This is a question I get a lot. The answer I give often gets a bit of a stunned stare for a few seconds because it’s not what one expects to hear from their trainer.
Before I tell you this somewhat unorthodox answer, let me give you a quick (and slightly embarrassing) back story…..
Back in the day when I was soooo strict about food I would literally eat around my craving for chocolate often consuming 400-500 calories to avoid it. Or I would eat two huge slices of chocolate cake on the weekend.
This literal slice. TWO of them!
All in an attempt to avoid the “bad” chocolate.
Then it hit me, if I just ate the 100 calories worth of chocolate when I wanted it I would actually save myself THOUSANDS of calories!
That is when the idea and practice of moderation instead of deprivation began to make sense to me.
So what’s my answer when someone asks how to deal with chocolate cravings?
Eat a small bit of chocolate and move on! (Preferably as dark as you can handle.)
You will not “blow your diet” you will not gain 5lbs. In fact, just the opposite will happen. You’ll get leaner and lose more weight because you will actually be able to stick to your eating plan for the long term.
Here’s the thing: there are so many techniques out there that promise to help you get faster results. Things like Carb Cycling, keto, Paleo, Intermittent Fasting, etc..
And they’re great. In fact, I use 3 of the 4 above in a bit of a mish-mash for my personal nutrition.
However, at the end of the day the “perfect” diet is one that gets you results AND that you can stick with FOR LIFE.
This is the opposite of the hamster wheel I mentioned in yesterdays blog. The nutritional hamster wheel looks something like:
Being SUPER clean during the week, counting every gram and calorie. And then letting it all hang loose on the weekends with the cocktails/wine count approaching double digits. And eating until you have to unfasten your jeans and sometimes even making yourself physically sick.
Then after this food binge, you have to “work it all off” starting Monday.
Only two things:
1). It doesn’t actually work that way. You can’t undo a weekend of nutritional debauchery with a few extra sessions on the treadmill. That will work off your latte and doughnut at best.
2). Even if you somehow managed to “work off” all your excesses, come Friday you’d be back at square one only to repeat the process again and again.
It’s no wonder that people get burned out on dieting. That is insanity!
There is a better way to do this for life…
Rotate your carbs, count your macros, fast intermittently, but allow yourself to do it almost perfectly.
Here is one thing I can guarantee you: when you stop being afraid of food, when you take it off its pedestal and make ANY FOOD you want totally ON limit anytime you really want it, it will no longer seem like an emergency to have it.
The FOMO that makes you think you have to inhale the entire bag of cookies before you can get “back on track” will lessen.
You can begin to trust yourself around food and you’ll find that this whole eating healthy (not perfect) is something you can and actually want to do for life.
It’s a life sentence after all.
