3 Steps To Ditching The All Or Nothing Approach To Nutrition & Get Results That Last

Do you ever find yourself treating your nutrition like a light switch ? You’re either “eating clean” or having your “cheat weekend” with no happy medium.

When you’re “on” your diet it’s built on restriction, and only eating certain foods that fit within the your diet dogma or list of foods.

Eventually you feel so deprived that you think you need to go “off” your diet on the weekend or at a social event.

This inevitably leads to overeating indulgent calorie dense foods, which due to their hyper palatability and effect on the reward center in the brain make them much easier to overconsume.

You allow this overindulgence to continue beyond that meal because you think “well I ate healthy all week, and I’m off my diet anyway. I’ll just enjoy myself this weekend and start on monday.”

Unfortunately some people’s “mondays” take a few weeks to come around, and by that time they’ve undone a lot of the progress they made and feel discouraged to get back on track.

When you overindulge every weekend because you ate “clean” all week, this is known as moral/self licensing behavior.

Self licensing applied here means that because you stuck to you nutrition plan all week, justifies the weekend cheat/binges that take place.

This self licensing behavior quickly becomes a slippery slope because as the indulgences get bigger and bigger, the deprivation to compensate for the indulgences can also get more extreme.

This all or nothing approach continues to fail because it’s based on deprivation, overindulgence and then shame and guilt that feeds back into more deprivation.

At the root of it all food isn’t the real problem, it’s a flaw in how you’re thinking about and approaching your nutrition.

These are the three steps you can use to correct that thinking pattern, and set yourself on a more well balanced and sustainable path to you nutrition and fat loss goals.

Step 1: You’re Not Your Food Choices. Remove The Moral Judgements

I frequently hear people use these kind of statements to describe how they chose to eat;

“ I was good all week.”

“ I was really bad this weekend.”

You need to completely separate who you are as a person from your food choices, they are in no way, shape or form connected.

You aren’t “good or bad” because of food choices you decided you make, and they aren’t a reflection of who you are as a person.

Making a moral judgement about who you are as a person based on your nutrition choices is really mentally unhealthy and damaging.

When the language you use to to describe how you choose to eat begins to chip away at your self worth and trigger guilt and shame, you need a new narrative to follow.

Instead say “I chose to eat more or less nutritious foods” This removes the judgement and morality of good and bad.

By using chose it also makes you take ownership of how you chose to eat because at the end of the day you do have a choice.

Step # 2: Choose How You Want To Eat Seven Days A Week

Find a way of eating that’s enjoyable, and you can see yourself following seven days a week instead of having an “on and off switch” to your nutrition.

This helps to remove the ups and downs, and takes away the “good and bad” judgements that come along with restriction and overindulgence.

Taking a more balanced approach allows for better overall consistency, and when it comes to getting results, consistency is king.

Make sure the approach you use includes foods you enjoy eating, and fits your lifestyle and preferences.

In the long run even if adding these foods you enjoy increases your weekly calories a little, it will be better for you than the 4,000 calorie cheat days on the weekend.

Obviously eating a full pint of Ben and Jerry’s isn’t what I’m talking about here by adding foods you enjoy everyday.

Make the majority of these additions should be whole nutritious foods that support your goal, and from time to time have a treat if you’d like.

When you don’t feel overly restricted and enjoy how you eat, there’s no need to “cheat” every weekend or go on a junk food bender.

3. Ditch The Idea Of Perfection, Focus On Progress

The imperfect diet someone can consistently follow will always be better than the perfect diet someone has to restart each week.

Realize that in real life perfection doesn’t happen, and setting that as your standard is a road to disappointment.

When you’re stuck in an imperfect situation learning how to adapt, and pivot to make the best nutrition choice possible is a valuable skill to your long term success.

If you choose to toss in the towel on your diet because the things aren’t perfect, you rob yourself of learning this crucial skill or adapting.

Doing the best that you can in any situation is all that you can ask of yourself, no one’s perfect. Not even diet gurus…

Realize one less nutritious choice doesn’t negate all the other good decisions you’ve made or could make for the rest of the day.

You’re always one bite of food away from getting back on track towards your health and nutrition goals.

Let’s use an analogy to get this point across:

If you pop one tire on your car, you wouldn’t decide to get out and pop all the other tires on your car right ?

A car with three working tires can still move forward, treat your nutrition the same way. When you slip up, keep moving forward it’s not a big deal unless you let it be.

One nutrition slip up isn’t a disaster, and just like a car with one popped tire you can continue to move forward! You might want to change it before too long though.

In conclusion, remove the judgement and morality from your food choices, they don’t make you “good” or “bad”, and that’s a damaging and dangerous way to think.

Find a way of eating that you enjoy and can stick to without feeling so deprived that you engage in moral licensing as a justification for your “cheat weekend.”

Consistent imperfect progress will get you much further in the long run than trying to be perfect all the time.

You’re going to have slips and make mistakes, it’s part of the process for everyone who changes their nutrition. Get back on track the next bite or meal, and learn from the mistakes you made. Use those mistakes as a lesson to make a better decisions in the future.

Choose a new way of thinking about, and approaching your nutrition using the steps above and you’ll be on the path to better results that actually last.