Defeating a Diet Buster

Personal submission by Leigh

e have all seen it happen. We begin a diet with high hopes and determination. Then it happens; we somehow end up being offered that one thing we can’t resist. Once we eat it, we have blown our diet for the day and we tell ourselves that we have failed and might as well just eat what we want for the rest of the day and begin tomorrow anew.

That sense of failure can be overwhelming, so much so that often that one piece of “forbidden” food marks the end of the entire diet.  I believe that this need not happen. There is an alternative choice we can make.

 I know that if I want to lose weight and live healthier, I will be faced with choices concerning my downfall foods. I came up with an idea that I have shared with my friends and many have found the psychological twist very helpful in beating that feeling of failure. It’s that feeling of failure that does the whole diet in. 

Let’s use chocolate cake as an example: 

 I am in week two of a successful diet plan. Someone offers me a mouth-watering piece of chocolate fudge cake with chocolate butter cream frosting. I have two choices: eat it or not. . . . failure or success. But wait, there is another option!

 What I have done is I have given myself a third choice which gives me more control and helps me not to experience the feeling of failure if I do eat the cake. I tell myself that I can have it later. I have not refused myself the cake, just put off having it until later. If I can delay eating it long enough, the cake either is gone, is stale or at a minimum, I have saved myself from eating more than one piece.

However, if I do eat it later, I tell myself I did promise it to myself so I have not, in actual fact, failed. I may even feel good enough about this little ‘win’ that I can eat a smaller piece of cake than I would have originally, and even refuse a second piece. Granted, this is only a change in perspective, but often that is all it takes to prevent that sense of failure and allows me to continue on with the diet plan. 

 I find that this concept works particularly well at family dinners. I keep telling myself ‘later, later, later’. By the time my willpower gives out, the tempting food is usually gone. It also works well with the hostess who urges that special dish on me, ‘just one piece’. I can put it off until later and hopefully either evade the calories from the first offer, or put it off long enough so that I eat much less than I might otherwise have eaten.

 Give my diet buster trick a try. I hope it works as well for you as it does for me!