12 April 2011
How to Eat the Foods You Love — FOREVER
Today, I’m launching a new weekly mini-series on Your Nutritionista I’m calling Indulging with Intention. With this series, I’m hoping to provide some insight on how you can incorporate the treats you love into your diet and still meet your weight loss and health goals.
Each week as I’m working with my Your Nutritionista Consulting clients, a theme often emerges (I’m so grateful to my clients for providing me with ample blog fodder!). Over the past few weeks, that theme has been indulging in a way that’s sustainable for a lifetime.
I recently posed this question to a client after she expressed some guilt about indulging in her mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies after an already indulgent weekend: “Can you imagine never eating those again?”
Her answer? “No, I can’t imagine that.”
So why follow a diet that restricts a food you can’t imagine living without? Of course you’re going to feel deprived, and even a little bit resentful! When the diet “ends,” of course, you’re going to feel like you’re owed all those cookies (or whatever) that you so diligently avoided. And that’s not going to do anything for your health or weight loss goals.
The first lesson of the Indulging with Intention is to plan to indulge. If you can make a habit of setting your sights on a treat you love in advance, you’re less likely to eat something impulsively that you don’t even enjoy that much.
So right now, I want you to make a list of so-called “treat” foods you LOVE that aren’t necessarily a part of your diet plan, whatever that might be. They should be foods that you can’t imagine living a life without, no matter how nutritionally void they are. Choose five of those foods. Now, for the next five weeks, plan to incorporate one of those foods a week into your diet. Yup, that’s right. Give yourself FULL PERMISSION to indulge in a treat you adore at least once a week.
But the catch is, you need to plan it. It can’t be an impulsive stop at the cupcake shop. It has to be something on the schedule — your favorite dessert (that you always try to avoid) from a restaurant you know you’re going to on a certain day, let’s say.
If you can train yourself to delay your gratification when it comes to treats and indulgences, you won’t be as tempted to eat something just because it’s there. And when you do finally get to eat what you love, you’ll be so glad you waited. But more important, you won’t feel at all regretful!
Of course, you also have to apply the Here and Now Concept to this — If there’s a spontaneous treat that you love and won’t get the chance to eat again, you might have to be flexible.
So for the next five weeks, try planning to indulge. I bet you’ll feel more satisfied, less deprived, and be less likely to sabotage yourself at the first sign of a treat food!
