Back away from the cupcake!!!

staciekins

Why is it when some people hit one of their mini goals for weight loss or whatnot, they celebrate...by eating??? Or find some excuse to have a cheat day. Particularly unhealthy foods. Cupcakes, candy, soda, or a huge, sodium filled, heart attack dinner. I find this slightly contradicting. I do, however love the idea of positive-self-reinforcement, but why "treat" yourself to the very things that caused you to be in the predicament that you are in. Why not instead, go buy a new top/pants/skirt, etc. Or even go and splurge that celebration money on some healthy foods that are sometimes just out of your price range like maybe a better type of fish for dinner, or a lean steak.

We tend to find many reasons to celebrate or "cheat"...ooh, 20 lbs lost, 10 lbs, 5 lbs, one inch, a birthday, a holiday, a graduation, friends in from out of state, not feeling like it today, girls/guys night out. All they are are excuses, and quite frankly, if you are here for the same reason most everyone is, you can't afford the excuses.

I mean, I really do understand the concept of treating ourselves every once in a while, but why most we treat ourselves with something unhealthy? I get that to some people, it "keeps them sane". But who says it has to be something unhealthy? Why do we poison our bodies with the very toxins we have been trying to rid them of? Why can't it be swordfish instead of salmon? Why not just have a lean beef burger in place of your normal turkey burger? Why not just have an extra square of that yummy dark chocolate. Get creative. Go ahead and spend an extra couple bucks that you normally wouldn't do. Don't sabotage yourself.

If quitting is an option, you never intended to succeed...

LORR79

With you 100% on not using food to reward your weightloss goals as thats totally counterproductive BUT...

As for eating when its a social occassion or special event,too right I will! I'm trying to lose weigh but want to maintain life. I dont want to be the person who says no all the time. For example its my little boys birthday next month and I will be eating cake :happy:

I would rather have balance and for me that means something that is do-able the majority of the time.

And I wont view celebrating a birthday with some cake or having a meal with friends as an excuse to eat,I view it as normality.

staciekins

With you 100% on not using food to reward your weightloss goals as thats totally counterproductive BUT...

As for eating when its a social occassion or special event,too right I will! I'm trying to lose weigh but want to maintain life. I dont want to be the person who says no all the time. For example its my little boys birthday next month and I will be eating cake :happy:

I would rather have balance and for me that means something that is do-able the majority of the time

Oh that is absolutely fine. My only intention was just to say not to use it as an excuse to overindulge. You can have a piece of cake. It's the portion that's a lot of the problem as with all the other get together scenarios. It's having control to eat a portion, not portions! :bigsmile:

cupajoe

I don't treat myself with food, but also try not to deny myself the things I love. I do have a friend however that lost over 100lbs (don't know the exact #) and he says that he couldn't have done it without his Saturday "cheat day". On Saturdays he would let himself eat what he wanted...have those buffalo wings he had been craving and go out for beer with his buddies. He says that it made him push himself extra hard the rest of the week so that he felt he deserved this treat. Different things work for different people.

staciekins

I don't treat myself with food, but also try not to deny myself the things I love. I do have a friend however that lost over 100lbs (don't know the exact #) and he says that he couldn't have done it without his Saturday "cheat day". On Saturdays he would let himself eat what he wanted...have those buffalo wings he had been craving and go out for beer with his buddies. He says that it made him push himself extra hard the rest of the week so that he felt he deserved this treat. Different things work for different people.

Dually noted...my only point was that it didn't have to be unhealthy.

Sezmo83

Because a lot of the foods I genuinely enjoy are unhealthy. I lost around 50lbs and maintained for over a year with a cheat day once a week. I didn't go mad with unhealthy foods but I'd allow myself to have something like pizza or fried egg and chips or a cake that's really nice but stupidly high in calories etc. A reward isn't a reward unless it's something you want and I generally want those unhealthy foods a hell of a lot more than I want a new possession. Nothing wrong with having something "bad" as long as you don't go overboard with it and as long as you don't use every little thing as an excuse to "celebrate" with a food treat.

I'm here now because I went from maintaining a not too bad weight to gaining weight at an amazing speed when they changed my medication. Didn't matter what I ate, I went back to following the weight watchers plan I originally lost weight on and gained between 4lbs and 6lbs a week on it without having a cheat day.

TheLaser

Would anyone give a smoker who was trying to quit smoking a "reward" cigarette for not smoking six days a week? Or let him or her have a smoking "cheat day?" Sugary, fat-laden food *is* an addiction -studies have shown that again and again.

For me, this diet is about changing my tastes, and so I don't need to have cheat days. Having not eaten any refined sugar for three months, I can honestly say that I no longer crave any sugary sweets -if fact, if I accidentally eat something that someone else has prepared and it has something sugary in it, I can taste the refined sugar immediately and it tastes BAD. Fast food? It tasted good to me as a kid, but the thought of it now is so repulsive. My "cheat" days are when I eat a few extra pieces of dried mango (unsweetened, btw... not like the kind from all those crazy places that actually ADD sweeteners to one of the naturally sweetest fruits ever.)

