Don't Cheat But Treat!

Diet plans are often not easy to follow. You get distracted from your goals and try to eat things you know you shouldn’t. After an out of diet treat, you try to cheat yourself by convincing yourself that you have not done anything wrong. In fact, that is not wrong at all! You don’t have to cheat yourself about a treat because a treating is not cheating!

Confused? Don’t be. A treat is great as long as it's planned. That's the key word friend. If it's planned smartly, then it's not cheating, but treating. Cheating is when it is not planned. For example, if you get really hungry or someone offers you something sweat and you can’t refuse him. Also, there is a guilt feeling after you cheat yourself.

So are there any real reasons to treat other than pleasuring you. Yes, there sure are! Pleasuring enough is a reason enough to eat. You can never keep on restricting yourself without breaking your will to keep on a diet. Moreover, there can be disastrous effects if your will breaks and you resume your pre-diet eating habits.

Also, eating low cal food over a period of time would decrease your metabolism rate. Thus, you would burn calories slower. This will not only affect your diet plans but will affect you psychologically as well as you may think that you have not been sincere in following your diet. Giving your body a high calorie meal once in a while, say once a week, would not let your body adjust to the low calorie diet, thus keeping your metabolism high and at the same time, pleasuring you up.

So, how can one plan for it while still continuing to stick to his/her diet? Just pick one day of the week when you eat all you want without counting calories. One may even add a little junk food to suppress those cravings that occur during the rest of the week. Another added benefit is that if you are about to go on a party or a social meeting, where you are surrounded by food, you can eat whatever you want , without thinking about your diet or without counting calories.

Many people discontinue being on a diet because they feel that they are forced to cheat. They feel that they can not maintain this tough diet and succumb to temptation. This often leads to guilt and to suppress their guilt, they start eating even more. Well, this is all partly correct as when you succumb to temptation, your peers tend to infuse a guilt feeling to get you back on your diet. However, this may backfire leading you away from your goals. Many people also tend to leave their diets thinking that they have ruined everything by cheating and that they would have to start over again.

On the other hand, if you treat yourself once in a while and know that it is beneficial to your diet plan, you would not feel guilty. Rather you would be happy and continue your diet better. Moreover, it will suppress your cravings and when others see you losing all those extra pounds despite eating freely, they would wonder what you do.

With a good diet plan and some common sense, you can maintain your diet while enjoying all you want. However, one must be flexible in his approach. If your treat day is on Friday and you have a party on Saturday, don’t be adamant and treat yourself twice. Swap those days just for once and be flexible. Remember, for diet control, there is no rule of the stone.

Scheduled Rests

Rests are very important to your diet as otherwise you may lead yourself to a burnout. Without proper rest and planned rest, you may loose all enthusiasm to go for a goal. You may start whining in your heart and also, may lose all the will to continue. Its just like a baby who plays all the time and suddenly breaks down due to fatigue. One should ease himself into a plan and not start it just all of a sudden because that may mean that he will leave it all of a sudden.

Some good warning signs to look out for are constant fatigue (higher than normal) and wanting to give up totally on your dream. You may be frustrated to the point where your goals don't mean anything to you anymore. You should not wait that to happen. Rather, you should notice all this in advance and take a day of the week as a treat day, on a small scale. If you want rest on a large scale, go for a whole week off your diet after following it strictly for a period of six weeks.

However, don’t consider the treat week same as that your treat day. This would ruin it all. In the week long off, consider taking small portions of what you like and do not indulge in over-feasting. Also, continue your workout even during the time you are treating. This would maintain a balance in your blood sugar to some extent.