Does this scenario sound familiar? You have been good all week, avoiding carbs and counting calories. Then you go to a party and they serve chocolate cake (your favorite). "One slice won't hurt," you tell yourself. The next day you had a busy day and forgot to calculate you calories. "Oh well I'll do it tomorrow." Before you know it your diet is ruined and you are wallowing in self loathing.
If you are like me, you have been on dozens of diets over the years. (I was on Slimfast in junior high.) With all of them I lost some weight for a month or two and then gained it all back with interest. I don't think I could stick with any of them for more than a few months. The most important lesson I learned from all these attempts is DIETS DON'T WORK.
So how do we loose weight if diets don't work? We change our lifestyle, so that the way we eat is not a diet, it is just what we eat and it is healthy. These past two years I have dramatically changed the way I eat and made exercise a big part of my life. However, I could not have kept it up if I had not first changed the way I think.
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| Our memories of food, good or bad can affect what we want to eat. |
Whether we realize it or not, our thoughts about food and our memories of food are powerful. My sister, for example, would not eat spaghetti sauce for years after she had a stomach bug. In the same way, the sights and smells of food with good associations can cause cravings. We can resist these cravings for a time (willpower), but few if any of us can resist them forever. However, if we change our gut reaction to the food, we may be able to reduce cravings and make it easier to resist temptation. Now I have little trouble resisting the chocolate cake even if others around me are eating it.
How did I do it? I did not follow a specific program. I don't know if one like this exists. I did not even make a conscious decision to do this. Rather as I journeyed to a greater understanding of what it was to live a healthy life, I observed the change within myself.
First, I had to have the proper motivation. For myself, I found that when I wanted to loose weight to look good, I would get discouraged the slow progress and give up. However, when my focus shifted to health, the slowness of my progress mattered less and I was less likely to get discouraged.
Second, I made a commitment to learn as much as I could about getting healthy. I watched every video I could find on Netflix and YouTube. Then I watched them again. I still watch them periodically for two reasons. 1) It keeps the information fresh in my thoughts. 2) When a lot of information is conveyed, it is difficult to remember all of it with one or sometimes even two viewings.
Third, I reminded myself of what I learned in the face of temptation. In the case of the chocolate cake, my first reaction on viewing it would be to remember other chocolate cakes I ate in the past. I would think about how sweet and chocolaty and I would want to eat it. To combat this I reminded myself of a video I saw on You Tube
Sugar the Bitter Truth in which Dr. Robert Lustig makes the scientific argument that sugar is poison. I can also remember a scene from America the Beautiful 2 (Netflix) where Dr. Howard Shapiro showed how much sugar and butter it took to make an average slice of carrot cake. Keeping this in mind made it much easier to say no to the cake. I also found that the more I did this the easier it became to resist tempting food.
This process is ongoing and I am far from perfect. However, I am finally on the right track and slow or fast I am going to reach my goals.
What food tempts you most?
