“Help I’ve ‘blown the diet’!”
Did you overdo it on the chocolate at Easter, but it didn’t stop there?
Maybe you’ve been enjoying some extra treats while you were on holiday, but ‘holiday-mode’ has carried on even though you’re back home now.
It feels too difficult to keep up those healthier habits you were working on before. Getting back into your normal, healthy eating habits seems like hard work. Unhealthy habits have snuck in and seem ready to stay…
You’re not alone!
We all do it – special occasions like Christmas, birthday parties and holidays disrupt your normal routine. It’s not the end of the world if your usual eating habits go out the window. You’re definitely not a bad person if you ate more chocolate or ice-cream than you would normally.
The first thing that might help you with this is to ditch the idea of being ‘on a diet’ – it doesn’t help you. Dieting just makes things worse in the long-term. Instead try to focus on building healthy habits forever. If you’re not ‘on a diet’ then you can’t have blown the diet right?! You don’t need to do things perfectly.
Healthy eating is about variety not perfection!
It’s ok to overdo it once in a while.
But it’s easy to slip into that mindset of thinking you’ve blown it! Where you think you’ve failed to change or build healthy habits so you might as well give up.
Don’t panic – you haven’t completely undone any of your hard work trying to eat healthier or move more. You CAN get back on track to keep working towards your goals, whether you’re trying to eat better, lose weight or get fitter.
So if you know you’ve been overeating, and your healthy habits have slipped…
Here are my top tips to help you when you’ve overdone it:
First draw a line under it all
What’s done, is done. There is no point beating yourself up for what can’t be changed. Feeling guilty and carrying on overeating to try to feel better, will only make you feel worse. You can’t change the past, you can only learn from it.
Remember the bigger picture. When it comes to achieving your goals, it’s all about what you do next that makes a difference. One day of overeating (or one week or even a month!) is not going to make that much difference in the long-term. Unless it continues, on and on and becomes a new habit forever. The best thing to do is draw a metaphorical line and move forward. Remember eating healthily is about what you do most of the time, it doesn’t need to be perfect.
Listen to your body
Learn to follow your appetite and hunger cues. If you overeat one day, then if you really listen to your body, you’ll find you won’t be as hungry the next day. It all comes back to eating mindfully rather than eating automatically. Our appetite goes up and down day to day so it’s important to learn to listen to it.
It can help if you ask yourself the following questions: “am I really, truly physically hungry?” or “why am I eating?” Ask those questions with an open mind and zero judgement. Be honest with yourself about what you’re doing. But also be kind to yourself; that guilt-tripping or self-punishment doesn’t help you.
Tweak it
If all the healthy habits you’ve been working on have all gone out the window. Don’t panic. Having a little slip-up is normal, but it can be hard to get back into it again. Especially if it’s carried on for a few days or even weeks. Go back to where you started. Review your goals; what you’re trying to achieve and why. Then think about what’s the first step for you take right now. What would be the easiest simplest thing for you to start doing again? What change would make the biggest difference?
Sometimes the smallest thing can act as a starting point to get other things going. For example, getting back into a routine of going to bed earlier can help you get up earlier in the morning. Then you have the time to have a decent balanced breakfast which sets you up for the day and helps you feel energised. So you end up feeling better and more likely to go for a decent balanced lunch instead of picking on biscuits all day.
Draw that line, listen to your body and tweak those habits.
Remember you don’t need to do any of it perfectly and it takes practice, patience & perseverance to build habits for life.
Need help to ditch dieting forever?
Want to eat normally again AND lose weight healthily? While still enjoying the cake & chocolate? Hell yes!
I will help you ditch dieting forever, either with my 1-2-1 support. Or if you prefer to work independently, you will learn all the skills I teach my 1-2-1 clients, on my ‘No More Diets’ online course.
My Weekly Round-up! AKA; what I’ve been up to recently…
- This blog post has been brought to you by Vanilla Chai tea – which I’d almost forgotten I had! It’s so good!
- I went for a massage last night, which was amazing – when was the last time you treated yourself to something like that? I’d highly recommend it.
- I managed to get to the library finally so I have a collection of books to get through this month. So far I’m about half way through Michelle Obama’s autobiography ‘Becoming’. Really enjoying it, what an inspiring woman.
- We went up another new hill at the weekend as well – Bury Ditches. So another hill to add to our list for our family challenge ’22 hills in 2022′ . Another gorgeous walk too especially as the bluebells are starting to bloom around here.
- Bird Nerd Report: I saw a couple of interesting birds up on Bury Ditches. I’m not 100% sure, but I think they may have been crossbills, although they weren’t as red as the photos in my book! The black caps have been back lots on my daily walk along the brook after the school run. Plus I keep seeing long-tailed tits, but not many kingfishers this week.
