How To Maintain A Healthy Relationship With Food While Dieting

How To Maintain A Healthy Relationship With Food While Dieting

If you’re on a fat loss diet plan, there may be a chance that you could come to ‘fear’ certain foods after so long.  You’ve been conditioned to know which foods are ‘good’ and which foods are ‘bad’ and do everything you can to stay away from the bad ones and only eat the good ones.

The big problem with this good and bad thinking however is that it forms a negative association in your mind regarding certain foods in the diet.  If you’re not careful, this could lead to eating disorders over time, which are very serious and could require extensive treatment to overcome.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the important things that you should remember that will help you maintain a more positive relationship with food while dieting.

Think In Terms Of Healthy Or Not Healthy

The very first thing that you should be doing to maintain a healthy relationship with food is think in terms of healthy or not healthy rather than good or bad.  This shifts the perspective and allows you to focus on the health benefits that certain foods provide, which is a much healthier association.

Try filling your diet with the most nutritious foods that you can, not because they are low in calories but because they will do the most for you from a nutritional point of view.

Plan For Cheat Meals

Next, another thing that you should be doing is planning some cheat meals into your program. Cheat meals are great because they give you psychological relief from strict diets and help you see that eating a food that’s ‘off’ your diet list won’t automatically make you gain all the fat you’ve lost right back.

This is key for maintaining that healthy relationship with food.  Cheat meals should be scheduled once every week or two for maximum benefits.  More frequently may not be a good idea as it could hinder progress, but making sure to get them in every so often is important.

Periodically Take Diet Breaks

Finally, the last thing to keep in mind is that you should periodically add some diet breaks as well.  This is key for helping you learn your new maintenance calorie intake so you don’t start thinking that you must maintain a very low calorie intake in order to succeed with keeping the weight off.

Often what occurs is that as you progress on the diet, your metabolism slows down so you start decreasing your calorie intake further to spark more fat loss, but over time, this leads to a very low calorie intake.

Before you know it you’re scared of eating more again for fear all the weight will come rushing back on.

Diet breaks will not only help to reset your metabolism but also teach you that you can eat more food and still maintain your body weight.

So there you have the most important things to note about maintaining a healthy relationship with food while dieting. For your psychological health, this is a must.