I fully acknowledge that this approach will not work for everyone, but my logic is if you don't change your ways and eliminate the foods that brought unhealthy weight gain in the first place, those foods will be an ever-present temptation. It actually took me less than three months to change my ways... less than three months! Granted, three somewhat difficult withdrawal and time-consuming, hyper-vigilant months, but I see those as three months invested in an lifetime of health and low-effort slimness.

If you have the willpower to reduce portion sizes of unhealthy food, that's awesome and I hope you can maintain that practice. Yes, giving up certain foods means giving up certain cherished parts of whatever culture you may have grown up with (e.g. your grandmother's cheese cake recipe), and that can be extremely difficult or impossible to relinquish.

A few random references to start with if you want to read more:

Recent New York Times article on the toxicity of sugar
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html

A medical librarian's blog
http://www.happyhealthylonglife.com/

On how fat/sugar food trigger same brain centers as addiction:
book: The End of Overeating, by Dr. Kessler

Sezmo83

For me, this diet is about changing my tastes, and so I don't need to have cheat days.

And my goal is to eat healthily in general and maintain a good weight but still be able to enjoy fast food, desserts and not so healthy foods now and then.

Yes, giving up certain foods means giving up certain cherished parts of whatever culture you may have grown up with (e.g. your grandmother's cheese cake recipe), and that can be extremely difficult or impossible to relinquish.

See this is the part I'm not prepared to do. Not 100% anyway. Not unless someone manages to convince me that it is absolutely necessary for me to give up things I truly enjoy. I can cut down on how much of them I eat and how often without a problem but cut them out completely? I doubt I'd stick to it without a REALLY good reason to be perfectly honest.

staciekins

Would anyone give a smoker who was trying to quit smoking a "reward" cigarette for not smoking six days a week? Or let him or her have a smoking "cheat day?" Sugary, fat-laden food *is* an addiction -studies have shown that again and again.

For me, this diet is about changing my tastes, and so I don't need to have cheat days. Having not eaten any refined sugar for three months, I can honestly say that I no longer crave any sugary sweets -if fact, if I accidentally eat something that someone else has prepared and it has something sugary in it, I can taste the refined sugar immediately and it tastes BAD. Fast food? It tasted good to me as a kid, but the thought of it now is so repulsive. My "cheat" days are when I eat a few extra pieces of dried mango (unsweetened, btw... not like the kind from all those crazy places that actually ADD sweeteners to one of the naturally sweetest fruits ever.)

I fully acknowledge that this approach will not work for everyone, but my logic is if you don't change your ways and eliminate the foods that brought unhealthy weight gain in the first place, those foods will be an ever-present temptation. It actually took me less than three months to change my ways... less than three months! Granted, three somewhat difficult withdrawal and time-consuming, hyper-vigilant months, but I see those as three months invested in an lifetime of health and low-effort slimness.

If you have the willpower to reduce portion sizes of unhealthy food, that's awesome and I hope you can maintain that practice. Yes, giving up certain foods means giving up certain cherished parts of whatever culture you may have grown up with (e.g. your grandmother's cheese cake recipe), and that can be extremely difficult or impossible to relinquish.

A few random references to start with if you want to read more:

Recent New York Times article on the toxicity of sugar
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html

A medical librarian's blog
http://www.happyhealthylonglife.com/

On how fat/sugar food trigger same brain centers as addiction:
book: The End of Overeating, by Dr. Kessler

Thank you for taking the time for this. This is some of the point I was trying to get across.

wolfchild59

For me, this is something I plan on maintaining for the rest of my life. And food is associated with celebration and reward. Yes, that's not a great association, but if we try to deny that it is, it's just silly. So I allow myself those times of celebration and reward because it's unrealistic to exepct to live the rest of my life avoiding those treats and meals for those times.

It's why I may log, but don't really care what the counts are, when I'm on vacation. Vacations are time for complete freedom, joy, relaxation and enjoyment. So not eating the food from the region I'm going and experiencing that trip to the fullest just seems to go against the idea of the escape from my day to day life. It actually makes me sad when i see people stressing out about going on vacation and "ruining their diets". Blah. If I gain a few pounds on vacation, I laugh about it with friends and family when I return as I describe every amazing morsel of food that I consumed. Hell, I've created photographic collages of the food I've eaten on vacation to share with people.

Those few vacation pounds always come right back off, usually in a week or so and those amazing meals I get to eat for celebrations or reward don't derail me or suddenly make me fat again. No, I enjoy the treat and then go right back to my normal eating the next day. And if I ever do give myself a hard time about it (jokingly or not) the hubby just looks at me and asks, "Oh my God! Were you not able to fit into your clothes today that you were able to last week?" Which always makes me sneer at him, then laugh, and realize that it's all just part of our lives. Depriving ourselves of those delicious moments would just be depressing.

sweet_lotus

There is no one right way or wrong way. If you can achieve a healthy weight, and then maintain it over a period of years that's what is important, now *how* you do it. Some people need to stay within strict boundaries, others don't.