The Diet Cycle: Why You’re Not Broken

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May 14, 2025

Wednesday, May 14th, 2025

Hello Friends,

Welcome to the thirteenth edition of the #LiveTo120 Newsletter! We hope you're enjoying your subscription to our Life Aesthetics Substack, and we have another awesome weekly newsletter for you ahead.

This week, we’re diving into a concept we call The Diet Cycle — and if you’ve ever felt like you’re either all-in or all-out with your nutrition, this might finally explain why.

Here’s the thing: nutrition tends to follow an inverse relationship between consistency and flexibility. The more structured and repetitive your meals are, the more progress you usually see — but things can start to feel robotic. On the flip side, the more freedom and flexibility you introduce, the more chaotic and inconsistent your results can become.

And that’s not a failure — that’s the cycle.

The Diet Cycle is a way to recognize which phase you’re in, and how to shift gears without hitting the panic button. Because let’s be honest — life throws curveballs. You’re not going to meal prep like a machine 365 days a year. But you also can’t eat “intuitively” if your intuition is built on protein bars, oat milk lattes, and vibes.

Over the past 15 years, this exact approach has been the foundation of how we’ve helped thousands of clients build real, lasting results. Whether someone’s goal was fat loss, muscle gain, or simply to stop feeling out of control with food, teaching them how to understand where they are in this cycle — and how to adjust without scrapping everything — has been a game-changer.

I often say that nutrition isn’t just about macros or calories — it’s about learning the alphabet of how your body responds to structure, stress, spontaneity, and everything in between. This article will walk you through that framework. You’ll be able to pinpoint your current phase in the cycle, recognize the resistances that tend to show up, and know exactly what to do next to move forward — not with more force, but with more clarity.

Enjoy this edition, and make sure to check your inbox for the next article we publish!

Sending the best of vibes,

- Coach Matt

📍 Before we dive in, take a moment to make yourself comfortable and relaxed.

⏳ We have about 10-15 minutes of reading ahead, but if you prefer, there will also be an option to listen to this episode via audio at the top of the newsletter available shortly.

🥞 Nutrition & Diet

Part I. The Real Reason Diets Feel So Hard

It’s become a running expectation on our coaching calls that I’ll eventually break out a metaphor — whether we’re talking about fitness, nutrition, or life itself. I can already hear my client Alicia laughing and saying, “There it is! The metaphor I was waiting for!” as I tie a life lesson to some poetic, occasionally ridiculous analogy that helps lock in a new perspective.

But in my defense, that’s what brings me the most joy as a coach — helping install new ways of thinking about this whole fitness, nutrition, and body transformation process. It’s like uploading a fresh program into your subconscious — one that quietly runs in the background, subtly shifting how choices are made, how habits take root, and how reality is filtered. Add a little knowledge, a little wisdom, and suddenly the hard stuff starts making more sense.

In fact, that linking of all the hard stuff together in a way that feels simple and clear — that’s the very bedrock of Life Aesthetics, and the reason our lifestyle platform works so well.

The Diet Cycle is one of those concepts I’m excited to share with you today — a crystallized fossil of thought, formed over 15 years of coaching thousands of clients through my unique approach to nutrition. It’s a solution to a problem nearly everyone faces at some point: why does sticking to a diet feel so hard — and why does achieving real results while still having balance feel so out of reach?

This concept begins with a little re-introduction.

For the purposes of the first few parts of this article, I want you to set aside the usual titles — not Coach Matt, not personal trainer, not nutritionist, not your weekend therapist or hype buddy.

Today, I want you to think of me as something else entirely: your Energy Accountant.

But instead of budgeting dollars in your bank account for bills, new clothes, overpriced eggs, and even more overpriced lattes — I’m here to help you manage a different kind of account: your calorie bank account.

Because how you budget your calories determines whether you're paying off accumulated debt (body fat) or investing in your future (lean muscle, energy, longevity).

And that brings us to the first big a-ha moment: most people find sticking to a diet hard for the same reason they struggle with their finances — a lack of education around managing money (calories), and overspending (eating) without a clear budget in place.

