Sunday 20 June 2010

The rules of relaxed dieting

I've been on several diets in my life. Some were weird, some were horrible and most just didn't work. The only thing that's ever worked for me is moving around more (I hesitate to call what I do "exercise") and to eat more sensibly. I've lost quite a lot of weight (around 30kg) but although I need to still lose more, I've hit an "meh, my heart's prolly okay now" plateau. These plateaus mean that I'm still conscious of the way that I eat and I'm aware of how much or little I exercise, but I have some additional rules. Here they are:

1) If it's broken, it has no calories, because they fall out.
See? All the calories fall out into a pile and a no-calorie rainbow appears. Joy!

2) Similar to the first rule, but slightly different. If you eat only a piece of the nom, there are no calories because it would be a pain in the arse to work out the amount of calories in a non-descript piece of food.
The science (yeah I'm gonna pretend it's science) behind this is that when you get food, the packaging usually tells you the calories per portion or per unit of food. This is bollocks, by the way, a portion of lasagne according to ready-meal packaging wouldn't keep a gnat alive. But since it's per portion/unit, if you eat a piece of the food (but not half or a quarter, because then you could work it out) then there are no calories. Working the amount out is a mathematical impossibility (read: one that I'm not going to endeavour to solve).

3) If you've achieved something, it's totally okay to treat yourself.
4) Likewise, if you're having a shitty day, it's totally okay to indulge to make yourself feel better. Relaxed dieting is an effective method for football-induced rage, too. The situation:

The solution:
And no, I don't care if you're sitting there pointing at my pictures and declaring this to be comfort eating. It works. Fine, it's calorific, but I'd rather have eaten something naughty than sit there in the dark feeling sorry for myself in a self-righteous way because I didn't eat a muffin. Besides, you can go swimming or something when you feel better.

5) Eating salad for lunch entitles you to dessert.
I don't see what's bad about ice cream anyway. It's far less unhealthy than a lot of things you could be eating. And dessert is important. I find that dieting is less annoying when you let yourself have treats, because otherwise you just feel like you're in food prison or something. And it's probably better to have controlled desserts than go a week without anything and then think fuck it, and then eat a cake. That's probably bad.

6) Any physical exertion whatsoever entitles you to a treat.
As illustrated, the exertion does not have to be intentional or planned. Exercise is hard. What's more, I find it hard to picture myself as "the kind of person who does exercise". I can't fathom people who run when they aren't being chased or don't need to get somewhere faster. I rarely feel like doing exercise voluntarily (especially since all FUN exercise like horse riding or martial arts is expensive and you're just left with shit you can do by yourself like running or walking) so I think you should motivate yourself. And if you've burnt some calories it's better to eat pie then than when you haven't done anything..

And lastly, reaching your target weight is, of course, a cause for celebration. Since you've already lost weight, you have a healthy attitude to food and no longer have to care or watch your weight so strictly.
Congratulations to you! Happy relaxed dieting ;)

1 comment:

  1. hi Stace, I wonder if you knew about the fact that black and white foods cancel each other out so you can eat freely for example dominos (black white black), especially with whipped cream, or ice cream with licorice sauce etc.

    Cheers :)

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