Diet Slipups And Backsliding: The Beginning Of The End?

You’ve gone and done it: after a good period of doing well with your food, you gave into temptation, and before you knew it, one bite became many.

And you feel bad about it, though maybe not 100% remorseful. A mixture of :

- “I’ve ruined it”
- ”I knew it would happen”
- “All this effort down the drain”
- “What do you expect, I can’t follow these restrictions for ever”
- “I deserve a treat with all I have to cope with”
- “It’s too hard, I can’t live this way; I’ll never do it”
- “Life isn’t fair; thin people are so lucky”

Nice cocktail of disappointment, resentment, anger, fear, and hopelessness. Is it any wonder that one slipup most often leads to another? We often overeat to soothe our uncomfortable feelings, and there’s plenty to choose from right then.

Along with another one I haven’t mentioned yet: fear of deprivation. It was glorious to taste that food that was off limits. Well, the first few bites were. After a while, we really didn’t enjoy it as much, but we couldn’t and didn’t stop.

I know I’ve often said: “I’ve blown it now, I may as well indulge in more of what I crave and get it out of my system. Then starting tomorrow, I’ll be better able to never touch it again.” Surprise, surprise, tomorrow usually didn’t go as planned.

Now what?

Some people feel that they are like food addicts and that, like a drunk, they must get back on the wagon and stick to their food plan. Overeating is never just a little indulgence, but always the beginning of a deep slide.

For some others, the cause of the slips is often the feeling or fear of deprivation, and strict food rules just set them up for eventual failure.

Some fortunate people say that an occasional fling with chocolate satisfies them for a long while, and is a normal part of their pattern. They are usually the thin ones, at peace with their indulgence.

And that’s the key.

Peace. Whether your slips are rebellion against deprivation or you are the kind of person that needs to follow strict guidelines to fight your food addiction, preventing the acceleration of the backsliding and its recurrence, lies in defusing the tension around the slip.
Tension that comes from feelings such as the:

- fear of doing it again
- fear of being without your favorite comfort foods
- discouragement of ever getting thin
- resentment about having to deprive yourself
- anger about your weakness
- anger toward the societal standard that good looks require thinness, while it offers an ever increasing array of fattening foods.

Then you won’t have the anxiety that wants to be soothed with eating.

How do you get rid of tension?

We each have our own ways, but the first step is common to them all: awareness. We must pause and realize what we are feeling before it’s too late and the runaway train can’t be stopped.

Then we can:

- talk to friends
- talk to professionals
- connect with our spiritual practice
- exercise
- nurture ourselves through massages, baths, and the like
- meditate

That last one may be hard to do when you’re already under tension. For me, I found the following worked better and were an essential part of solving the weight loss puzzle:

- Emotional acupressure (such as EFT)
- Releasing (such as the Sedona Method)
- HeartMath

The magic is not in choosing the perfect method(s), but in making them a regular practice. Because it’s not when a fire is raging, that you want to learn how to use the fire extinguisher.

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