And so, the Diet Cycle begins with a simple question:

How much money (calories) do I need to reach my goals — whether that’s losing fat, building muscle, or maintaining my body composition?

And just as importantly: how much do I currently have — meaning, how many calories am I actually eating right now?

Part II. Discovery Phase: Audit Before You Adjust

“You want me to what? Send you photos of everything I eat for a full week?”

Yes.

“Even snacks and beverages?”

Yes. Especially those.

“What if I eat the same thing every day?”

Doesn’t matter. Send it over. And no, you’re not bothering me with the incoming texts — this is part of the process. But here’s the key: don’t change a single thing.

If it’s donuts, pizza, and energy drinks, that’s exactly what I want to see.
This is your Week 1: Discovery Phase — not your highlight reel. The goal is to observe your reality exactly as it is, not how you think it should be now that you're in a program.

This is the conversation I have with every single client who joins our coaching program — before they ever hit their first Monday on plan.

We call it Discovery Week.

This initial approach to nutrition is simple but powerful: observe before we intervene. I use this week to audit everything — ingredient choices, serving sizes, meal timing, prep habits (are they quick-grabbers or gourmet foodies?), and most importantly, their natural baseline.

The secret sauce? I’m also quietly monitoring their weight trends (correlated with digestion and metabolism) across seven days while they go about their usual life — now lightly integrating their strength training program and logging their daily lifestyle data inside the platform: mood, motivation, hunger, stress, sleep, and more.

The meal photos I receive each week are a masterclass in client diversity:

From Tim Hortons die-hards living off bagels and coffee…
To bird-peckers who nibble endlessly without ever forming a real meal…
To the recovering diet culture survivors terrified of anything remotely processed…
To the TV-brainwashed cereal lovers eating for “heart health” in the morning and chasing it with buttered coffee because, well — keto.

The first < 7 days are strictly data collection mode.

No judgment, no macros, no calorie goals — just observation.

I’m not trying to fix anything yet, I’m trying to listen. This is where I get a raw look at the habits that run on autopilot: what foods show up on repeat, how often meals are skipped, whether protein is low, or if sugar and fat are being stacked in snack-heavy windows.

I’m also watching the emotional patterns around food. Is breakfast being skipped because they’re genuinely not hungry, or because the morning’s a stress-fueled blur? Are they reaching for snacks at 9pm because of hunger... or because it’s the only calm moment in their day? This part isn’t about meal perfection — it’s about getting real. I want to see how a client actually lives, not how they wish they did now that they’ve signed up for coaching.

After that first week, I’ll review the meal photos they’ve sent in with them over our first weekly review — sometimes even tossing in a lighthearted A–F grade for fun. But in all seriousness, this is where the real work begins. I use those images to help clients understand why their current habits have led them to where they are today — whether it’s their health, their body composition, or just how they feel in their own skin.

Most of the time, my clients are genuinely surprised. Many had no idea how calorie-dense some of their go-to choices were. Others thought they were eating “healthy” — not realizing how much marketing, misinformation, and diet culture had shaped their perception of food. Some admit they’ve never even looked at a food label. And very few have ever truly understood what fats, proteins, and carbs are — or that each gram of these nutrients carries real, measurable energy.

And so, the Diet Cycle begins by auditing the natural rhythm — the tendencies, the breakdowns, and the misaligned beliefs that shape someone’s choices. Only after that groundwork is laid can we begin to build a strategy that actually fits.

Then — and only then — do we move into the next stage of the Diet Cycle: the Structure Phase.

ps. ready for the next a-ha moment of this article?

Here it is: most people — and maybe even you — don’t actually have the experience required to eat intuitively.

Why? Because there’s no foundational understanding of food labels, calorie density, or the basic concept of macronutrients.

And without that baseline knowledge, intuitive eating isn’t intuitive at all — it’s just guessing with confidence.

So here’s a takeaway if you’re doing this on your own:

Try taking photos of every single meal and snack for one week — no judgment, no edits, no pressure to impress. Just document it. By the end of the week, patterns will reveal themselves. You’ll notice what’s missing (like protein), what’s stacking (like sugar and fat), and how often you’re eating reactively instead of intentionally.

