The Right Way to “Cheat”

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• Is Food a Reward?
• Willpower and Your Thoughts

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Full Episode Transcript:

Welcome welcome. Thanks for joining me today. The title of today’s episode must have intrigued you just a little bit, but no, I don’t mean cheating in a relationship or on a test or boardgame. I’m going to talk to you about the right way to “cheat” when it comes to food. And why am I talking about cheat days and cheat meals, if you’re trying to change your eating habits? Because you can be successful with breaking “bad” eating habits AND still “cheat.” In fact, I’m going to talk about why it will actually help you be successful with changing your eating habits, as long as you’re “cheating” the right way, which of course I’ll share.

So I just want to first mention that I don’t think having good eating habits means only eating healthy foods. Some people may consider that to be good or healthy eating habits, and I’m not here to tell you that there’s something inherently wrong with that opinion. However, as a healthcare provider and Eating Habit Coach, it’s not my opinion and I think most would agree, isn’t a fun way to live or look at food and eating. But why do women who are trying to improve their health or body with what they’re eating, feel that they need to be perfect all of the time?

Well, that’s partly due to this mentality that you HAVE to be perfect in order to get results. I think this is very common in women and even more so for career women, right? So let’s say for example, you’re trying to lose 20 lbs. Someone tells you what foods to eat and what foods to avoid, to lose that 20 lbs.

You start out really determined to eat these healthy foods and stick with your meal plan or diet. You rely on willpower to keep yourself going with those veggies, lean proteins and counting calories. You lose several pounds, your brain thinks, “great, this is working!” and you continue with the strict plan you were given. You push aside any urges or cravings for that chocolate cake or ice cream for weeks, so that you stick to your diet. You feel like you’re being really “good” and then a friend offers you some Oreos and you can’t take it anymore, so you eat an entire sleeve. You say, “screw it” and end up eating more of the junk food you haven’t allowed yourself to have during those weeks.

Then you feel guilty and all these negative thoughts are swirling around in your head about yourself and your ability to lose weight. You failed to get the results you wanted because you weren’t perfect, right? No, absolutely not.

Results aren’t determined by how perfect you are or how “good” you are when it comes to what foods you eat and how much. What gets results is being compassionate toward yourself and your efforts and not trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. What gets results is meeting yourself where you are, meaning not going from one eating extreme to another and expecting yourself to be perfect in that process.  

Getting results also comes from making decisions that serve you, meaning decisions that benefit you and aren’t harming you in the short or long-term. Being intentional about your actions by deciding with the higher portion of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, rather than what’s considered the lower portion of the brain, the more primitive part. The primitive part of the brain is also referred to as the reptilian brain. I’ve also heard it called the toddler brain and the downstairs brain. It includes the brain stem, a portion of the brain called the limbic region and the amygdala. These parts develop early on in life, which is why the term the “toddler brain” is a good one for the primitive brain. The prefrontal cortex is developed later and can sometimes be called the “adult brain”. It’s why adults are supposed to be better decision-makers than children are, regarding their future.

So, why am I talking about compassion, meeting yourself where you are, decision-making and parts of the brain? It’s because these are the things that are going to allow you to “cheat” the right way AND still create the results you want. Sounds pretty good, right?

Now why is it important to not be super strict with only sticking to healthy foods when you’re trying to change your eating habits, lose weight, improve your health or a specific medical condition, etc.? Because otherwise you won’t be able to sustain the changes you’re trying to make and if you can’t sustain them, then you of course won’t get the results you want, right? You NEED to have treats in there. You NEED to be able to allow yourself to still eat foods that excite you. And although there are lots of foods that are considered healthy that are actually delicious too, let’s face it, the peanut butter cookies and the fudgy brownies are probably going to beat out the cobb salad for most people.

If you throw in some of those treats, comfort foods, junk foods, whatever you want to call it, while you’re trying to change your eating habits, you’re going to be much more likely to want to stick with these changes since you aren’t completely depriving yourself. Now certainly you might be able to deprive yourself completely for a month or two, but I promise you, it’s not likely to become eating habit changes for life.

So, that’s where those cheat meals or cheat days come in. By cheat meals, I’m also including desserts and snacks in here too, not necessarily just breakfast, lunch, or dinner. So, of the two, cheat meals and cheat days, I recommend trying to stick with a cheat meal, rather than a full cheat day, because it will be easier to stay on track with those healthier eating habits.  If you have a cheat day, it’s a little more difficult to get back on track the next day since your brain just got used to an entire day of ridiculously delicious food. So going from that, to oatmeal, salad, and chicken with steamed vegetables the next day might be a little more challenging than you’d like.

So regardless of if you decide to have a cheat meal or a cheat day, here’s how to do it in a way that will compliment your journey of changing your eating habits, rather than hinder it. Here’s where the compassion, meeting yourself where you are, and the decision-making will all come into play.

Let’s first hit on the decision-making. So to better support your journey of breaking “bad” eating habits and forming healthier eating habits, you need to decide from your pre-frontal cortex, rather than your more primitive brain. Remember the prefrontal cortex is more future-focused, what you might call the “adult” part of the brain.

The more primitive part is motivated by instant gratification. When you decide in the moment to have a cheat meal or cheat day, you’re using the more primitive part of the brain to make that decision. It’s because you had some craving or urge to have a cheat meal or cheat day, for whatever reason. I just want to make a quick mention here that the reason may be the best reason in the world, but because it’s in-the-moment, it’s still using the more primitive part of the brain.

