Dieting and food guilt (guest post)

Diets are restrictive. The idea is to not only limit the amount of calories that you take in, but also limit the amount of fat/carbohydrates/protein as well. Every single one of us on a diet uses some method to track those very things. Some more carefully than others, but each of us has a bottom line amount that we are sticking to in order to succeed.

Here’s where I have a problem with it. In order to succeed we must abide by the diet of our choice’s “rules”. If you stray from those rules, there is guilt and usually some type of contrition involved. Most of us got here to some level of overweight by obsessing about something. And most of us have transferred that obsessive or addictive nature into our weight loss and diet regimens.
With me so far? Okay. So, say you get a whopping 1400 calories for the day. Decent amount,  especially if you’re working out at least an hour a day. You’re almost guaranteed weight loss at that point. The idea of those 1200 calories is to use them on good, healthy foods. Fruits, vegetables and lean protein are all good choices. But all too often we end up using them a caramel mocha-choco-latte something or another. And the guilt sets in. You start feeling bad because you used those precious points, calories, allotments on something NOT GOOD FOR YOU. So you think, well damn, I’ve already blown my good food day on this latte thingmajig, why not go ahead and eat some fries from MickeyD’s. So, you do. And then you feel more guilt. Oh my god, I can’t believe I did that. I feel so bad. I shouldn’t have eaten that. Everything’s ruined. I’m going to gain fifty million pounds overnight. You stress about it, you gain five pounds for stressing on it and you feel like the worst dieter in the world. And here we are, with our obsessive/addictive/committed personalities chipping away at ourselves for one bad day of food. One day. We will flog ourselves for those bad choices for the next month. Every little setback with food will send us right back to the drive through eating something not so good for us because “well, I’ve already ruined my day with this other thing.”

This is such a trap we fall into. It’s the worst kind of trap. Because eating that one pack of fries or that one mocha-choco-latte is NOT what got us to our current state. Seriously. One bad choice, one bad meal, even one bad day is not going to set us back tens of pounds. Really, it’s not. I know that’s hard to believe. Eating that stuff for every meal, several times a week, for several months…. now THAT will land you back in Fatville. But enjoying some ice cream, or a coffee drink with cream will not end the world as we know it. You should be able to enjoy those things ONCE IN A WHILE and be able to say to yourself, “that tasted so good. I enjoyed my splurge.” And then move back onto the diet like nothing happened. Because nothing happened. Diets are not punishments. Diets are mere guidelines to making ourselves healthy.

So go ahead, have that splurge… without the side of guilt.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Tagged as: Diet, Weight loss