Food guilt!!

aimez23

Does anybody else get the worst food related guilt when they fall off the wagon?

I am not trying to lose weight, and am really happy with myself - I use the app to macro track and just try and ensure I follow a balanced diet as my aim is fat loss cause I'm determined to have a banging set of abs lol but I am not completely dedicated so relax when on holiday or just deciding to treat myself. However, as soon as I've done it I feel so anxious and bad about myself that I either continue and have a crazy binge or just berate myself continuously. I do suffer from anxiety but does anyone have any tips how to get away from the guilt and enjoy the odd treat?

Also, how to moderate - if I have a 100g chocolate bar, I'll eat the whole thing cause "then it's gone!"

2011rocket3touring

I found the best thing is to forgive yourself and jump right back on the wagon. Don't waste time berating or beating yourself up. Let it go, dust yourself off and do better tomorrow.
Forgiving yourself puts your mental energies to the future not the past.

vingogly

Best way is to try a little experiment. Track your weight daily and after you eat your chocolate bar, carefully note how your body responds to the chocolate bar over the following week. Assuming you stick to your program, I suspect you'll find that it has no noticeable effect.

A Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate Bar has 180 calories. It weighs in at 41g. A hundred grams would be 439 calories. There are 3500 calories in a pound of fat, so that means by my reckoning your chocolate "cheat" could result in a two OUNCE gain at most.

If you have a 100g of Hershey's Special Dark chocolate over and above your maintenance every single day, that's a different matter, of course.

cwolfman13

aimez23 wrote: »

Does anybody else get the worst food related guilt when they fall off the wagon?

I am not trying to lose weight, and am really happy with myself - I use the app to macro track and just try and ensure I follow a balanced diet as my aim is fat loss cause I'm determined to have a banging set of abs lol but I am not completely dedicated so relax when on holiday or just deciding to treat myself. However, as soon as I've done it I feel so anxious and bad about myself that I either continue and have a crazy binge or just berate myself continuously. I do suffer from anxiety but does anyone have any tips how to get away from the guilt and enjoy the odd treat?

Also, how to moderate - if I have a 100g chocolate bar, I'll eat the whole thing cause "then it's gone!"

No...the all or nothing mentality is a recipe for failure pretty much every time...you have to lose that...it's completely unrealistic to think you're going to be "on" and "perfect" all of the time...that your nutrition is always going to be perfect...that you're never going to miss a workout, etc...it's completely unrealistic and thus that mentality will always lead to ultimate failure.

You have to realize that all of this...your health, fitness, maintaining a healthy weight, etc isn't predicated on perfection...it's predicated on how you're living most of the time.

sardelsa

To me it is all about adherence. If you keep trying to be "perfect" you will eventually fail and then you will feel bad and may not get back on it. I use a flexible dieting approach, yes I eat nutritious food, I try to cook lots of veggies and lean meats and hit my fiber goals.. but I also love my treats and enjoy all types of food. I know I won't be "perfect" all the time or hit my macros.

In the past when I would try to "eat perfect" or "clean" I would always feel bad eating a certain type of food and then feel like I've failed.. then I would just eat everything for the rest of the day, and maybe the rest of the week because "who cares I already messed up" ... this was not healthy and looking back at my results then VS. now I will take my current progress and results (health, strength, aesthetics) any day

feisty_bucket

cwolfman13 wrote: »

the all or nothing mentality is a recipe for failure pretty much every time

Very much agree. You're gonna have a much easier time of it (and lots of stuff in life, too) if you adopt more of a sliding-scale, percentages, probabilities way of looking at things. IMO.

