#20 – Do you suffer from Eater’s Remorse? Why stressing makes weight loss harder.
Cheat meals and Holidays are like vacations
You work, save money, and live below your means for 50 weeks out of the year so that 1-2 weeks of the year you can not work, not save money, and live above your means.
This is great and gives a reprieve from the constant grind of life, stress, and work.
BUT it doesn’t work if you:
1) Don’t save money, live below your means, and work the majority of the year
OR 2) Stress and struggle to relax the whole time because you’re worried about spending too much money, or missing something at work, or gaining weight, or not working out on your routine, or missing your weekly TV shows, or not cutting the grass, or trying to make relatives or family happy…
This is the point: The entire reason you life sustainably, diet, and focus on creating a healthy and financial reserve for yourself is to allow space in your life to relax that and not worry.
When you go back to normal life, the money, the weight, the muscle will all settle back to normal, so enjoy it and shut your brain off!
Sure you can never take a vacation and work 24/7 and save money so you can retire comfortably one day, but you’ll be old then and the future isn’t guaranteed. Sprinkle in mini-retirements and vacations along the way to enjoy the journey! Same with cheat meals and planned off periods of your diet.
Stressing about eating releases cortisol, prevents gluconeogenesis/elevates blood glucose.
Stress causes cortisol release.
Cortisol release causes the body to not build muscle, hold onto fat, and keep glucose in the blood.
Elevated cortisol prevents you from sleeping and keeps you sympathetically activated.
Eating less healthy food happens. Whether or not you choose to enjoy it and not freak out about it is your choice. But understand that many times the thing that impacts your health and weight the most is your emotional stress reaction to what you ate!
Understanding that the value comes from the experience, not the quantity or logistics
Eat what you enjoy and what you want – nothing more.
When you buy a dessert, what do you buy? The experience, the taste, the enjoyment and happiness of that moment. But it is a diminishing return that often gives less value after each bite.
If you’re full, don’t want any more, or simply satisfied with what you’ve received, then stop!
By stuffing more food into you out of some “obligation” to not waste food, you’re not getting the value from what you wanted, you’re actually doing the opposite.
Here’s the point: If you don’t really enjoy it, or have reached your desired result, then stop! Simply doing what actually makes you happy and having the self knowledge and control to stop compulsively acting will solve many problems in your life.