Why that’s not a great thing is because it gets you into, or keeps you in the habit of deciding in the moment. Basically, you stay in the habit of instant gratification. Instant gratification doesn’t play nicely with breaking “bad” eating habits or forming healthier eating habits.

What does play nicely, is using the prefrontal cortex to decide ahead of time, if you’ll have a cheat meal or cheat day. When you decide ahead of time, you’re more likely to be thinking big picture. You’re more likely to be thinking of your goals you had already set for yourself. You’re going to decide from that higher level, more future-focused part of your brain, the part that has your best interests in mind for the near or far future. That means you are more in control.

That’s what healthy eating habits really are about. Being deliberate or intentional about what you’re eating and being the one in control. Rather than just eating out of automaticity from a trigger.

The other benefit of using your pre-frontal cortex to decide ahead of time if you’re going to have a cheat meal or cheat day, is that because it was planned, you really don’t have to feel any sort of negative emotion afterward, right? The tendency to experience some sort of negative emotion such as guilt after a cheat day, usually occurs when you feel like you didn’t have control and you just let impulses sort of take over. There’s this disappointment in yourself that usually occurs. You feel like you “messed up.”

When this happens, you’re much more likely to lose the desire to “get back on the wagon” so to speak. Or, you might make it mean something about you and your capabilities and give up entirely. This brings me to the next thing that is just so important with cheat days and meals, self-compassion.

Because you’re a human being, you deserve to have self-compassion. In fact, you might even say you’re entitled to it. You don’t need to DO anything or be a certain way to deserve self-compassion. You just have to be a being.

So why do a lot of us not have self-compassion when it comes to eating habits, messing up, “falling” off the wagon, all that? I don’t know. I don’t have the answer to that. Maybe it’s something that has established over time. Maybe it’s something in our DNA. Who knows?

What I do know is that self-compassion is a very useful tool when it comes to eating habits and cheat meals or cheat days. Like I mentioned earlier, when you end up feeling guilty about not being super strict with eating healthy foods, and you blame yourself or are upset at yourself, it’s not likely to result in continuing on with those changes that you originally set out to make. I mean, some people can talk negatively to themselves and that actually works, but it’s rare and it usually doesn’t last.

I don’t know about you, but if someone spoke negatively to me a couple of times, I’d tolerate it, but if it continued, I’d say the heck with that person and leave the relationship, situation, what have you. Well I’d like you to think about yourself this way too. If you talk negatively a few times to yourself when you “mess up,” it might not affect you too much in the beginning, but over time when you keep beating yourself up, it’s going to wear on you. What happens then? Your brain is going to say, “I’m not going to keep myself in this situation any longer” and you’ll give up on the goals you had set for yourself.

When you combine deciding ahead of time when you’ll have a cheat day or cheat meal with self-compassion, you’re way more likely to enjoy that planned cheat meal without any guilty or negative talk. That means you can keep moving forward on your journey with your eating habits as planned and not have any negative emotion sabotage you going forward, right? I’d like you to think of self-compassion as what helps to make the ride more smooth or more comfortable. It just makes it way more enjoyable.

Now, the third part I wanted to talk about is meeting yourself where you are. So you may have the thought, “well, my eating habits are really bad and I’m going to end up having a lot of cheat meals or cheat days.” That’s fine and that’s actually what I recommend.

So here is how I’d like you to go about this. Meeting yourself where you are means not trying to make too drastic of a change. You’re going to determine where you are as far as your eating habits and where you’d ideally like to be. For example, if you eat lots of sugar, say two desserts a day, almost every day, and your goal is to only have one dessert on weekend days only, you don’t want to be super strict with sugar all of a sudden. Because then when you can’t stick with it since it’s too drastic of a change, you’ll feel badly and potentially even give up like I talked about earlier.

What you’re going to want to do is plan out some “cheat meals” or in this case, “cheat desserts.” So, if you currently eat 2 desserts a day and ultimately want to decrease it down to one dessert on Saturday and one dessert on Sunday, then plan on eating several desserts during the week. Maybe eat two desserts every other day and one dessert on the remaining days. You plan which days ahead of time, have some self-compassion and let yourself know that you’re meeting yourself where you are.

That sounds like a much nicer approach, right? A little more enjoyable journey. One that you might actually want to take all the way until you get to your destination. Because that’s what it’s all about, my friends. Getting those results in an enjoyable way and decreasing the likelihood and the desire to give up before you even get there.

If you start out too strict and aim for perfection, you end up right back where you started, maybe even worse, because you’ll be less likely to give it another attempt. That’s what you want to avoid. You want to make this as easy as possible, which includes scheduling in some cheat meals. Then, reminding yourself afterward that you decided on purpose to have that particular cheat meal from your higher brain. That way, you can have some self-compassion and not beat yourself up afterward.

That’s what I have for you today on the right way to “cheat.” I’m sorry to disappoint you if you were hoping for something scandalous. I do think that cheat meals will serve you much better than those other types of cheating though. So, I hope you enjoyed today’s topic and if this show is resonating with you, then you’ll enjoy the special workshop I’m hosting on How to Stop Emotionally Eating next Thursday, July 14^th at 7pm ET. It’s online and free. There are just a few seats left, so visit katemjohnston.com/workshop to get one of those last virtual seats.

I’m so glad you joined me today. Thank you, remember to have some self-compassion and plan ahead, and I’ll talk with you next week. Take care.