Awareness is the first upgrade — and it doesn’t require an app or a spreadsheet. Just your camera roll and a willingness to look and be honest with yourself on how you feel.

Part III. The Meal Plan Structure Phase – Where Results Start to Stick

Think back to when you were a kid — what meals did you love?

Were you a cereal-for-breakfast kid? More of a pancakes-and-syrup type?
Did you live for homemade grilled cheese sandwiches, or show up to school with
Dunkaroos in your lunchbox?
Did your hand shoot up when someone asked what your favorite food was — and the answer was always pizza or burgers?

The truth is, a lot of the joy we find in food is hardwired from childhood.
And one of my favorite coaching tricks — and the next stage of the Diet Cycle — is taking those nostalgic, feel-good meals and recreating them…but healthier.

This is where we clean up the ingredient quality most people are blind to, while building a structured meal plan based on their personal energy budget — using the BMR and TDEE data I’ve calculated during Discovery Week. From there, I match the right ratios of protein, fats, and carbs they need to support their goal.

It’s a blend of science, intuition, and 15+ years of coaching experience — all baked into a structured meal plan that doesn’t feel like punishment, but instead feels familiar, simple, and dialed-in.

You see, most people come into my program in a state of — let’s be honest — complete nutritional chaos.

Their meals are either based on what’s most convenient in their self-labelled “busy lifestyle” or, worse, dictated entirely by whatever their taste buds are craving that day.

Once we stop the food selection roulette and bleed out the chaos from their daily routines, everything starts to shift.

We don’t do a complete overhaul — instead, we take what they’re already eating and refine it. I usually start with 3–4 main meals and 1–2 snacks, built around foods they already enjoy. From there, we add structure: consistent timing, better food quality, and upgraded composition. Each anchor meal gets a balance of protein, fiber, and hydration. These are the three pillars of satiety, digestion, and energy regulation — and when you get them right, cravings begin to vanish.

What we’re doing is calming the volatility.

We track metrics like weight trends, hunger levels, digestion, energy, and mood — and we create rhythm. Meal timing becomes consistent, blood sugar stabilizes, and the body starts trusting that nourishment is coming regularly. This is where adherence starts to win over motivation. We reduce decision fatigue by encouraging 80% repeat meals, giving their brain one less thing to wrestle with during the day.

It works like magic… because it’s not magic. It’s structure, built around them.

This phase of the Diet Cycle is about experimenting — building a lineup of meals you genuinely enjoy and can stick to for a full week. The goal is to stretch that plan just far enough to track results and practice the underrated skill of consistency. And yes, consistency is a skill — not a personality trait. Don’t confuse the two.

If you’ve never followed a meal plan for longer than a few days, start with what you already enjoy and build from there. Repetition isn’t boring — it’s how consistency is built.

Part IV. Want to be Rich? Compound Consistency.

“Out of all your meals, which one sucks the most?”

It’s a question I jokingly throw at my clients around the two-week mark — once they’ve had time to settle into the meal plan we built together.

By this point, the magic usually starts kicking in. A few pounds of fluff have melted off, energy is sky-high, digestion feels smoother, bloating is gone, and for the first time in a while, they feel hopeful — like maybe this won’t be so hard after all.

And honestly? It’s sometimes a chore getting them to pick a meal they want to ditch or swap out. Thanks to Discovery Week and the strategy of building their plan around foods they actually enjoy, I’ll often hear: “I love them all, it’s hard to choose!”

I find this shift fascinating. Because if I had told that same client on Day 1 that they’d be eating the same structured set of meals for 2–3 weeks straight, they would’ve panicked — maybe even ghosted me. But when you lock into a plan that tastes great, makes you feel amazing, and delivers results? You want to stick with it.

That’s the power of consistency. That’s how you get rich — not just in results, but in life.

A new lifestyle is like upgrading to a nicer car or a more expensive apartment. At first, it feels like a stretch on your budget. But give it a few weeks, and that stretch becomes your new normal. That’s how sustainable habits work — you grow into them, one solid rep and or day at a time.

