Weight Loss Motivation - What makes you break your diet?
No matter how great your weight loss motivation, you invariably break your diet at some point. Why is that?
You break your diet because you're hungry, in some way, and food is everywhere!
You just can't avoid seeing delicious food, even if you wanted to. It's in the office, it's at home, it's on TV, it's the focal point of nearly every social occasion, it's on every street corner. It's as if your weight loss motivation is under attack everywhere you go! And the more hungry you are the more delicious everything looks!
So given we can't remove all tempting food from your reach, controlling hunger is the key.
You may think that being hungry is a necessary evil when you're dieting. (Haven't we all heard the diet gurus of the past spouting "Hunger is your friend"?) But it's just not true! Help your weight loss motivation by dealing with your hunger, in the right way.
Now, how do you stop being hungry on your diet without stuffing yourself all the time eating the fridge empty?
The answer lies in identifying your hunger! What type of hunger is motivating you to eat?
- True physical hunger. You haven't eaten for a few hours and your tummy is rumbling because it's empty. Cure for this is just to eat. And eat before you get too hungry and wolf everything down! Follow the Hunger Scale (see Tools).
- Low blood sugar hunger. Typically within a couple of hours of eating some quickly digestible starchy or sugary food you'll feel hungry again. The body is looking for food to replace the sugar quickly again. Cure for this is to eat slow-release foods regularly throughout the day to keep your blood sugar levels even.
- Cravings. These can be caused by
- a sensitivity to food - you may actually crave the stuff that you're slightly allergic to e. g. Allergy to wheat and you crave pasta and bread. Cure is to detect and deal with your allergies. See a specialist if you suspect that your cravings are allergy based. Clues are always craving foods with the same basic ingredient, wanting to eat them several times a day, finding it physically difficult to leave them out of your diet.
- a deficiency in nutrients. Your body craves what it is lacking. Cure is making sure you have a good quality multivitamin and mineral supplement each day.
- a feeling of deprivation. Cure is not to ban any food from your diet. Everything in moderation.
- Comfort eating. There are quite a few reasons why we eat for comfort. These range from stress, low self-esteem, guilt, loneliness, boredom .... The list is endless. The cure involves identifying your own personal reasons for using food as comfort, facing up to your need and finding other ways to get solace than trying to fill the gap with food.
- Social Hunger. You're not really hungry but you have been offered food and it might upset your friend if you refuse. After all she made you a cake, went to all that trouble. Or you're out at a restaurant. Everyone else is eating dessert. You've just eating a main course so you're not hungry but you join in anyway. Cure is to be clear about your reasons for wanting to lose weight /stay slim and to value yourself enough to be assertive (without hurting the feelings of others) as well as deciding to put your long term goals before short term satisfaction.
You need to be a bit of a detective in identifying your own patterns of eating and what is contributing to your breaking your diet. Use the clues above to start solving your own situation. Need help? Contact the weight loss motivation team for support.
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