17 May 2011
No-Regret Eating
Before you read this post, catch up on past Indulging with Intention posts:
Perhaps the most important concept when indulging with intention is making a policy of eating without regret. There are two ways to do this:
- After eating something that maybe wasn’t the best option, make it your duty to not spend even one minute regretting it.
- Before eating something that maybe isn’t the best option, think about if you’ll regret it or not.
These two points seem contradictory, but they aren’t.
Imagine this scenario: Your boss brings in doughnuts for the team as a thank you for your hard work. Doughnuts aren’t your favorite treat food, but these doughnuts are from a gourmet shop and you’ve never tried them before. You think you might feel a little bloated after eating one since you already had breakfast but feel you’d probably be glad you tried one.
You just tackled the second bullet above.
So you indulge. Turns out, the doughnut kind of sucked. You feel gross after eating it because it was greasier than you expected. You’re mad you “wasted” calories on a treat that turned out to be worth it. But you stop yourself and remember that there’s absolutely no point in lingering or regretting your decision. You know that the rest of your choices for the day will be good, so why pick yourself apart about one doughnut?
And that’s the first bullet.
That’s how it works: You spend a minute thinking about if this food is REALLY a treat for you. If it is and you know you’d be glad you tried it afterward, go for it. But if things turn out differently, you have to vow to not regret it. The same thing goes if you indulge in something you KNOW you’ll regret. You have to just pick yourself up and move on.
