I've Ruined My Diet!

Find a diet that won't make you say "I've ruined my diet, again!" and you've got something sustainable. Unfortunately you'll never find that sorts of diet in commercials, health magazines, your yoga instructor, or from your doctor.

The only possible failure you CAN be getting from a diet (assuming fat loss is the main goal) is when you consistently go over your caloric intake/targets.  When you make calorie counting your "diet", dieting is no longer all-or-nothing but a learning process that you get better and better at each day.  It's like learning to ride the bike for the first time or picking up the guitar. Since it involves budgeting your energy input/output, it becomes something you can reflect and quickly make adjustment to as you go.  Like using new recipes that consist of more satiating ingredients when cooking or saying no to your 3rd pina coladas at happy hours.  It's a skill that you don't win or lose but learn from trial and error and eventually with patience and openmindedness, you succeed.

Here are some examples of balls to the wall approach that may work for some people while they're invested but do not sustain because it's not practical.  

6 weeks sugar detox, clean eating, no meat diet, grapefruit diet, blood type diet, 28day meal plan from xyz company diet, basically any new diet from amazon that disregard calorie counting or says "don't diet, just try blah blah blah"....  All these examples are just ways to do trick you into eating less calories temporarily (but not always) but usually restrictive and miserable than it needs be.  

Some so impractical that nobody can ever sustain it long enough to make it a lifestyle. This is why people go for quick fix approaches that doesn't require much learning and practice initially.  The "don't eat this, eat that" sort of schemes and yoyo throughout the year without ever considering the fact that removing body fat actually involves creating an imbalance of energy stores in the body consistently.

You like donuts?  Look it up and fit it in your caloric allowance.  You like pizza? Look it up and fit it in.  You like to have 2 glass of wine before bed?  Look it up!  If you know your energy balance while trying to lose fat, all you have to do is eat less than that balance and you'll succeed.   Once you're more mindful of your eating habits and better at eyeballing food portions, you'll never have to count calories again and it only takes a couple days to couple weeks to familiarize with all your favorite foods.  
How much of a deficit depends on your dieting experience, food preference, fitness level, current body fat mass, how dedicated you are or how hungry you're willing to be.  It's too bad most people would rather follow "3 Golden Rules of Clean Eating For Summer Abs" or "21 Days Detox and Bodyweight Squat Challenge For Firm Booty" instead of actually set time aside to learn about body physiology/metabolism, hunger hormones, and basic training philosophy.

At the end of the day, there's truly no "off limits" and you simply can't fail if you're a tracker. You'll make mistakes of going over your target on some days but at least you see your eating habits more objectively since calories are quantifiable things that you can tweak quickly instead of feeling the emotional wreck most dieters go through when they fall from pseudoscience-based eating 'systems'.  

When you don't feel like a loser all the time questioning why you don't have willpower to consistently say no to carbs or not eating after 6pm, this whole 'moving more' and 'eating less' business will get a whole lot easier for you. 

I hope the last time you ruined your diet is the last time.  Stop looking for new diets, quick fixes, and secrets and start finding a reliable and easy calorie counter you can use to learn to get better at budgeting how you eat to reach your goal.  If you need help, let me know.

http://lifehacker.com/fitness-is-a-skill-not-a-talent-heres-how-to-develop-1651281013