I’ve been thinking about rules and diet plans and cheating on those rules and diet plans. I am feeling ready to move forward…I feel like I’ve been learning a lot about how I think, figuring out why I eat, but I want to make some changes now. The problem is, when I think about diet plans I start feeling panicky. Let’s see, if I do this diet plan, it means I can no longer ever eat sugar. Ok, well, before I start this diet plan, I need to go buy a box of chocolates, and maybe eat a bit more ice cream and maybe have some cake and pie one more time, because, I really love desserts and if I’m going to have to give them up, then I better have one last fling! Oh wait, I could do this other diet plan instead, it says no animal products. Ok, well, first I need to have one more cheeseburger and some bacon and maybe a really good piece of grilled BBQ chicken, cause if I’m giving up meat, I need to have one last fling! And on and on it goes. Someone tells me that I can’t have something ever again and I instantly want to have it.
I’ve been trying to think how I can circumnavigate this tendency of mine. What if I decide to go on a certain diet and I just go in with the idea that I can cheat whenever I want to? Or what if I just give up on diet all together and just make small healthy changes, one at a time? Here’s the problem. My baseline behavior is to crave food that isn’t good for me and eat it in quantities that I don’t need. I need structure. I need a system. I need a chance to wean myself off of some of the more addicting foods like sugar and excess salt and fat. Processed foods that excite my taste buds, but give me a stomach ache. I need to get off of all that stuff so that I can re-learn how to enjoy the taste of fruit and vegetables. I need to restrict myself so that I re-learn how to be satisfied with a much smaller serving. I need a diet plan. I even have a diet plan. One of my own making that is simply based on what my body seems to like and not like: unlimited fruits and vegetables, limited grain, limited fat, lean meat, no dairy except maybe the occasional sprinkle of cheese, no sugar. Over years of dieting and “lifestyle changes” I’ve discovered that this particular way of eating makes me feel good and I drop weight when I do this.
What I’m trying to figure out is how to deal with things like birthdays and holidays and potlucks with friends. I find that when I severely restrict myself I do good for months and then suddenly something snaps and I just get tired of depriving myself of dessert and so I cheat and then that cheat just seems to open up the floodgates and suddenly I am no longer eating healthy any more and am instead bingeing on all of my favorite unhealthy foods. This is what I’m trying to figure out how to avoid.
Maybe if I go into the diet telling myself, you are going to eat healthy, but if temptation should rear it’s head on a special occasion, then you can just go ahead and have a small helping of the bad stuff. And maybe, if I know that I can cheat whenever I want, it won’t be so hard to resist or go back to the healthy eating after I’ve cheated. It’s a mind game. All of this is a mind game.
Well, I think that’s going to be the plan. I hope to start when I do my next grocery shopping. Here’s to healthy eating and here’s to winning the mind game.
Life With Esther 