Cheat meals, most of us take pleasure in them. It can mean the difference between sustaining a good healthy diet for a few weeks to months to years. But why?
My once a week cheat meal. I don’t feel guilty,
I just accept I’ll have to clean up a little after
Rewarding good behaviour
Our psychology is massively based around pain and pleasure. We do what is pleasurable and avoid that which is painful. To a lot of people, a healthy diet doesn’t bring as much pleasure as the occasional take-away. Learning to cook is a great way to buffer this contrast however, by rewarding healthy eating with a once a week cheat meal, more pleasure is associated with healthy eating thus enabling you to continue for longer
Those who don’t cheat
If your will isn’t strong enough not to, those who don’t cheat and sustain a healthy or restrictive diet for a period of time without reward can fall into the trap of becoming fad or yo-yo dieters because that they’ve dedicated themselves to something they can’t sustain.
As well as this, many people in my experience feel they can’t cheat or when they do they feel incredibly guilty. By interviewing many people who have been able to lose a fantastic amount of weight (some 7-11stone) control and rational thinking is a huge factor in success. I.e. controlling when you do and don’t eat healthfully and secondly rationally accepting that you can cheat, and if you do it just means that you’ll just have to be a bit stricter over the following days with exercise and healthy eating to make sure your progress isn’t significantly slowed.
Reward. Accept. Think rationally. Gain control
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Purchase our diet plans and a 1-2-1 coaching package and we’ll apply these and other approaches to your eating so that you can make a long term change to your health and fitness for the better. Contact us on 01474 247 629 or info@revitalizeclinic.co.uk to start your journey