There is an idea that if you have been eating right all week, then on the weekend you can afford something delicious. Who came up with the concept of cheat meal – “deceptive food” – and why does it not work?
The idea came from professional bodybuilding, where the “cheat meal” was part of the pre-competition process. This meant a planned violation of the diet, a regular opportunity to eat or drink whatever you want according to a predetermined schedule – any “junk food” (“junk food”), sweets, and even alcohol.
The practice of professional sports has shown that “cheat meal” once a week does not disturb the rhythm of training and does not negate the results. It was assumed that the opportunity to eat forbidden (and, of course, more attractive) food once a week would give athletes a chance to “let off steam” and endure restrictions more calmly.
In addition, the coaches who developed this concept believed that a deceptive meal, most often containing a lot of fast carbohydrates, salt and fat, would deceive not only athletes suffering from nutritional restrictions, but also their metabolism – would not allow it to slow down, focusing on the intake of a reduced amount of calories at high energy consumption of the body.
The modern dietary industry has taken this idea and brought it to the diet of ordinary people. The principle is formulated as follows: we eat right all week (which means with dietary restrictions, most often regarding simple carbohydrates and some fats), and once a week in one meal we can afford unbridled revelry.
It would seem that everything is logical: on Sunday we enjoy our favorite “wrong” food, take a break from restrictions, relax, rewarding ourselves for moderation and abstinence during the week. And from Monday, with renewed vigor, we return to the fetters of proper nutrition …
If only it were that simple.
Diets are designed specifically to fail: no one needs a client who has lost weight once and for all
Diets fail for many reasons. The main one is that diets are designed specifically to fail: no one needs a client who has lost weight once and for all. The diet industry capitalizes on those who lose weight and gain weight again, ten times in a row.
But there is another reason. Nutritionists (and today more and more often “ordinary people of the people” who do not have a special education and turn their personal experience of losing weight and / or increasing physical activity into another nutritional brand) do not take into account how much food is not just food.
The call to “replace the wrong eating habits with the right ones” does not work, because we need these very “wrong” eating habits for something, they solve those of our problems that cannot be solved in any other way.
That is why changing eating behavior in most cases is possible in the office of a psychotherapist, where you can pay attention to your attitude to food. This will help you understand what – other than satisfying your hunger – you are using it for.
Diets and “healthy lifestyle” training offer us a quick solution, and it is always an attempt to control through violence against the body, which always ends in failure.
What is wrong with the concept of “Sunday break”?
She divides food in our minds into “permitted” and “forbidden”. Forbidden food inevitably begins to be perceived by the brain as more attractive – yes, yes, research convincingly shows that the dopamine system of the brain, the “reward” system, reacts differently to the types of foods that we deny ourselves.
The brain begins to filter images of this food from the environment faster – showcases of candy stores constantly catch our eye, the aroma of hot almond croissants and coffee hovers where it used to smell only of gasoline and dust.
You go out into the world – and you are surrounded by “sweets”. At the same time, the brain promises you unprecedented, downright heavenly pleasures from this food, a pleasure of the order that no food can actually deliver.
As a result, as long as you manage to stick with the six-day abstinence, seven-day-reward system, you feel good about yourself, and perhaps sincerely believe that the system “works.” But as soon as you break loose and try too tempting delicacy outside the established regimen, a huge sense of guilt falls on you.
Dividing food into good food and bad food and avoiding bad food always ends up making you feel guilty – it doesn’t work any other way.
The truth is that any restriction in itself provokes a relapse.
It is believed that as soon as you manage to abstain from the forbidden, it will become less attractive to you. “Give up sugar on the 21st day, and on the 22nd you will not want it!” But you’ll want it on the 31st or 43rd.
What’s more, when it comes to boring and rather unappetizing white sand, it’s easy to abstain – but try to resist a warm, dark chocolate-drenched brownie, a tender, radiant curd mass that winks at you with a raisin eye, or a crumbly, fragrant apple pie?
The truth is that any restriction in itself provokes a relapse. Deprivation – deprivation of something – first gives rise to a feeling of pride in oneself, one’s own willpower, endurance, but at the same time gives rise to frustration – an unpleasant experience from the fact that the desired is impossible.
Frustration grows – willpower weakens. And one day frustration wins. Now imagine that once a week you have a legitimate right to “search” for your favorite food – but only once, only one serving …
You finish your favorite cake and begin to be tormented by doubts – how much exactly is included in “one portion”? Can one more? After all, the next time will be “possible” only in a week? How about half? And if only to take a bite from a friend?
And now you are already eating the second and third cake, simultaneously experiencing delight, horror and shame.
The only thing food rules raise is our anxiety about doing something wrong.
