Sometimes we hold ourselves to a diet for a day, then we fail… hopefully its more like a week or two before we fail. And if we are really good, it might be a month. But then, what entails failure in the diet world?
The Healing Diet, which is the one that we teach most often, had a very significant problem if you fail… which is a serious loss of the value of the work that has been accomplished to date. In this diet, eating no sugars or grains, limiting your fruit intake to berries every other day, or perhaps a granny smith apple a few times a week, means VERY tight dietary controls.
The purpose is to really reign in any sugar blips in your bloodstream, giving your body a chance to heal leptin receptors, and thus become a fat burning machine. What you realize when you have thoroughly beaten down this path, is that body weight is a funtion of hormone, not caolrie balance.
Ok, so on to the article title. In a diet like the healing diet, if you cheat by having a sandwich, or having an extra serving of fruit, or even having a dessert, then you haven’t ruined the diet. However, if you cheat by falling completely off, grabbing a soda, following it up with five slices of pizza, then three massive scoops of ice cream… well. You will have driven your blood sugar so high, that there is no way you will retain the complete measure of what you have accomplished.
Thus, “choosing to cheat” can be a very wise choice. What I mean, is if you can foresee the inevitable collapse of your will power, and you can stand in the middle of a completely controlled, manifest destiny, I own my diet individual… and an out of control raving “give me the whole pie or die” lunatic… then you can win. So identify the weakness, see where it is coming from (“I need grains” or “I need sugar”), and feed that weakness ever so slightly with something that satisfies.
For some of you, if you get the least taste of something you are craving, you then fall completely. So for you, in the healing diet world, you need a replacement food. For me it is ice cream, i love it! So when I feel that surge of desire, i pull out a pint of heavy whipping cream, almond butter, peanut butter, 100% cocoa, and a little stevia or xylitol, and away we go! That will usually completely satisfy me. If not, add some coconut, and eventually breakdown to throwing some fruit in.
It might be that you could make an “english muffin” pizza, and never need to go get the whole pizza (much more will power is needed when there is a whole pizza staring at you)!
So choose to cheat, when it can save your diet. Other diet plans can have a cheat day every week with little consequence, but then… that is why the healing diet results are so amazing. Come hear all about it at the TOTAL FOOD MAKEOVER coming in October!
Dr. E