How to Stay Committed to a Diet (Here are 12 Research-Backed Tips)
Key Takeaways:
Staying on a diet is difficult but 100% possible.
The most important thing is to set a realistic goal, which will encourage you to choose sustainable dieting strategies over crash diets.
To boost your chances of staying committed to your diet, prioritize healthy, calorie-wise foods both at home and when eating out. Limit access to ultra-processed foods.
Living an otherwise healthy lifestyle — e.g., staying physically active and getting enough good-quality sleep nightly — complements and enhances your dieting efforts.
You’re unhappy with the digits on the weighing scale. You go on a diet. Six months fly by, you get back on the weighing scale, and now, you’re smiling at the number.
OK, back to reality.
If you’re like most people, those six months will not “fly by”; instead, you’ll struggle with hunger and temptations. Your willpower will be tested to the limit. Unfortunately, the odds are stacked against you:
Research suggests you’d likely quit your diet by the five-week mark
Non-adherence rates range from 16% to 59% in weight loss programs (and that’s in supervised clinical and research settings!)
But! Before you despair, look at those percentages again.
Up to 84% of individuals manage to stick to their diets. What’s their secret? In this article, we share the strategies used by successful weight loss achievers that you can implement to improve your chances of staying on a diet long enough to (finally) see results.
#1: Choose a sustainable diet over a crash diet
Crash diets, also known as very-low-calorie diets (VLCDs), involve dramatically reducing calorie intake to 800 to 1,200 calories daily.
Since energy balance determines weight, VLCDs are naturally very effective in producing rapid, significant weight loss — many studies have reported weight losses of approximately 15 to 30 kg over 12 to 20 weeks.
However, they have a serious downside. Long-term sustainability.
About 40% to 50% of participants assigned to VLCDs drop out of the program before achieving their weight loss goals. VLCDs also carry the risk of excessive muscle mass loss, which has the double-whammy effect of lowering metabolic rate and upregulating appetite.
What’s the better alternative?
Answer: a diet involving a slight to moderate calorie deficit so you lose weight gradually, around 0.5 to 1 kg weekly. This approach presents two advantages:
Minimize muscle mass loss (especially on a high-protein diet; more on this later)
Increases the likelihood of you getting enough of the vitamins and minerals you need for optimal energy levels through your diet (the better you feel, the more likely you are to stick to your diet)
Does diet composition matter? Several studies have shown that low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets and low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets are equally effective at eliciting and maintaining weight loss.
That said, a macronutrient you should prioritize is protein.
It promotes satiety and minimizes muscle mass loss in a calorie deficit. The recommended daily protein intake for people with overweightness or obesity to maximize fat loss is 1.2 to 1.5 g per kg of body weight.
#2: Set a realistic goal
Research shows that setting a weight loss goal leads to greater weight loss than not setting a goal. But here’s the catch. You can’t be overly aggressive.
According to findings from the broader goal-setting literature, when a goal is too ambitious, individuals often experience impaired performance, which leads to goal abandonment. In the context of obesity, studies have found an association between setting larger weight loss goals and:
So, as mentioned earlier, a good weight loss goal to strive for is a 5% to 10% weekly reduction in body weight.
#3: Only keep healthy foods around you
According to a 2021 cross-sectional study, unsurprisingly, individuals living in households with:
Easy access to ultra-processed foods, such as ice cream and snack crackers, had poorer diet quality (research shows people eat more calories and gain more weight on an ultra-processed diet than on a diet composed of minimally processed foods)
More fruits and vegetables had a much better diet quality and were far less likely to be overweight
What does this mean for you? Set yourself up for success at staying on a diet by overhauling your home food environment. Throw or give away hyper-palatable, hyper-calorie foods. And stock up on healthy, minimally processed foods like fruits and vegetables.
#4: Stock your pantry with healthy snacks
On a related note, leaving an obesogenic food environment behind doesn’t mean you can’t snack. Snacking throughout the day could help you control hunger and prevent overeating while dieting.
But, of course, what you snack on matters.
A 2016 review found that while snacking on energy-dense and nutrient-poor foods (e.g., cookies) led to weight gain over time, snacking on healthful snacks — whole foods high in protein, fiber, and whole grains, such as nuts and yogurt — did not.
A 2008 randomized controlled trial found that people with obesity who were dieting and exercising lost weight regardless of whether they ate three generally healthy snacks daily or didn’t snack at all.