But let’s be clear — meal plans aren’t meant to stay static forever.

No matter how consistent or disciplined you are, it’s important to keep yourself engaged with your nutrition. If a few meals start to feel stale, that’s your sign to evolve the plan — not abandon it. The Structured Phase is also the perfect time to start experimenting: testing new meal setups, playing with flavors, and upgrading food quality without compromising consistency.

One of the core philosophies I teach is the difference between structure and content. You can read more about it here, but in short:

Structure is the type of meal — a smoothie, a salad, a sandwich, a bowl, etc.
Content is the specific ingredients — banana smoothie, PB & chocolate smoothie, grilled cheese, BLT, and so on.

When it’s time to make your first changes to a meal plan, ask yourself the same thing I ask my clients:

“Which of the 4–5 meals in my current rotation brings me the least joy?”
And more importantly: “Am I craving a structure change or a content change?”

Try it yourself this week — one simple swap can restart momentum.

This single question brings clarity. If the structure feels boring, try a totally different meal type. If the structure works but the flavor’s off, swap the ingredients and keep the format.

Once you’ve rebuilt the meal, your next step is to cross-reference your new meal plan with your recent results.

Did weight drop as expected? Too quickly? Not at all?
How strong are you feeling in your workouts?
Are you full and energized, or flat and underfed?
Are blood sugar crashes hitting mid-afternoon?
How’s digestion responding?

These are self-awareness cues — your body’s way of telling you whether the plan is working or needs adjusting. Based on those signals, you can fine-tune everything — from total daily calories to macro ratios (protein, carbs, fats) and even micronutrients like fiber, sugar, and sodium.

This is the phase where precision begins. It’s less about guessing, more about calibrating.

Who can guess our next a-ha moment in the article?

Ready?

This phase of the Diet Cycle is all about bridging consistency with flexibility — staying grounded in your structured meal plan while beginning to experiment with new meal formats and flavors.

For some, this phase might last 4–8 weeks. For others, it may stretch across several months. Either way, the Structure Phase delivers some of the most powerful results in the early chapters of a transformation journey.

It builds consistency, yes — but it also teaches you the backend of nutrition. Week by week, those small tweaks to your meal plan reveal food preferences, uncover hidden intolerances, and help you dial in the macronutrient ratios that truly work for your body. It also generates a predictable stream of data — weight trends, hunger signals, digestion cues, energy levels — all of which we can use to make micro-adjustments to either your calorie intake or your training/cardio output to ensure you never plateau.

For many, this phase is where they stay while working with a coach or pushing toward a specific body composition or performance goal. Minor tweaks along the way keep engagement high, while the plan remains relatively stable for maximum results.

But for those looking to make this a lifestyle — a sustainable, long-term way of eating that doesn’t rely on a set meal plan forever — there lies ahead a beautiful path.

A path paved with food freedom, variety, and a deeper understanding of how to truly fuel your body.

But beware…

This next phase isn’t for the faint of heart. It requires attention to detail, a bit of math, a few extra minutes on MyFitnessPal, and the kind of mental and physical fortitude usually reserved for Navy SEALs and parents of toddlers.

We’re talking about macro tracking.

Brace yourself — things are about to get delightfully nerdy.

Part V. IIFYM: Freedom… Until It Isn’t.

I want to tell you my secret now.

I see dead diets.

For many, the term IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros) stirs up a cocktail of emotions — part food freedom, part nutritional rocket science. And if you haven’t heard of it before? Honestly, you’re lucky you made it this far without it.

Because now… we’ve officially entered that part of the Diet Cycle.
The part where chaos quietly creeps in.
Where we begin traveling the X-axis — venturing further from structure and deeper into the uncharted, seductive territory where flexibility feels empowering… right before your results crash and burn.

Welcome to the graph.
A visual representation of the inverse relationship between nutritional structure and nutritional flexibility — and how they impact your progress over time.

Below, you’ll see a chart I built to illustrate this exact tipping point: where freedom, if unmanaged, becomes friction. And where consistency, if misunderstood, gets mistaken for restriction.

