Excuse Me? #3: I can’t eat healthy, Part 1
Hopefully you read parts 1 and 2 of this “Excuse Me?” series. And hopefully, with many excuses dealt with, are now working out regularly. If that describes you, fantastic job.
But I have to ask, how’s your diet?
At the end of the day can you say that you made no excuses and have no regrets with how you ate? Unfortunately, chances are you still have some work to do in the healthy eating department. Let’s get to work:
1. I deserve to eat this
Hmmm, I am not so sure. I won’t break out into theology, but I do think if we are honest with ourselves, we don’t deserve nearly as much blessings as we have. Let’s change the mindset to being thankful for what we already have. That is a refreshing change from the entitlement we so often see around us. Often this excuse is related to an achievement, i.e. “I’ve done X, now I deserve Y”. Try to break that chain if you can. Often achievements come with their own reward even if it is just a small sense of pride or a pat on the back from a friend. Try not to make food your reward.
2. I’ve already messed up my diet, might as well go all the way
This is so surprisingly common and yet is it is the one I struggle to get my head around the most. If you messed up, the sooner you get back on track, the less the damage will be. Do not make it worse! And besides, where does this line of thinking stop? If you messed up at lunch, do you go nuts at dinner too then get back on track tomorrow? Why get on track tomorrow? It seems so arbitrary. It makes much more logical sense to get back on track as soon as you realize you’ve made a mistake.
3. I earned this food, after all I ran 2 miles today
This excuse is related to #1, but is a bit more specific. I find this one odd. If you are working to lose weight as many people are, why would you reward your calorie burning activity by eating junk food? It seems counterproductive to your goal. Math is your friend in this case, often the food you hope to eat as a reward for your exercise contains far more calories than you burned. Don’t take my word on it, there are plenty of food databases and exercise calorie calculators available to do the math yourself.
Want to see some examples? How about walking for nearly an hour and a half to burn off 2 slices of pizza. You can see from the chart that poor food choices will quickly outweigh whatever calorie burn you did that made you feel like you “earned” it.
4. But chocolate has antioxidants and red wine has resveratrol
Yes, they do. They also have a decent amount of calories from sugar. And calories from fat in the case of chocolate or alcohol in the case of red wine. I will not debunk every food that people make these types of claims about. You understand the point, zeroing in on one potential benefit of a food while ignoring all the other aspects of the food is a very faulty view of nutrition.
5. I am stressed, it’s comfort food
This one is related to number 1. However, instead of eating a food to reward yourself for something positive, this excuse allows you to eat what you want because something bad happened to you. Biochemically, the comfort food you eat when you are stressed may in fact make you feel better…for a little while. But the problem with comfort foods is that they are usually high in fat, carbs and salt. These types of things can lead to a temporary spike that makes you feel good and then leads to a crash where you feel worse than before. Better to eat healthy food and not contribute to the vicious cycle.
6. Life is short, eat what you want
And your life will be even shorter if you do. Now, I jest, but only slightly. Sure you can eat whatever you want but as you age and it catches up with you, will you be happy you did? As you put on weight and your joints hurt, or you deal with complications from diabetes, will you be glad you ate what you wanted?
My advice, eat healthy to enjoy the life you’ve been giving. Does this mean you never take a moment to indulge yourself? Of course not, that is part of life as well. But it is not ALL of life.
Stay tuned for Part 4 of this series!
