The Subtle Insanity of the Dieting Mind

Has anyone tried the slim fast shake plan – all you do is have a shake for breakfast, a shake for lunch, and eat a sensible meal  everything in the house for dinner.

Unfortunately, dieting is less about food and more about behavior, dissatisfaction, feelings and emotions.

Food and what you should eat is quite simple, the dieting mind is not.

The dieting mind is filled with preconceived notions and charged with hurtful memories.

This post will help you diffuse the power these emotions by creating a level of understanding of the dieting mind with a touch of humor.

This additional understanding and touch of humor will rob your dieting mind of its power,  and it's effect on your eating and your feelings about yourself.

Subtle insanity examples:

How many of you (and I’d like to hear from you in the comments section) have:

• a hidden food or candy stash in your desk at work
• placed wrappers deep in the garbage can to hide the evidence
• binged on some odd food items (bran flakes, cake icing, cake batter, yogurt, granola bars, …)
• eaten treats, cakes, or ice cream to point that you had to go out and replace what you ate for fear of being discovered. Then needed to eat even more to get the ice cream ‘level’ back to its original state
• looked around before going to the vending machine as if you are committing a crime
• bought other groceries to hide the fact that the only reason you are at the grocery store was to get treats, chips, candy and so on

Are there any others that you can think of? Please share below.

The fact is, that each of these behaviors undermines your attempts at weight loss. The feelings of guilt, shame and frustration ensue. Memories of failure and the wave of emotions paralyzes your motivation to move forward. I’m such a loser. I’ve blown it again.

The sooner we can watch these subtle insane behaviors as passing moments and emotions and not as inherently you, the sooner you will rob them of their power.

Notice that I did not say make them go away or completely eradicate them. Right now, we are seeking to rob them of their power, not solve, fix, or remove them all together.

Everyone overeats from time to time. Everyone makes mistakes. The sooner we can laugh at them, the sooner we can stop beating ourselves up and the quicker we move on emotionally.

You will also find that they occur less frequently. And that you can smile about.

Robbing these behaviors of their power may in fact make them disappear altogether, but even if they don’t, you will something to chuckle about.