90% compliance? Nice going, A-.
50% of goals met? Not so hot, do better tomorrow.

leajas1

I find that the guilt comes in if I don't track it. It's like once I've documented it (sometimes it just has to be my best guess) I've taken some sort of responsibility for it and I can move on and forget. Also, seeing that total number of calories go up can even help put the breaks on the binge mentality and stop me from eating more when I really really want to (not out of hunter, but just because).

zilkah

I sometimes get "bad day guilt" like dang I ate a lot of bad stuff today and my macros were trash, but I try to just then remember it's balance over time. I will make up for it throughout the week. you dont get fat in a day and you don't get fit in a day.

I have a really HORRIBLE sweet tooth. I can't have certain things in my house , like cake. Cake is my enemy lol. I just don't buy the things I know I can't control myself well around. Or I look at it this way - I can have some today AND some tomorrow, win win lol. If i eat it all in one sitting it's less times I get to enjoy it

Dayle1984

Here are my tips ---

- make decisions mindfully when it comes to having a treat/cheat/off plan item/whatever you want to call it.
- once you've mindfully made the decision to have whatever that thing is, make sure it's something you really, truly enjoy, not junk you're eating just because it's there (that would not be mindful)
- own it. you decided to do this thing. you did it. it's done.
- move on

I try to follow this. I find as long as I decide and plan to have this or that, I feel more in control, I am better at not letting the guilt creep in. And by being mindful, I don't "waste" those times on things I don't love. For example, some people their vice is pizza and French fries... I don't find those temping at all. cookies and chocolate, well that's a different story.

Good luck!

canadianlbs

not very much about food. but a general observation about my own psychology: a lot of the time if i take a longer look at my 'guilt' and unpack it into its component parts, it's actually fear.

it's just fear that i've internalized. in its neutral form it's just 'there will be consequences'. somewhere in there, if i don't catch my mind in time, it adds the 'and i deserve it' part and that's where it becomes all about me and how much, i my own personal self, suck.

regret is normal. but sometimes looking at either one of those two reflexes individually takes the nightmare-doom-i-suck-i-suck factor out of it all. it just turns into 'i screwed up, there will be consequences; darn it; oh well.'

kommodevaran

I'm not sure if the feeling I had was guilt - but I would at least call it shame, feeling of defeat, like I had failed myself - whenever I felt that I had eaten "wrong" or not good enough, when I couldn't stay on plan - what you call "falling off the wagon".

No wonder I struggled with staying straight on the narrow, because it wasn't only very narrow, it was murky, and slippery, and full of stumbling stones, and I didn't even know where I was going, or why.

All that changed when I discovered MFP and learnt that THERE IS NO WAGON. What I eat will determine how I feel, and in time, how I look, but there are no moral consequences, I'm not weak, stupid or greedy. I like food, and food is good. Some food provides much of this and little of that, and other foods can be completely differerent. Everything that is edible, can be eaten. It's all about dosage and context.

What I need to do, is getting enough of everything, and not too much of anything, every day. There's a million ways to do that. I just have to pick one.

After struggling with my weight, either real weight gain (I have been obese), or fear of gaining weight, for many years, I'm finally managing my weight, virtually effortlessly.

Healthy weight loss IS fat loss.

I too would eat to remove temptation, but I wonder if we are talking about the same thing. Is 100 grams of chocolate a crazy binge? I don't see 100 grams of chocolate as the whole thing, it's just one thing, 539 calories or so.

To forgive yourself for eating - I find that to be just as troubled as berating yourself, because it means that you think you did something wrong. Eating is a completely neutral act, context is what matters. Eating someone else's food is stealing, and should produce some form of negative feeling, but I don't think that is the issue at hand. Consistently eating too much, or eating junky food at the expense of real food, is not good for you, but enjoying and eating food responsibly, is a wonderful thing.

How to change mindset? You'll have to decide to work on it. There are lots of things you can do, depending on the reason why you are struggling. Read about normal eating patterns. Find other sources if what you are reading is what makes you feel so guilty. Make a plan that encourages flexibility, and eat a variety of foods you like, choose something new every week, cook more from scratch, eat with friends and family. Get enough sleep, meditate, exercise, manage stress, and do something silly from time to time.