No More Diets

How can I stop thinking about food?

It’s just typical isn’t it? Just when you want to reduce the amount you eat and lose weight you start thinking about food more than ever.

And to be fair - it’s hard not to think about food. It is all around us - at home, on every street corner, at every social function. We just can’t ignore it - and if we even try our hunger will bring us right back to reality.

So maybe it’s not possible to stop thinking about food altogether - we can really only try and reduce the times we think about food.

I find the best way to tackle this issue is to…

a) avoid getting bored - if you are doing something you love you will never think about food until you get hungry. Think about whether boredom is a factor and then start working on adding more interest and non-food related pleasure into your life. There is so much available to capture our imagination these days that there is no need to be bored. Whether you are bored at work or at home - tackle this problem at source - do you need a new job or a new hobby rather than a new diet?

b) plan food ahead of time. Take away the need to constantly think about food by planning your meals a week or a few days ahead and preparing them in advance too. If you always have something healthy and delicious to look forward to, you’re less likely to hanker after something else less healthy.

c) keep “unplanned” food (as much as possible) out of sight to keep it out of mind. Don’t buy what you know you don’t want to eat. Don’t wander past the bakery store of you know you’ll be tempted. Turn off the TV or avoid the commercial breaks.
d) never ban food - it only serves to make you want it more. If there is a particular food you love, which is not particularly healthy, plan small amounts with your meals or snacks

e) eat enough so that you are not hungry all the time - if you are trying to lose weight fast with a starvation diet of course you’ll be able to think of nothing else but food

How do you stay motivated when you start to feel deprived of all the good-tasting stuff?

It really depends on how you are losing weight.

If you are following a weight loss program where you have rules where foods you love are forbidden then you can start to crave the good stuff more than you ever did before.

This takes iron will-power especially when the food you love is on offer in a restaurant or at a friend’s house. (You aren’t tempting yourself are you, I hope, by keeping the food around at home…?)

You may want to practice pausing at the moment you are tempted and remind yourself why you want to lose weight and what it means for you - run through the end result in your head - and then compare that with the momentary pleasure of the food.

But I tend to tackle this issue by working on removing the feeling of deprivation altogether.

In my program I have my clients tackle this problem by encouraging them to :-

a) eat the food they love, to buy the very best and to eat it in small portions, sitting down, very slowly, enjoying every moment. If you really taste the food, eat it when you are hungry and “know” you are consuming it - then a small amount is much more likely to satisfy you than if you stuff down a huge portion guiltily by the fridge.

b) find new healthy satisfying recipes and foods so that over time the food they love and the food that does them good get closer together. Healthy food does not have to be wall to wall salad and cottage cheese - there are loads of fantastic real food dishes which taste great, fill you up and satisfy your hunger for the good things in life so that you’d never know you were trying to lose weight.

These two approaches take away every sense of deprivation - the sort of diet mentality where you can’t have this and you can’t have that … until you come off the diet, eat it all again (in large amounts) and put the weight back on.

How can I control my chocolate consumption (I don’t eat any other ’sweet’ items!)?

I’m very fond of chocolate myself so I’m with you on that - there’s nothing quite like the mixture of sugar, fat and cocoa beans in the world and I would not want to give it up. I do control the urge to eat too much of it though by

a) not banning it - putting something on a forbidden food list just makes it more attractive

b) establishing a habit where I eat 4 squares of chocolate for dessert most nights with coffee - something I look forward to - you may want to eat less if you are trying to lose weight - I am just maintaining mine

c) buying the best chocolate ( i.e. the brand I like the most) so that it is a real treat

d) eating the chocolate slowly and truly enjoying it - when I eat chocolate I know I’m eating it (so much food we feel guilty about is stuffed down almost without tasting it)

If this is enough for you to control your consumption then that’s fine but if you truly can’t stop eating chocolate and tend to binge on it then you may want to take this further.

I read an interesting experiment in an Anthony Robbins book a few years ago (can’t remember which one - “Awaken the Giants Within” I think) where he cured someone of their self-professed chocolate addiction by challenging them to eat nothing but chocolate for two days - apparently after eating nothing but chocolate for that time the guy couldn’t face another chocolate without feeling sick.

You’ll also find an effective (though less dramatic) approach in Jason Vale’s book “Chocolate Busters” which is a whole program to help you stop eating chocolate. You might be able to get it in your local library and it’s also available on Amazon.com (see below)

For the UK:-