This is the final checkpoint before leveling up. Consider it your pre-req for earning real flexibility without falling off the map.

Let’s walk through the graph above, because it’s the heartbeat of this entire concept — and it might just explain why your results have been so inconsistent over the years.

The blue line represents structure, which in this case means a consistent meal plan with low flexibility — the kind of plan we build in the early stages of coaching. You’ll notice that it starts high, dips in the middle, and rises again. Why? Because at the start, structure delivers the highest return on results: meals are controlled, repeatable, and easy to measure. But over time, people get bored. Engagement drops. The body adapts. This is where many drift toward the shiny promise of flexibility, which brings us to the next line…

The orange dashed line is macro tracking, which represents the pursuit of flexibility. This line climbs as structure fades. People get excited by the idea of eating "whatever they want" as long as it fits their numbers — hence the IIFYM approach. At first, this feels freeing. But eventually, decision fatigue, inconsistencies, and a lack of food education catch up. You start “eyeballing” things. Logging becomes sloppy. Freedom starts to blur into chaos. As you can see, the orange line peaks mid-journey… and then begins to crash.

The green line is the one that matters most — results. It begins strong (thanks to early structure), then dips mid-journey as flexibility increases and adherence wavers. This is the “Danger Zone” where many abandon ship — frustrated that what used to work no longer does.

Why is IIFYM the place where diets go to die? Because almost everyone makes the exact same mistake.

They start tracking as they go.

No pre-log. No plan. Just vibes and good intentions.

Suddenly it’s 7:42 PM and they’ve got 11g of fat, 6g of carbs, and 84g of protein left… and no earthly idea how to make a meal out of it. So they start throwing things together. Two boiled eggs, a protein bar, half a rice cake, and a scoop of Greek yogurt with some peanut butter on top. It’s a meal Frankenstein would be proud of — and it makes zero digestive or psychological sense.

Even worse? They start trying to plug in restaurant meals with no nutritional info. Chicken Caesar salad from a local pub? Logged as "Chick-fil-A grilled chicken salad." Homemade lasagna? Guesswork. And don’t even get me started on sushi rolls — it’s basically rolling the macro dice.

They begin adding back in foods they haven’t had in weeks: highly processed snacks, gluten-heavy choices, inflammatory oils, and “fun” foods they never learned to track properly in the first place. And then the symptoms return — low energy, bloating, cravings, skin issues, mood swings, brain fog, and that familiar sense of “ugh.”

The weight trend? It stalls. Or climbs. Or bounces unpredictably.

The habits they spent months building — cooking, prepping, grocery shopping with intention, journaling, tracking metrics — they start to vanish. It’s not because they’re lazy or unmotivated. It’s because they’re drifting without a plan. And as frustrating as this phase is…it’s a necessary one.

Everyone needs to feel the pain of losing their rhythm after finding it — because that’s when they finally understand why structure matters. Not as a punishment, but as a baseline. As their home base.

So when clients come to me and ask, “How do I actually become more accurate with tracking?” — my answer is always the same:

Start planning the night before.

Take five minutes and lay out your meals for tomorrow. Make sure your macros are hit before you even wake up. Then, if you want to swap a meal structure (say, a wrap instead of a bowl) or change the content (chicken instead of turkey), that’s totally fine — because the foundation is already set.

It’s not about being perfect.

It’s about being prepared enough to stay consistent without the chaos.

But here’s the good news: as structure makes a comeback, results begin to rise again. When clients return to a version of structure that works for their lifestyle — with just enough flexibility to stay sane — they enter what we call Sustainable Mastery.

The a-ha moment from this part? You don’t need to choose between structure or flexibility. You just need to understand where you are in the cycle — and what needs to be adjusted to keep results moving without burning out. This graph is your roadmap to long-term success.

Part VI. Back in Control – Structure’s Subtle Flex

My 15 years of coaching experience have led me to a simple but powerful thesis — the one you saw mapped out in the Diet Cycle graph above: Structure always makes a comeback.

Don’t believe me?

