Restrictive thoughts can be sneaky little devils. We’re happily going about our day and think we are eating healthy…then BOOM after dinner, we find ourselves eating cookie after cookie and can’t seem to stop.
What’s going on?
It could be that you’re unintentionally on a diet.
Any form of restriction or dieting will inevitably end up in a binge. Why? I call it the Law of Dieting: for every diet there is an equal and opposite binge.
So how do you do if you’re unintentionally dieting?
There are thoughts like these that run through your head…
I’m not going to eat past 7:30 pm.
I’ve got to eat less today because I ate a massive dinner last night.
I should probably try to “eat clean” because I’ve had a lot of sugar lately.
After this brownie, I won’t have any more sweets for the week.
I have to have this green juice everyday for breakfast because I know it’s the healthiest.
Any thoughts where you freak out if you break a food rule and/or you’re telling yourself you SHOULD eat a certain way? These are restrictive thoughts.
If you’re not tuning into what your body wants and needs, only using your food rules and “shoulds” to plan your day? That can definitely be an unintentional diet.
It’s not the end of the world if you have these thoughts…in fact, it’s normal!
Dieting is SO ingrained in our brains as the only way to eat and lose weight, so when we’re trying to eat “normally” our old thinking will still come up from time to time. And that’s okay.
If you catch yourself thinking these thoughts, just notice and move on. You don’t need to act on them.
In fact, just this last week, I had waaaaaaaaay too much brownie batter making treats for a friend’s birthday. My reaction was “I should totally eat clean the next few days because I probably had the equivalent of 7 brownies in these batter spoonfuls”.
I immediately acknowledged and dismissed the thought, as I knew it was my old patterns and what I used to do as my reaction for feeling “fat” or having overeaten.
No big deal and no harm done. It’s when we freak out, think we MUST listen to the thought or rule, and head down that restrictive path that we’re in trouble.
Eating when you aren’t hungry? Normal people do that from time to time. Emotionally eating? Normal people also occasionally do that.
So, if you do either of these, don’t panic and jump into diet mode-just acknowledge that “normal eaters” do it sometimes, and move on with your day 🙂
