but, I’ve struggled with being a self-starter on these “important but not urgent” items.  When I was in school, there was infrastructure. When I was working at a corporate gym, there was infrastructure. Once I went out on my own, ALL OF THAT DISAPPEARED. I had no one to tell me to get things done by certain dates, no one to push me to expand, no one to say you HAVE to do this or that.  Without constraints, I became complacent and comfortable and unable to create a fire in myself to complete these long-term tasks. I lacked self-discipline (a term I now have qualms with, but that is a story for another article.) I found myself chasing instant gratifications, and a big one of those quick-fix, feel-good things for me, was FOOD.

        I found that by ridding myself of the option to instantly gratify with food, I created in myself a hunger both literally and figuratively. I became hungry for satisfaction and that hunger became easier and easier to put onto things that I had ambitions to do (LIKE WRITING THIS!) It was as if I simply had a need for that habitual dopamine hit, and when I was deprived of that through food restraint, I was forced to get it in other ways.

        I found that by saying no to my cravings throughout the day I was working a muscle; the muscle of self-control.  It seemed to me that every time I said no to something, my capacity and ability to say yes to other things STRENGTHENED.  I spontaneously found myself applying my newly found focus and energy into all types of things that I had put on the shelf waiting for another day.  I cleaned and organized my room, putting miscellaneous stuff into boxes, I finished building a fountain for my bedroom — a project that I had started 10 months ago and simply never made time for. I started to edit footage from a video shoot that I had done months back, and I began piecing together all of the component parts of my soon-to-launch website!  SIGAFIT.COM. Until I took away my habit of food-as-escape-pleasure I had been unable to summon up the personal strength and tenacity to complete them. Dieting gave me my power back. I told my friend Blake about my new-found focus and he told me that Steve Jobs had reported similar feelings. I looked it up and found this quotation:

Jobs’s daughter Lisa “watched him spit out a mouthful of soup one day after learning that it contained butter….Even at a young age Lisa began to realize his diet obsessions reflected a life philosophy, one in which asceticism and minimalism could heighten subsequent sensations. ‘He believed that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from restraint,’ she noted.”

        I believe that it goes back to an evolutionary adaptation when humans were hungry and without a food source in the wild.  Their bodies would adapt to the circumstance by enhancing their energy and focus to assist them in survival and continuing the quest for food.

        Be forewarned though! The stage that precedes this focus is a petulant, childish inner tantrum of “I want this or I want that.” It is important to know that this is coming and that the tantrums don’t last forever.  I have found over the course of my days of dieting that the tougher it is to say no to any given craving, the bigger the payout for not indulging.

        Intrigued?  I hope this article stimulates you to think of what you would do if you were to find yourself with heightened focus and capacity to do things that you care deeply about but have been tabled due to them being overwhelming.  I think that this could also be a more fun way to go about changing your physique as well. Shifting your paradigm so that physique is a side effect and the accumulation of positive habit changes becomes the real quest that you are on.