Battle of the Binge: Shifting Your Diet Mindset
If you've ever dieted or tried to start eating healthy, this may be a familiar story: You're nailing your diet. You've eaten "clean" for 5 days straight! Perfect! Then Friday night you have a margarita. It leads to 3 more, and suddenly you're grabbing 2 slices of pizza before you get on the subway. When you get home you house every cookie in the house and wash it down with the pint of Ben and Jerry's you left in the fridge.
Saturday morning you wake up and the memory of last night's binge comes over you like a bad dream.
Just me? No one else? Ah good, then you can stop reading here and go back to watching Miranda Sings videos on YouTube.
As a coaching client of Precision Nutrition this year, I've been working to eliminate my binging. But it hasn't been easy. I'm not perfect. The binges still happen, but they've become less frequent as I've changed how I talk (and think) about food. Here are a couple of the mindset shifts that have helped me.
INSTEAD OF "CHEAT," SAY "TREAT."
I've stopped saying "cheat meal". What comes to mind when you say the word "cheat?" High school math class? Olympic athlete doping scandals? Lance Armstrong? Anything positive? Not for me! I used to save Sunday evening as my "cheat night," when I would break my diet and have a pint of ice cream, maybe a bottle of wine, Chinese food. These binges would often total thousands of calories, enough to offset the "perfect" diet I'd eaten all week. And when I was done, did I feel good about myself? No.
Food has no morality. Eating a donut doesn't make you bad any more than eating a salad makes you good. So replace the negative term "cheat" with "treat," a word we associate with positive things. "It's Sunday night. I'm going to have a little treat." And see if you can't just have a few bites of that ice cream instead of the whole pint. (Bonus Points: Come up with calorie-free treats. Stop using food to reward yourself or punish yourself!)
INSTEAD OF "EATING CLEAN," SAY "EATING GOOD ENOUGH"
There is no perfect diet. To get all the essential nutrients we need, we should be consuming a wide variety of foods. There are not "clean foods" and "dirty foods." Foods exist on a continuum from harmful, like motor oil (don't try it), to helpful (like whole, minimally processed foods.) There are literally millions of combinations that could constitute a healthy diet.
And every single human has different preferences and appetites. The meal plan that worked for someone else may not work for you.
So I try to choose more helpful foods, fewer harmful foods, and eat "good enough" rather than "clean" or "perfect." This keeps me from feeling like I've failed or messed up, and falling into the "Screw-its". You know, when you say "Oh, screw it! I had that donut, so I broke Paleo for the day. I might as well go have a few slices of pizza tonight and start fresh tomorrow."
INSTEAD OF "DIET," SAY "NUTRITION" OR "FUEL"
How many diets have you tried in search of the perfect one? The one that helps you lose 30 lbs and keep it off forever so you can rub your six pack abs in the face of the bully who beat you up in high school?
I've tried so many. Low-carb, low-fat, Dr. Atkins, Dr. Bronner's, etc. I could go on. In my head, the word "diet" is stored with words like starving, restriction, StairMaster, carbs, calories, obsession, shame, body image, and a million other negative connotations.
The perfect diet would be the one you can sustain forever. So that "diet" has to include cookies. And alcohol. And all the things I'm not going to give up for the rest of my life. Wait. That starts sounding like living. Like maybe you're not on a diet after all.
So I'm not on a diet. I hope I never will be again. Instead, I say things like "I'm working on improving my nutrition" or "I'm figuring out how to fuel my body the best."
Diets are temporary restrictions. As I get ready for the summer, am I choosing fewer processed carbs like cookies and drinking less alcohol? Sure! But I'm not giving them up completely. And every day is a chance to practice getting 1% Better, improving my nutrition, learning what my body likes for fuel. Removing "DIET" from my vocabulary helps me feel good about making this positive change for myself.
I'm a Precision Nutrition Certified Coach. If you'd like a free consultation on how Nutrition Coaching could help you reach your goals (fat loss, muscle gain, reversing the aging process, playing basketball at the Olympics), drop me a line at davidjosephbaldwin@gmail.com!
Saturday morning you wake up and the memory of last night's binge comes over you like a bad dream.
Just me? No one else? Ah good, then you can stop reading here and go back to watching Miranda Sings videos on YouTube.
As a coaching client of Precision Nutrition this year, I've been working to eliminate my binging. But it hasn't been easy. I'm not perfect. The binges still happen, but they've become less frequent as I've changed how I talk (and think) about food. Here are a couple of the mindset shifts that have helped me.
INSTEAD OF "CHEAT," SAY "TREAT."
I've stopped saying "cheat meal". What comes to mind when you say the word "cheat?" High school math class? Olympic athlete doping scandals? Lance Armstrong? Anything positive? Not for me! I used to save Sunday evening as my "cheat night," when I would break my diet and have a pint of ice cream, maybe a bottle of wine, Chinese food. These binges would often total thousands of calories, enough to offset the "perfect" diet I'd eaten all week. And when I was done, did I feel good about myself? No.
Food has no morality. Eating a donut doesn't make you bad any more than eating a salad makes you good. So replace the negative term "cheat" with "treat," a word we associate with positive things. "It's Sunday night. I'm going to have a little treat." And see if you can't just have a few bites of that ice cream instead of the whole pint. (Bonus Points: Come up with calorie-free treats. Stop using food to reward yourself or punish yourself!)
INSTEAD OF "EATING CLEAN," SAY "EATING GOOD ENOUGH"
There is no perfect diet. To get all the essential nutrients we need, we should be consuming a wide variety of foods. There are not "clean foods" and "dirty foods." Foods exist on a continuum from harmful, like motor oil (don't try it), to helpful (like whole, minimally processed foods.) There are literally millions of combinations that could constitute a healthy diet.
And every single human has different preferences and appetites. The meal plan that worked for someone else may not work for you.
So I try to choose more helpful foods, fewer harmful foods, and eat "good enough" rather than "clean" or "perfect." This keeps me from feeling like I've failed or messed up, and falling into the "Screw-its". You know, when you say "Oh, screw it! I had that donut, so I broke Paleo for the day. I might as well go have a few slices of pizza tonight and start fresh tomorrow."
INSTEAD OF "DIET," SAY "NUTRITION" OR "FUEL"
How many diets have you tried in search of the perfect one? The one that helps you lose 30 lbs and keep it off forever so you can rub your six pack abs in the face of the bully who beat you up in high school?
I've tried so many. Low-carb, low-fat, Dr. Atkins, Dr. Bronner's, etc. I could go on. In my head, the word "diet" is stored with words like starving, restriction, StairMaster, carbs, calories, obsession, shame, body image, and a million other negative connotations.
The perfect diet would be the one you can sustain forever. So that "diet" has to include cookies. And alcohol. And all the things I'm not going to give up for the rest of my life. Wait. That starts sounding like living. Like maybe you're not on a diet after all.
So I'm not on a diet. I hope I never will be again. Instead, I say things like "I'm working on improving my nutrition" or "I'm figuring out how to fuel my body the best."
Diets are temporary restrictions. As I get ready for the summer, am I choosing fewer processed carbs like cookies and drinking less alcohol? Sure! But I'm not giving them up completely. And every day is a chance to practice getting 1% Better, improving my nutrition, learning what my body likes for fuel. Removing "DIET" from my vocabulary helps me feel good about making this positive change for myself.
I'm a Precision Nutrition Certified Coach. If you'd like a free consultation on how Nutrition Coaching could help you reach your goals (fat loss, muscle gain, reversing the aging process, playing basketball at the Olympics), drop me a line at davidjosephbaldwin@gmail.com!
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