Deprivation... good or bad?

When trying to lose weight or stick with some other healthy eating plan, one thing tends to be consistent across the board... you have to deprive yourself of certain foods.

In my view there are two ways that this tends to be implemented.  The first, highly successful game plan is to educate yourself to dislike the food using techniques such as hypnosis or studying all the bad effects of eating the food.  If this works for you, and it does for some but not others, then you will find yourself easily ignoring the eliminated food. Having no interest in it at all.  If this works for you, congratulations! You should be able to get and stay in shape easily. :)

Then there is the other, more commonly used method.  Willpower.  Let's say for example, that you have eliminated chocolate.  You make a decision to stop eating it and you manage.  Well done! After a time, maybe a week or two, you have done so well and decide that you can take it or leave it now and you are in control of your chocolate consumption.  Sooo, you have a chocolate bar, safe in the knowledge that you are in control and will only have the one.   However, you discover that it tastes rather good and, well, as you've had one, you'd like another and you might as well get it over with in one go rather than have some again later, so you have more chocolate, after all, you know you won't eat any again later.  At this point, you may have something else that you shouldn't be eating or you may get a handle on it again and stop... until later...

What has now happened is that you have started a binge cycle.  By depriving your self so gallantly, when your willpower breaks, it breaks in style!  Then, you get it back again, wear your halo for another few days, then hit the 'naughty' foods again, undoing every scrap of good you have done.

So how about this... pick a small item, something sweet, chocolatey, indulgent... whatever works for you, but keep it small.  Allow yourself this item every day.  It is not compulsory to eat it, but you have to know that you can, that that is your treat.  You are not depriving yourself, you can have it.  What you ARE doing is controlling the amount of 'damage' you are might do.  Surely allowing yourself a fun sized chocolate bar, a GU mini chocolate pot, that kind of thing, will relieve you from the feelings of deprivation which are behind the binge/saint cycle that ultimately stops you from getting to your goal.  It's all very well substituting and eating fruit instead of chocolate, but, in my experience, if you want chocolate, you want chocolate, not an apple, and ultimately, you will have the chocolate too, after consuming 200 calories worth of fruit as an avoidance tactic!

Try it for a couple of weeks, see how you get on.  Hopefully, this will break the cycle for you.  I am starting this today as I am guilty of this cycle too!  I will let you know how I get on soon :)