Imagine that you courageously endured the whole week and the longed-for Sunday came, but … you don’t want treats. How so? After all, the next time – only a week later? Or can you “save” this time, like in a computer game, and treat yourself twice next week? Or will this treat burn out if I don’t use it?
If you have ever tried to eat “by the system”, you know these torments. The trouble is that the introduction of any food rules, which I call food terrorism – “eat this, don’t eat this, eat this only until 16.00 pm, don’t eat anything after 19.00 pm” – never leads to increased awareness.
The only thing food rules raise is our anxiety about doing something wrong.
Feeling of false control. Perhaps my biggest gripe with the concept of deception food is the sense of false control it creates.
As long as a person manages to maintain this system, he regulates his diet as described in the articles of nutritionists. In these articles, it seems, not living people appear, but alien aliens from Alpha Centauri: it is enough to tell them not to eat cookies and sweets, and they – one! – and do not eat cookies and sweets!
The feeling of control gives rise to the illusion of omnipotence, raises self-esteem, provoking boastful and arrogant remarks
The feeling of control gives rise to the illusion of omnipotence, raises self-esteem, provoking the boastful and arrogant remarks of the newly converted adept about the unfortunate ones who complain about the impossibility of losing weight.
“What is so difficult? the new convert asks ironically. “A little effort for the desired result.”
Psychologists call this phase the “diet honeymoon,” and like any honeymoon, it ends sooner or later. The fact is that control is a kind of spasm of the will, a hypereffort that generates great tension.
Tension is looking for resolution, looking for a reason, looking for a moment when we are weaker – unhealthy, shocked by this or that life event, too tired. It is known that the most terrible, destructive outbursts of anger occur in overly restrained people – emotional overcontrol breeds a relapse.
Eating behavior is no different: the greater the effort to exercise control, the greater the need for relaxation.
It is those who, for the outside world, easily and naturally do without forbidden food, blaming others for their inability to make an effort on themselves, behind closed doors experience the most monstrous bouts of gluttony.
How to control nutrition?
In fact, the solution was invented quite a long time ago and is actively popularized in modern approaches to nutrition in Western Europe and the USA.
This is the ANTI-diet approach, which proposes a complete rejection of any diets and dietary restrictions, based on the notion that we are endowed with the most advanced system of nutrition regulation from birth. And this system is our own body.
Paying attention to your body’s signals of hunger and satiety is a more effective method of managing weight and eating behavior than the tactics of restricting your diet, counting calories, or separating foods into “good” and “bad.”
One variation of the anti-diet approach is intuitive eating. The process of mastering intuitive eating is focused on building a healthy, harmonious relationship with food, body and mind. Intuitive eating encourages us to respect our own hunger instead of enduring it. We learn to take into account the most important physiological factor of food satisfaction, which comes only when we eat exactly what we want at the moment.
Thus, we begin to solve our own emotional problems not through food, but in other ways.
Mindfulness has nothing to do with restrictions, as the creators of dietary systems try to convince us.
This approach began to take shape in the 70s when Thama Weiler opened a retreat center for women based on a non-diet approach, Green Mountain at Fox Run, in Vermont, USA.
The menu at Green Mountain is nothing like a diet clinic—blueberry pancakes or French toast for breakfast, granola or a whole grain sandwich. There are a wide variety of cakes to choose from. For lunch – vegan tortilla or chicken salad in a melon.
Green Mountain was the first place where women could eat whatever they liked and lose weight because they ate mindfully. Mindfulness has nothing to do with restrictions, as the creators of dietary systems are trying to convince us.
Mindfulness is being present in the present moment and being able to make choices. Including the choice of the food that we need right now.
In a reality where all food is allowed and none has a special “Sunday” status, I can choose a cake and only choose it when I really need it. And my body will not respond to it with weight gain.
An anti-diet is a conscious relinquishment of control in favor of trusting and loving your body.
One of the most common objections of people who have learned about intuitive eating is: “But if I start eating whatever I want, when I want, I will eat only chocolate and buns, sausages and hamburgers – and then I will certainly get fat!”
This is only true if you live in the Sunday Cheat Meal format, which is nothing but food fascism. Having made some food special, we fixate on it. It begins to take up too much space in our lives and eventually begins to control us.
Remember George Orwell: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” So here too. This approach generates a huge sense of guilt, hatred for those who allow themselves permission only on Sundays, an obsessive preoccupation with food.
The ANTI-diet is a conscious relinquishment of control in favor of trusting and loving your body. Just as a relationship based on love and trust with a child works better than control and a system of punishments and rewards, so the body responds to such an attitude with gratitude.
And the results of research confirm this: people who choose to forgo dietary control for themselves maintain a stable weight throughout their lives, lower than that of the control group.
And most importantly, they are not obsessed with food.