Ask any of the 30,000+ clients who have worked with Life Aesthetics, and catch up with them a few years later. Odds are, they’ll tell you that working with us didn’t just change their body — it rewired how they approach their lifestyle. They learned the difference between structure and content. They embraced consistency, prioritized whole foods, and built simple, joyful meals that they stretched out for weeks until boredom kicked in — then tweaked, adapted, and optimized.

They’ll tell you that over the course of 16–20 weeks, they moved through phases: first following a meal plan, then learning how to track macros, then spotting the patterns in their own behavior and food preferences. They became label readers. Restaurant hackers. The kind of people who see beyond the surface of a meal and instinctively register what’s protein, what’s fat, and what’s filler. Like they’ve unlocked some kind of nutritional x-ray vision.

That’s what freedom really is.

It’s not eating “whatever you want” — it’s knowing how to pivot when you need to. It’s being able to lock in structure when life gets chaotic, and loosen the reins during periods of maintenance without spiraling. It’s knowing how to rebuild momentum with a meal plan, and how to enjoy freedom with meals that still make sense nutritionally.

That’s the Diet Cycle.

That’s what we teach — and it’s what every successful client eventually embodies. Over time, they begin pre-logging their macros the night before, not because they have to, but because it makes life easier. Some even build full weekly meal plans by default, knowing that they have the tools to swap meals, adjust macros, and keep results moving.

From our now-iconic Life Aesthetics Kitchen recipes to simple family dinners, the long game always comes back to this: when people commit to a lifestyle change, structure becomes a superpower.

Now, if you’re wondering why results don’t return to the same peak as the beginning of the Diet Cycle — there’s a reason. Once you've achieved your transformation, you’re no longer pushing toward an aggressive goal. You're living in balance. You’re maintaining. You're just managing little pivots here and there — dropping a few pounds after vacation, recalibrating after a stressful season, or shifting into a muscle-building phase with a new training goal.

That’s the point.

This phase isn’t about chasing results anymore — it’s about owning them. You’re not surviving the process. You’re driving it.

And now… you know the route.

Part VII. Diet Cycle Mastery + Final Thoughts

If there’s one final takeaway from everything I’ve shared in this edition, it’s this:

The real win isn’t perfect eating — it’s knowing where you are in the cycle.

Once you understand the Diet Cycle, you’ll stop panicking.

You’ll stop catastrophizing a bad week. You’ll stop ghosting your goals after a single off-plan meal. And most importantly, you’ll stop restarting from scratch every time life throws you a curveball.

Because you’ll finally realize: you’re not broken — you’re just in a phase.

Some phases require structure. Some demand flexibility.

Others? They need a reset.

But each has a role to play in building long-term mastery — and none are a failure.

That’s the beauty of seeing your nutrition through a cyclical lens: you learn to shift gears instead of abandoning the wagon.

And that shift — that calm, confident pivot — is what builds true self-trust.

Intuition.

Not motivation. Not discipline. But the inner confidence of “I know exactly how to get myself back on track.” That’s not something you download from an app or borrow from a coach. That’s earned experience.

The Diet Cycle isn’t restrictive — it’s liberating.

Because when you stop aiming for perfection, and start building consistency with a plan, your relationship with food transforms. Your weight swings shrink. Your digestion evens out. Your energy levels stabilize. And your identity as someone who takes care of their body hardens like armor.

So now I’ll ask you what I ask every client:

Where are you right now in the Diet Cycle?

Are you in the chaos before the cycle begins — no plan, no structure, all cravings and convenience?
Are you in the Structure Phase — head down, meals dialed in, progress rolling?
Are you deep in the Flexibility Phase — tracking macros, but noticing some chaos creeping in?
Or maybe… are you in the Return to Structure Phase — learning, for the first time, how to course-correct without crashing?

Wherever you are, know this: the goal isn’t to stay in one phase forever.

It’s to move through them with awareness. To recognize the patterns. To make the small adjustments. To stop restarting your diet — and start mastering your flow.

Because this — this process of awareness, adaptation, and ownership — is what #LiveTo120 actually looks like in practice.

And we promise: once you learn to ride the cycle, it’ll carry you further than any “perfect plan” ever could.

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