Beating yourself up over eating a few sweet treats or a serving of “forbidden food” is useless. You can give yourself a break when you eat healthy and forgive yourself occasionally or simply include a favorite food in your diet on rare occasion. When you choose to eat healthy, rather than diet, it means that most of the food you eat is not just low in calories but healthy. While you might make adjustments in the way you cook or make substitutions of a fattening food for a lower calorie one, it doesn’t mean you have to give up all the foods you love or miss out on the holiday celebration.
The key is to eat a small portion if you do break away from healthy eating.
While you might love cream horns or other delectable dessert, eating them everyday, or several a day, can make you gain weight and isn’t part of a healthy lifestyle. However, if a coworker brought cream horns as a treat for the holidays, you could have one, or a half of one, saving the rest for a later time. As long as you stick to a healthy diet the rest of the day or week, you won’t see much difference in your weight loss. That doesn’t mean that if you fall back into old habits it doesn’t affect you. It does, and can ruin your weight loss program.
Special occasions don’t happen every day.
A wedding dinner, a holiday celebration or a vacation might be occasions that you find yourself eating more than you should or eating foods you shouldn’t. These special occasions don’t occur every day, which means you aren’t changing eating habits, you’re making an exception for one day. As long as everyday isn’t a holiday in your book, enjoy the time you have with friends and family, making as many adjustments as you can to keep your meal healthy, but not flogging yourself if they all aren’t.
Some experts suggest you do take a day off and splurge a bit.
When you first start a program of eating healthier, you’ll be tempted at every turn for a bag of fries or a quick donut stop. The more you learn about eating healthier and practice it, the more your taste will change, bringing temptation to a halt. By allowing a few splurges, feelings of guilt and self-loathing are at a minimum, which can keep your self image at a high and help you stick to healthy eating habits.
After eating healthy for a length of time, you won’t even be tempted to eat greasy foods. In fact, some people find that quickie burgers taste horrible after they’ve developed healthy eating habits.
For those who still feel like they must do something to offset their nibbling on unhealthy foods, adding a few extra minutes of exercise can burn off extra calories and make them feel less guilty.
If you find you’re eating foods that aren’t healthy too frequently, it’s time to take action and get back to the basics.
Sometimes social pressure causes you to indulge in foods that aren’t part of your program. If you prefer not to tell your host or hostess they’re serving food that isn’t healthy, it’s better to eat a little of it rather than offend them.