“It’s all or nothing!” A term used all too often in our line of work I’m afraid. People seem to be completely on it or well and truly off it! One little slip and the flood gates open! Sound familiar?
Now while being 100% on plan is fantastic and will yield some pretty impressive results, however if this is a Jekyell & Hyde relationship going on and then you hit a 2 week junk fest because you simply can’t live without oreos then is it the best approach? Is it a sustainable approach?
Ever felt like you were having to resist certain foods all of the time? Now that resistance may not last forever, and this is when people can break and go on a rampage. So if you really can’t do without some chocolate, biscuits, wine or whatever and when you have tried before you have fallen dramatically off plan then why not schedule them in? Of course, this is not calorie free but if having 2 slices of cake per week keeps you adhering to a plan for 4, 6, 8 weeks at a time rather than doing 2 weeks, cracking and then having 2 weeks in biscuit limbo!
By scheduling in ‘treats’ at specific times you know when and where they are coming. I would assign these treats to certain days beforehand, if you allow yourself 2 treats per week you could end up ‘cashing them in’ by Monday afternoon and then you have another 6 days to wait for you next treat. Something like Wednesday and Saturday would work for me, break up the week.
I had a similar experience over Christmas, I am a lover of the mince pie. A little too much in love! I gave myself 2 rules last year:
1. No Mince pies before 15th December
2. Only 3 mince pies per week.
What I found was that I actually didn’t get through the allowance I had given myself!
This saved me from both mindless and overeating. It was a Christmas miracle!
Now please don’t take this as a permission to eat cake every week, this can and will impact your results, but you have to find what works for you.
Have a little less concern on being 100% perfect all the time and look more to something that you can do for 100% of the time.
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