Looking for healthy snack ideas? We’ve got you covered:
#5: Make use of planned “cheat meals”
The occasional planned cheat meal could make staying on a diet more effortless.
In a 2016 study, researchers found that participants who indulged in “planned cheating” once weekly exhibited greater long-term adherence and enjoyment of their diet than those who followed a rigid dieting plan throughout the week.
More specifically, participants who didn’t have any cheat meals to look forward to often developed “irresistible urges” and cravings that eventually led many of them to fall off track with their diet.
Here are a few tips on implementing cheat meals:
Plan for the additional calories. Energy balance determines your weight. You don’t want to overly indulge to the extent that you end up “offsetting” your dieting efforts in the past few days or weeks. So, have a rough estimate of how many calories you’d like to eat during your cheat meal — and stick to it. You could also create more “calorie room” for your cheat meal by eating a little less on the days leading up to it.
Follow a well-balanced, nutritious diet the rest of the time. This goes back to the points mentioned under “Choose a sustainable diet …”
And here’s an important caveat: it’s best not to use cheat meals if you have or have struggled with an eating disorder. Cheat meal engagement is linked to greater eating disorders and psychopathology, including binge-eating episodes, in adolescents and young adults.
#6: Plan when eating out
How to stay committed to a diet when you eat out frequently? Plan for it.
According to a 2021 systematic review providing a comprehensive understanding of successful dieters' strategies, “pre-planning for events” is vital.
This includes:
Recommending healthier restaurants for social events
Pre-assessing menus for outings
So, here’s what you can do. Get familiar with where you can find healthy food around Singapore:
Then, check out your food options before eating out to pick one that best suits your dieting goal.
#7: Keep track of your food intake and weight
You don’t have to count your calories if you don’t want to, but you should ideally have a rough gauge of the amount of food you eat daily.
Monitor how your weight is trending — e.g., if it’s going up, you’re eating too many calories.
This straightforward way of assessing your progress could make staying on a diet easier.
#8: Incorporate physical activity
Wait a minute. Wouldn’t physical activity crank up your hunger and make staying on a diet even more difficult than it already is?
A large body of evidence disagrees. Physical activity positively influences:
Psychological processes, such as appetite control
Psychological aspects, such as self-efficacy and body image, which lead to greater self-determined motivation
… and, consequently, improvements in dietary self-regulation.
Meaning? To boost your chances of staying on a diet, increase your physical activity levels simultaneously.
Learn how much exercise you should do in this comprehensive guide to losing weight.
#9: Get enough high-quality sleep
Not getting enough sleep increases your:
“Hunger” (ghrelin) hormone while decreasing your “satiety” (leptin) hormone
Neurological responsiveness to food rewards, especially high-calorie foods
For better chances of staying on a diet, get seven to nine hours of good-quality sleep nightly. Click here for tips on sleeping well.
#10: Manage stress levels
Like sleep deprivation, high cortisol levels — as seen in chronic stress — could increase your cravings for sweet, high-calorie “comfort foods”. It could also impair your sleep, and, at this point, you already know what that brings: more hunger and less satiety.
Here are a few strategies you could use to better manage stress and improve your chances of staying on a diet.
#11: Get social support
Social support is a well-established facilitator of weight loss and weight loss maintenance, as it can provide encouragement, motivation, and accountability. In other words, telling trusted loved ones, such as spouses, family members, friends, and co-workers, about your weight loss goal could make staying on a diet much easier.
#12: Seek professional help
Another way you could get support is by engaging the services of a:
Registered dietitian with the expertise to co-create a healthy, nutritious meal plan to help you lose weight gradually and safely. They’ll also teach you how to make better food choices by reading food labels, understanding how much nutrients you need in your diet, etc. Research shows that dietitian interventions often result in more weight loss than non-dietitian-delivered interventions in individuals with obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Fitness coach who can develop and guide you through an individualized exercise routine that’ll bolster your chances of staying on a diet. This could help allay your fears of exercising, especially if you have a chronic condition.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one weight loss program that equips you with the invaluable services of a registered dietitian and fitness coach, check out NOVI Optimum Plus (a medical weight loss program involving GLP-1 RA medications) .
Our NOVI Optimum Plus clients always receive support from both physicians and health coaches. This maximizes the chances of successfully achieving a healthy body weight, which leads to more energy and better health overall.
NOVI Optimum Plus includes:
Doctor consultation (video or in-clinic)
GLP1-RA Medication with free delivery
Digital coaching & support