Okay, so I need to vent a little bit with this one. I am a part of a challenge group on Facebook (which honestly just irritates the heck out of me most of the time and I should just remove myself but I have yet to take that step!). This group is called 2015 Transformation and it is a bunch of somewhat local women who are all on a healthy living kick as well. Except these women have taken it WAY TO SERIOUSLY! They post pictures for “flex Friday”, post their lunch for “meal Monday” and so on. At first what I thought to be a motivational page turned into an angry depressing page for me. The leader of the page posted a picture of a half a banana with peanut butter and 10 chocolate chips, yes only 10! The comment said, “I cheated tonight. I couldn’t help myself, I sat and watched my family eat pizza, then came home and made myself a yummie salad. But it didn’t quite ‘cut the mustard’.” Cheat?! Lady…you’ve lost your mind- that’s a normal snack for me! And I’ll be darned if I am going to go out for pizza and not eat it! Literally three days later she posted, “I am bonking. No, I am not bonkers. I have been following the lowest bracket of 21 Day Fix and doing Max:30 workouts. I am tired and hungry A LOT. So yea for me, I get to eat more!!!…” She goes on farther but nothing necessary for you to get my point! Yep, tired and hungry because you aren’t eating! Eat the pizza, as long as you are conscience about what you are putting in your mouth and not binging or doing it regularly IT”S NOT GOING TO HURT YOU! Work out harder tomorrow morning knowing you had a slip up tonight but it’s okay to slip up! Also, it’s not cheating…consider it as a reward, you worked hard, you have EARNED this. Studies suggest that a successful dieter will stick to their diet plan 90 percent of the time, that’s 10 percent short of 100! 10% of the time you can eat those 10 chocolate chips.
Still don’t think it’s okay to splurge once in a while? How about this, leptin (I’ve mentioned this word before!) is secreted by fat cells and is key to maintaining energy balance in the body (it allows you to know when you are full). When leptin levels are low you continually think you are hungry, and low levels of leptin are caused by decreasing caloric intake. Continually eating with minimal calories could potentially lead to binging! So take that high calorie splurge, it might actually help you in the long run!
kjschreier 