During a session this week, my client Rob told me that he was struggling. A few months before, he’d been doing very well and feeling in control. He shared that he wasn’t even having dessert very much because he just wasn’t craving it. Lately, however, things had gotten harder. Rob got off track and many of his healthy habits slipped. He started eating dessert multiple times a day and eventually realized that what he was doing didn’t feel good. He wanted to get things back under control but couldn’t regain that same momentum. In session, he told me that he’d tried to cut dessert back out but found that he just couldn’t do it.
When staying in control was easier because he wasn’t experiencing cravings, Rob believed that “staying on track” meant that he shouldn’t have dessert or even want to have dessert. I reminded him that we can’t artificially manufacture not wanting or craving dessert but what we can do is plan for how much dessert we’re going to have and use strategies to stick to our plan.
The great news is that Rob doesn’t need to cut out dessert to get back on track. In fact, the evidence shows that he probably shouldn’t cut it out. Eliminating dessert continues to feed into the all-or-nothing cycle of either eating no dessert at all or eating too much. But it felt wrong to Rob, as it does to many people, to eat any amount of dessert. After some discussion, he made himself a Response Card to read daily:
Good for me for eating this dessert in a planned way. This is exactly what I should be doing because cutting out all dessert only mires me deeper in the all-or-nothing cycle. I’m proving to myself that I can be on track, stay in control, AND have dessert!
If you, too, are prone to holding all-or-nothing beliefs about certain foods, it’s important to figure out where, when, how, and how much of those foods fit into your daily (or weekly) eating plan so you can break out of the cycle. Remember, there is no food you eat when you’re “off track” that you can’t or shouldn’t eat when you’re on track. You might eat less of it, or eat it less frequently, but figuring out “rest-of-your-life eating” means figuring out where all the foods you love fit!