Cheat MealsIts not a bad idea to include cheat meals as part of your healthy eating plan, in fact, it may be a good idea. Although this statement may appear paradoxical in nature, it is important to realize that despite your best intentions, it is virtually impossible to eat nothing but healthy, organic foods at every meal of the day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. For some people, the need for these dietary allowances may not even arise from incessant food cravings, but rather, from issues of time. Lets face it, planning and preparing healthy meals is time-consuming and its nice to be able to just quickly pick something up when you are in a hurry or when you simply don’t want to cook. For these reasons, it is important to allow for cheat meals in your diet, albeit in moderation. An Effective Strategy for Dietary Allowances Personally, one of the strategies I have found to be most effective in sticking to a proper diet is to eat only healthy foods during the week, while on the weekends I may become a little more lenient in my diet. Of course, that doesn’t mean that you should eat whatever you want the entire weekend; the idea is to simply afford yourself some flexibility in your diet on these days. During the week, most people are busy with work or school anyway, so instead of indulging in any unhealthy cravings during this time, why not save them for the weekend when you can actually enjoy them? The fact that weekdays are typically more regimented and structured also makes it easier to plan your meals and eat healthy during these days. Plus, you only need to focus on eating completely clean for 5 days at a time, making it easier to stay motivated knowing you can allow for a cheat meal or two on the weekend in a few days. In this way, the weekend serves as a great checkpoint in your diet, allowing you to relax and refocus mentally while preparing for the week ahead. Not only does this strategy help to ensure that you are eating nutritious foods most of the time, it also makes eating a candy bar or bag of chips or any other foods you may have been craving that much more enjoyable. The fact that you have “earned” the right to a cheat meal by eating healthy all week helps you savor it more and it can be a great way to start the weekend. ;-) If you are just beginning to implement healthy eating strategies in your life for the first time after years of poor food choices, you may need to start a little slower. No matter where you are in terms of eating habits, the key is to gradually start eating more and more healthy foods while at the same time limiting your unhealthy choices. By striving to make gradual improvements, your nutritional plan will become more manageable for you and you will be able to stick with it instead of going hardcore with the healthy food choices for a few days and then burning out and resorting to your old habits. If you are at the point where eating healthy for a single day is a challenge for you, you may want to start by limiting yourself to consuming cheat foods only once per day, then once every two days, then every three days and so on until you only need a cheat meal on the weekends. Of course, after consistently using the strategies discussed here for awhile, you may very well get to the point where you rarely ever need to stray from your healthy eating plan at all. Once your body becomes accustomed to eating healthy foods most of the time, cheat meals may simply slow you down and cravings for unhealthy foods may decrease significantly. Still, no matter how health-conscious you are, it is likely that the occasional cheat meal may need to be scheduled into your diet, so by planning ahead and making proper allowances for them, they can actually help you stay focused in the long term instead of hindering your progress.
|
