I'm such a fat ass!

You may not know this but I’m not only a personal trainer and nutritionist, but I’m also a priest. I take confessions. Food confessions. And, surprisingly, I let people off the hook without doing 5 Hail Mary’s or punish them with 300 squat thrusts. In most cases when I take confessions by guilty souls, I try to assure them that they are normal. That there is no person in the world who eats perfectly clean 100% of the time (if you do, please email me. If you’re eating disordered, that doesn’t count!). That, in fact, it is important to vary one’s food intake and to eat the foods you crave once in a while. And, that the worst thing you can do is beat yourself up over it because that sends you into an even deeper tailspin than where you started.

Take a look at two emails I received recently:

“Subject: I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.

Ice cream that is. Almost a full pint, Haagen Dazs no less. And I've been really really good. No chocolate at all. I was possessed. Didn't have enough to eat during the day. And I can't make it tomorrow night to class. Maybe I'll come to the morning class - is there room? I signed up for Feb so maybe it's one long extended month. When is your next detox? Should probably do that too.”

And then there was another one:

“I was doing so well and felt so great…and then shortly after my last e-mail to you, I got off track. And it’s been a downward spiral. I know I shouldn’t and don’t want to dwell on it and I’ve been trying to refocus my thoughts and energy, but I could knock myself out for making such poor choices. Yesterday was better and today is a new day. I’m definitely one of those super sensitive sugar people. It only takes a little taste and ALL the cravings come right back. That’s actually what ruined it for me. I think it was day 18 of the Detox and I bought a 85% dark chocolate bar to treat myself for doing so well. Then I ate the WHOLE bar. What a fat ass!!!”

What do both have in common? Both women caved into a sweet craving. The end result is massive guilt and they're beating themselves up. Now, mind you, this isn’t uncommon amongst us women. I rarely have guys show up for class, confession to me they at the whole tub of Ben & Jerry’s and that they would now stop eating and run 50 miles. Nor do they get the whip out to whip themselves over the back for being such shameful and disgusting human beings. They tend to just move on with their life and work it off or eat better for a few days. But look at us women. We strive for perfection. That perfect body. The perfect diet. The day we are at our ultimate goal: the Victoria’s Secret Body. And then – boom – someone handcuffs us and forces chocolate down our throat and we just didn’t have a chance to say no. We were possessed and couldn’t stop it. As end result we should just go to hell with out fat asses and never surface to Earth again. Well, that’s how it often comes across.

It's not uncommon for me to hear that and I always try to calm their guilt. I try to have them see the upside of their behavior and take off some of the guilt they feel: “It’s ok. You’re human and you live a life with many factors that can bring on food cravings: stress, work events, client dinners, travel, family visits, sleepless nights, broken hearts, unprepared meal choices, hormones… Clearly you’re not going to be perfect 100% of the times. But, what sets you apart from those that cave in and start over a diet on Monday, is that you can simply see it as a cheat. A way to up your calorie intake temporarily to boost your metabolism. A way to satisfy your cravings and then move on. A way to experience how awful poor choices make you feel. As long as you can forgive yourself and just move on and see it as part of developing a lifestyle you are going to be just fine.”

Source: active.com

Of course, there are those that see their caving in as total failure. They feel guilty and bad that they lost control. They immediately fault themselves for being bad people for having made such poor choices. It's no longer just about their one-time bad behavior but they immediately see themselves as bad people. Black or white. All or nothing. Those are the people that “start over” on another restrictive diet on Monday. They will spend 2 hours on the treadmill running at 10.0 (ok, I’m exaggerating). They make short-term choices to get results fast. The results come fast and last just as long. Once they see a difference they typically revert back to their old behaviors without having learned anything about themselves and the cycle repeats itself.

I would like to give you one piece of advice based on my own learnings about perfection and the thousands of people I have worked with over the years: Be the kind of person that is relaxed enough to realize that having cheat meals/treats/reward meals – whatever you call it – is part of living a life. It helps you in the long run to keep a clean lifestyle if you allow yourself a cheat 2-3 a week (depending on where you are in relation to your ultimate goal). You’ll be a lot more relaxed about your dietary lifestyle if you incorporate and plan cheats without the guilt trip. You’ll be much better off than the person who sets the bar impossibly high and aims for perfection.

source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/unattractive

Perfection doesn’t really exist. It is a fleeting moment. The moment you think you have the perfect diet, the perfect body, the perfect whatever, it’s gone already. Why? Because your body changes every day. It changes with temperature, with your workouts, your hydration levels, your diet, your hormones, with travel, with age, with stress…. If your goal is to achieve perfection and maintain it at that level, you'll never quite be happy with yourself. Your body is always a work in progress. So, you’re going to save yourself a lot of frustration and headache if you can realize that your expectations have to be somewhere between ‘realistic’ and high enough to motivate you towards your goal. How do you get there? By trial and error. You succeed and then you cave in. Then you do it again until you figure out what works for you. For some it takes years and for others, who have the support of like-minded people, like Slim & Strong participants, they tend to get there a little quicker because we learn how to 'normalize' these experiences we all share.

The best action you can take to undo a food binge is to eat clean the 1-2 days afterwards and work out within 12-16 hours of that meal. You want to target the glycogen stores in your muscles and liver. If you can use most of that energy, you’ll avoid all those carbs turning into body fat. And then you simply move on like nothing happened. You worked it off. Done.