Give up junk food or make room for it in your diet?

Kelly4374 · March 2021

I make room for 200-300 calories per a day for none clean eating. I work retail, there's always junk around for staff. I also add an alcoholic beverage on days where I have a large overage of calories from workouts.

helen_goldthorpe · March 2021

I'm lucky in that as an endurance cyclist I have days where I need* to eat a lot of calories, so I tend to save my "treats" for those days. But I have found over time that even on high calorie days I'm increasingly preferring the healthier option because it makes me feel better. Nothing is off limits, but I'm naturally choosing less junk as time goes by.

*Now I've lost the weight I initially wanted to lose, and a fair bit more on top, my focus has very much moved to logging my food to make sure I eat enough rather than the other way round.

rheddmobile · March 2021

What worked for me - and I was in a slightly different situation as a newly-diagnosed diabetic who really shouldn’t ever eat Pop-tarts - was going cold turkey on most junk food at first. Not only did I not eat it, I didn’t buy it, have it in my house for my husband to eat, or go to restaurants where it was served. I needed to learn a whole new way of eating, and I didn’t need to sabotage myself with temptation.

Gradually I learned to enjoy other foods which met my needs better, and then I was able to allow some things back into my life in moderation. I also took up running, which enabled me to indulge in a lot more carbs and calories on run days without risking my health. These days I can eat at least a little bit of almost anything (the exception is karo pecan pie, which has more carbs than my blood sugar can handle in even a tiny sliver) and I don’t find sweets, chips, and breads tempting. When I see them, they just don’t strike me as pertaining to me, like looking at men’s shoes. But there was a time when I definitely needed to not have them around.

As far as whether or not a certain splurge is worth it, having a limited number of calories to work with will certainly reset your priorities! You like pop-tarts... but honestly do you LOVE pop-tarts? To each his own but honestly my opinion is a pop-tart is a pretty sorry excuse for a pastry. For a GOOD pastry I might give up a whole meal and have a pastry instead of dinner. But not for a pop-tart. My husband on the other hand has worked out that a pop-tart is just the right amount of carbs and calories to keep him happy during an 8 mile run. So he eats one as run fuel, where another person might eat an energy gel or something.

I used to like Little Debbie cakes. Now I can’t imagine wasting my calories on something so... blah. I eat things I enjoy much more than I used to enjoy them.

So, the answer to, do we just not get to eat stuff like that, ever? Is... you can probably find a way to eat the things you really enjoy. But when you have to think about it due to counting calories, you might find out that you never really enjoyed half the stuff you used to eat.

callsitlikeiseeit · March 2021

i have something sweet almost every day.

i eat out frequently, and order what i want.

I eat under 1500 calories per day, most days.

Do you really want a pop tart? or a bagel? You may not be able to fit BOTH in the same day, but you can certainly have one on one day, and the other the next.

modertation isn't about abstaining totally, its about making a choice for a particular day on what you want more, or what you can fit in. I'd think a pop tart far easier to fit in than a bagel, but that's me.

lemurcat2 · March 2021

rheddmobile wrote: »

So, the answer to, do we just not get to eat stuff like that, ever? Is... you can probably find a way to eat the things you really enjoy. But when you have to think about it due to counting calories, you might find out that you never really enjoyed half the stuff you used to eat.

Good way of putting it.

7rainbow · March 2021

Don't give up foods completely, you will only crave it more. Besides, are you really not going to have cake/chips/whatever again? I highly doubt it. You are trying to lose weight to have a more enjoyable life, right? My ideal life isn't vaycant of those things. Everything in moderation is key. I'm young and have a decent metabolism which probably contributes to it, but I'm a 137 lb, 5'6 female. I eat cookies and cake and icecream and still live my life. If you struggle fitting these things in, try having them in smaller portions or having them less often. Make sure to just count your calories and you can't go wrong 🙂

psychod787 · March 2021

7rainbow wrote: »

Don't give up foods completely, you will only crave it more. Besides, are you really not going to have cake/chips/whatever again? I highly doubt it. You are trying to lose weight to have a more enjoyable life, right? My ideal life isn't vaycant of those things. Everything in moderation is key. I'm young and have a decent metabolism which probably contributes to it, but I'm a 137 lb, 5'6 female. I eat cookies and cake and icecream and still live my life. If you struggle fitting these things in, try having them in smaller portions or having them less often. Make sure to just count your calories and you can't go wrong 🙂

The bolded is highly subjective. Some people do well with a flexible dietary pattern, others do not.

cbenno97 · March 2021

I'm also someone who is an abstainer rather than a moderator. I've had moderation preached by others my entire life--or so it seems. In the end, I can only go from my experience. I know that hyper-palatable foods send me down the path of wanting more, more, more. While I admire the willpower of the moderators among us, my willpower comes from not allowing certain foods in the apartment to begin with. I haven't given up hope that one day I'll become someone who can eat all foods in moderation, but at this point, I'm not there yet. Different strokes...

Give up junk food or make room for it in your diet?

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