One of the biggest mistakes I made throughout my journey surely was to do entire Cheatdays. At first I was pretty restricitve but a few months into my journey, I figured it would be okay to allow myself to eat whatever I wanted once a week. So I started having a Cheatday every single Sunday.
Not a Cheatmeal, an entire Day. I would eat whatever I wanted. I wouldn’t track any calories that day, but I sure ate well over my limit. Not portion size wise, I have never been one to eat extraordinary big quantities of food. It’s what I ate that was the issue, I’d have stuff like candy, pancakes, cereal but even small portions of those add up quickly because they’re high in calories. After such a day I’d feel absolutely miserable, my digestion had a hard time handling the food I ate. I noticed I was developing an unhealthy mindset. I’d work hard throughout the week to reach Sunday and finally treat myself. It was almost as if that was the only thing that got me going. I soon noticed that as someone who used to struggle with binge eating that was not a good solution for me and it also slowed down my weightloss. After each Sunday my body had to get rid of the excess water it retained from the high carb food I had consumed, so it was a vicious cycle.
I fell off the wagon sometime later and had to almost start over from the beginnig as I had gained some weight back (I will go more into detail in a later post). Anyways one thing I learned, I had to make this mistake and several others to get to where I am now and to find what works best for me and my body. I noticed that after starting over but without constant cheating my body would look a lot better even at the same weight as previous.
I don’t regret making this mistake as I learned a lot from the experience.
Throughout the years I developed a much healthier mindset and relationship with food. I will still allow myself to eat something thats not part of my regular diet but it’s only one meal that I swap now and it’s very rare that I do so. Not because I over restrict or anything like that, I just don’t have the desire as often as I used to (but nowadays I also would’t allow myself to manipulate my own success like that.. I developed a lot of discipline). If I choose to eat something outside my regular diet my choices have become much healthier which I’m really happy about (I still have a sweet tooth though but I have it so much better under control now).
This honestly has been a difficult post for me to write, as it’s the first time for me to be so open about struggles I had with my diet and my relationship with food. My binge eating for example has been my “dirty little secret” from before I started my journey and was something that I just never talked about. This is the first time for me to actually even mentioning or admiting to it at all.
Fitgirl in progress 