Changing what you want to eat

I'm doing a group whole 30 challenge on my facebook page so if you would like to join and change the way you eat, get healthier, and lose some weight I would love to have you join us!

Both the kids are still sick.  They are both coughing pretty bad.  On top of that I'm a little sick.  My throat hurts, and my nose is all stuffed up.  I am glad however that today I didn't wake up any worse than yesterday so I don't think that this is going to be as bad as my cold last month.  I'm really sore which I expected from doing Turbo Fire, but I didn't expect to get sick.  I didn't do Turbo Fire yesterday as I was so tired and didn't feel good.

I have been thinking this week about eating and changing your eating habits and diet trends.  I've realized that one of the big diet fads that is going around right now is the whole "Eat what you want" theme.  A lot of intuitive eating plans tell you to just eat what you want, and also Weight Watchers you can eat whatever you want as long as you track it, and with calorie counting you can eat what you want as long as you track it.  But I have found that doesn't work for me.  When I eat what I want, I keep wanting to eat those less healthy foods.  There is a reason why I gained so much weight and it was from eating what I wanted to eat, which was not healthy food.  Eating less of the non healthy food is a good start, but it it is just a start. If you really want to have permanent and long lasting weight loss you have to change what you eat.  Every long term maintainer I have looked at you see this pattern.  They start out somewhere, usually tracking and counting points or calories, but then they make a switch somewhere, usually gradually they start eating less and less unhealthy foods and more and more healthy foods and it takes a effort.  For me, I had to cut out all the junk I had been eating in order to stop wanting to eat those foods.  I didn't just go from wanting to eat pancakes and pizza to wanting to eat kale and fish.  For me I had to cut those things from my diet completely to stop craving them.  Now I have no desire at all to eat pancakes and pizza, but I do crave kale and fish.  When you change what you eat and strengthen your desire for healthy food you weaken your desire for less healthy food which is what changes your desires and changes your cravings and it is the only way the "eat what you want" motto works.  When you want to eat meat and vegetables then sure, eat what you want is great, but when what you want is popcorn and cookies, eating what you want either leads you to way overeat your calories or points which then causes a whole host of new problems like negative self thoughts, binging, "getting back on track tomorrow and eating everything I want today" mentality.  Or it leads you to be super hungry because you spent all your points/calories for the day on two slices of pizza at lunch and now you only have 50 calories left for the rest of the day.

Now I'm not saying you can't ever have those things, but it should be every once in a while, maybe for special occasions, and only you can decide what warrants a special occasion.  But every day isn't a special occasion and for me when I'm trying to kick the habit, I'm just saying no plain and simple.  Yes I will miss out on a few occasions but it there will always be more pizza, there will always be more cookies.  The world isn't running out of sugar and it will be there when I feel I am ready to add it back in sparingly.

I don't know if that makes any sense to all of you, Hopefully it resonates with someone.  Those are my thoughts over the past few days for what it's worth.

I hope to see you join in the challenge on the facebook page!