When I started my diet/fitness journey, I vowed to be a better eater, and not consume a lot of junk food. Initially I gave up chocolate, cakes, and everything sweet. But for someone like me who was born with sweet ‘teeth’ (imagine just how much I love desserts), it was very hard to give up on the mouth watering desserts Kathmandu seemed to be teeming with. I think just around the time I went on a fitness regime complete with a diet chart, many new bakeries and pastry shops cropped up in the capital. What luck!
The glorious cupcakes, the gooey lemon cheesecake, the perfect looking tiramisu, there’s just so much you want to feast on when you are out. For me, the more I deprived myself, the more I craved these delicious goodies, and I would eventually give in and have so much that I’d actually feel guilty, never mind gluttony. Once, in a single day, I had a thick slab of chocolate cake, two banana muffins, a slice of caramel pastry, and two scoops of Baskin Robbins Mississippi Mud chocolate ice cream – all within six hours or so. Don’t ask me what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking, just giving in to my intense cravings.
And the worst thing is that this wasn’t the first and last time I did something like that. After I went on my diet/fitness regime, I must have gorged like a food-deprived maniac once every four or five days. I would be on a healthy diet and then suddenly, just like that, a craving would hit and my perfectly balanced life would spiral out of control. I’d see chocolate cake while passing by a bakery window, or a little girl licking on an ice cream cone and I’d feel so bad about depriving myself that I’d decide to get one for myself. One seemingly harmless little indulgence would then turn into two or three (or more) treats.
I know many people like me who go on healthy diets completely cutting off from junk food and chocolates only to binge eat every few days. This is a common problem faced by many on their weight loss journey. You restart your weight loss program every week or at the beginning of every month and you are on the right path for a while before cravings come calling. And this happens so many times that it’s no wonder why we aren’t losing weight as fast as we would like to.
The solution to this is controlled eating. I know it sounds simple but it requires a lot of discipline and, as I always keep saying, determination. By controlled eating, I mean you don’t entirely give up on what you love – be it ice cream, choco-chip cookies, or vanilla pastry – but eat it in moderation so as not to binge on them when you are suddenly hit by a food wave.
The thing with depravation is that when your body and mind know that you are abstaining from a certain thing you will only crave that more because you are constantly thinking about what you cannot eat. So try this instead: Eat anything you want but in moderation. Follow a healthy diet plan and when a craving hits, look for something small to satiate it. You don’t have to eat an entire chocolate cake to satisfy your hunger for something sweet. A spoonful or two works as well.
However, it’s quite difficult to stick to a forkful or two so try and split it with a friend or cut off the creamiest sides of the cake and just eat the middle portion. This is what I do and I find that it reduces the amount to almost less than half. Another thing you can do is keep some food with you at all times. You can find great energy bars with less than half the calorie content in an average chocolate bar at departmental stores around town. I always have one in my bag.
I keep a packet on dark chocolate everywhere – at home, at work, and even in my car. So now when I suddenly crave something sweet, I have something at hand and won’t go out on a mad chocolate frenzy. I have also found out that sucking on a popsicle helps so I carry a few of those in my bag – cheery and strawberry flavored chupachups that I just dig out and enjoy whenever my sweet ‘teeth’ itch.
I also eat whatever I want once a week. I have designated Sundays as my eat-anything-you-want days and on these days I’ll give in to my cravings. I look forward to these days so much that it compels me to be strong and stay disciplined the rest of the week. This might sound a bit far fetched but it actually works. And when you have designated a specific day to eat whatever you want, you don’t feel like you’ve cheated on your diet plan and you won’t have to restart all over again every few days.
We all work too hard, and do so much that we need a little indulgence every once in a while. And if that comes in a shape of a chocolate bar or a dripping ice cream cone, so be it. As long as you master the art of indulgence, there’s nothing you can’t indulge in and still lose all the excess weight.
The writer weighed 74 kilos and with a little bit of hard work, and a lot of determination has dropped down to 51 kilos.
sharmaditi374@gmail.com
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