“Cheating” On Your Diet

I was recently on a weeklong vacation. Even when I am traveling I like to try to eat as healthy as possible and keep my activity level up. During my trip I was consistently uploading to my social media pictures of the different restaurants we were eating at and how I ordered healthy dishes. After a few of these posts I thought to myself “Maybe everyone else doesn’t want to eat this way on vacation”. I was making these posts to prove that it is possible to maintain a diet even when traveling but I felt that it came off as “you better maintain your diet when traveling”. I 100% do not believe this to be that case.

In our Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky weight loss offices we teach our clients that losing weight and eating healthy needs to be balanced with living a life you enjoy. Because of this my next post was on this topic exactly. Here is what I wrote; “Reality check! Our last few posts have been about staying on plan even when on vacation. The truth is - being 100% on plan 100% of time isn’t realistic. You should never feel guilty about having your favorite meal or indulging once in a while. This program is for life and in life sometimes you just want some lasagna and garlic bread :)”.

If you are trying to reshape your relationship with food in order to slim down, get healthy, feel more confident, etc. it is important to remember that sometimes you are going to give into cravings and that is okay. In our weight loss offices we never use the term “cheating” when referring to eating junk food. We simply call these situations “choices”. If you choose to have pizza, ice cream, French fries, etc. you should never feel ashamed or like you have messed up. You simply made a choice which will cause your body (and potentially weight) to behave in a certain way. As long as you go into these situations knowing the likely outcome and ready to resume afterwards, I think straying from a strict diet can actually be a good thing. Doing so can drive home the point that a few slices of pizza will not completely derail a solid weight loss plan.