Cheat meal vs. indulgence

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  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    I'm most frustrated in my not being able to resist - and visiting why I can't -

    I get it; it's the feeling that you can't control it, and perhaps that you wasted the calories rather than being able to use them more intentionally. I experience that too sometimes, and although I agree with everyone that guilt is not a helpful motion to feel about food (can lead to feeling bad about yourself in a way that makes it harder to resist or leads to a negative relationship with food), I've done the same.

    One thing to keep in mind is that you CAN control it. It's just that in that particular circumstance (you had the calories, they were there and probably smelling delicious) you didn't have a strong enough reason to do so. If something actually bad would have happened based on eating the cookies, you know you wouldn't have. Probably, if you'd been unable to eat them without going over you wouldn't have. That's significant.

    Beyond that, when I find it difficult to resist, I find it helpful to kind of go through the contributing factors and think them out--is it something that is just really tempting to me, that I'm always going to be tempted by if it's right in front of me? was I susceptible for some reason? was I too hungry or craving carbs? (I started riding my bike 8 miles to work without adjusting my eating and was stupidly surprised when I spent the morning wanting a bagel, when I normally don't care about bagels--unlike running, biking apparently makes me hungry more immediately), was I just wanting a snack so that snacking on something else might help?, so on.

    Another thing that sometimes works for me is just scheduling in the temptation--making it intentional if it fits in the calories. After dinner I will have 2 cookies, say. If I do that, I can generally wait.
  • _sirenofthesea_
    _sirenofthesea_ Posts: 117 Member
    One thing to keep in mind is that you CAN control it. It's just that in that particular circumstance (you had the calories, they were there and probably smelling delicious) you didn't have a strong enough reason to do so. If something actually bad would have happened based on eating the cookies, you know you wouldn't have. Probably, if you'd been unable to eat them without going over you wouldn't have. That's significant.


    Ok - this hit home - I think had I not had the calories available - I wouldn't have eaten them :)
  • _sirenofthesea_
    _sirenofthesea_ Posts: 117 Member
    Thanks everyone for chiming in - always good to bounce thoughts about this journey off completely neutral people -
    and while we all have different viewpoints - I got something from everyone's post! :)

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