The Game-Changing Nutrition Mindset Shift
Updated: May 15, 2020
When women turn their attention to the things that they’re eating, especially for women with fat loss goals, they tend to approach it from a place of deprivation and with a restrictive mindset. Usually what happens is this:
"Ok, no more bread."
"No thanks. Cake sounds great but I'm on a diet."
"No, I'm off pop right now. I’m sugar-free this month."
" No. No. No. I can't." So, what happens next? Sometimes, they can’t even survive more than a few days of this unnecessary torture which leaves them right where they started. Sometimes, they can stick it out for longer, are completely miserable, and wind up stopping at the store on the way home and leaving with a giant family sized bag of Miss Vickies, two bags of candy, a chocolate bar, and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s (just in case.) Ask me how I know...
This is the binge-restrict cycle. When someone’s approach to food is extreme, the end result is usually a binge. Cue the feelings of failure and shame (and often the emotional eating that goes with that.) You’ll wallow for a few days, eat every last ounce of sugar in your house to “get rid of it,” and it will start all over again. No more sugar for you, you'll say - for real this time! Luckily, it doesn’t have to be this way. Even if you’re not happy with what your current food intake looks like, you have options that don’t leave you smelling someone’s breath to try to remember what it was like to eat cupcakes.
What I recommend is approaching changes to your diet with the mindset of adding in verses cutting things out. When we eat more nutritious foods we enjoy we: - Feel more satiated and satisfied - Are less hungry, which leads us to make better choices overall - Have less room for the foods we want to be choosing - Don’t feel deprived, which allows us to live moderately and with food freedom instead of being in the binge-restrict cycle
So let's get you out of that cycle. What can you add in instead of cutting out?
.
.
. Leave me a comment and tell me if you've ever been caught in the binge-restrict cycle!