Why it’s perfectly ok to cave in to your cravings (sometimes)

CAVING TO CRAVINGS – WHY IT’S A DIET INEVITABILITY

I’m going to be totally honest with you – I caved and gave into some pretty serious temptation over the last few weeks, leaving behind a trail of despair and disaster.

My mind and body responded in the only way they could, and I beat up on myself repeatedly for going backward. I felt less than ordinary.

Beating ourselves up for ‘caving’ is futile because we’re all imperfect human beings who will naturally fall down and succumb to temptation.

When I scroll through weight loss Facebook groups, I’m simply amazed at the amount of time and effort that many women (and men) put into tracking every calorie and measurement.

When months and months of hard work don’t add up to much in the way of results, we give up, go back to our old ways and reverse the results we did achieve.

CAVING TO CRAVINGS – WHY IT’S A HEALTH NECESSITY

What would happen if you just expected yourself to cave from time to time? I dare say a temporary hiccup that happens, rather than the end of the world!

There are also a couple of ways that you can reframe the idea of caving:

Caving is like a reset for your body. Mixing things up constantly keeps your body guessing and prevents it from adapting to routine and plateauing.

Caving can also be used as a reminder that the journey towards a healthy life is a long game. Therefore, the process should be realistic to be sustainable.

We humans can be very black and white, all-or-nothing in our approach to our goals. But if you think about it, how long can you realistically sustain such efforts and what happens after you achieve your goal?

Optimal health and well-being for life requires slow and sustainable effort. Constantly and gradually changing old behaviours into new rewires your brain until the balance tips in favour of the new. However, don’t think the old behaviours won’t resurface – they will but except this and then reframe the experience.

Your goal is to keep moving in the direction of your desired outcomes. But remember, caving once in a while won’t make a huge difference to the overall process. What’s more, you’ve been conditioned to be this way your entire life. The conditioning reversal itself requires sustained, conscious action to the contrary.

HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS WITH CAVING TO YOUR CRAVINGS

Here are three key strategies that will help you call a truce with this inevitability and then just get on with it:

Step 1: Increase your awareness of your mind and behaviour

Conditioning reversal in relation to caving and temptation starts with awareness. Be aware of when you are experiencing a craving attack. Stop what you are doing, close your eyes and pause to observe how it feels in your body and what is happening in your mind. If you want to, you could even talk to it and tell it that you know what it’s trying to achieve and that you’re not interested because you have bigger fish to fry!

Do your best to act in the opposite manner to how you usually would when experiencing a craving. It takes enormous effort but every time you get a craving, try to do this as often as possible. The results will be so worth it! Acting in opposition to what is habitual will break down unwanted neural pathways in your brain and build new ones that are supportive of this new way of being and behaving.

Because humans are naturally inconsistent, the process, of course, cannot be perfect. It will take longer than you might otherwise desire – and that’s ok when you think about how long you’ve been on this treadmill for! Perspective is key. If you can do what’s healthy as much as is reasonably possible without making your life unpleasant and be kind to yourself when you cave to temptation, you’re much more likely to stick at this long-term.

Step 2: Future pace – think of the worst consequence of consistently caving

You, like me, might be afraid that if you allow yourself to experience caving from time to time that it might get totally out of your control. This presents another opportunity to get perspective on this issue, but in a way that prevents us from going too far in the opposite direction.

Remind yourself often just how yuck not looking after yourself feels. Remember how it feels in your body, how sluggish and lethargic you feel, how you feel when you wake up the next morning, how you beat yourself up relentlessly in your head so that you end up doing it all over again the next day and the next, falling into a completely vicious cycle that just gets harder and harder to break. Think of the longer term effects of your actions and their effects on you physically and mentally, as well as what it costs you in terms of time, money, momentum and self-esteem. Journal your experiences if you need to or even make an audio recording, talking about how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking in real time. Read over your journal or play the audio back to yourself when you’re tempted to give into the cravings the next time and then stick to your plan as best you can.

For example, if I break my fast before it’s time to eat, I might feel rotten and I also remind myself that I’ve just increased my insulin levels again which will make it harder for me to reduce my insulin resistance problem, and hence it will take longer for me to drop my body’s set weight. Thinking about these longer term consequences BEFORE you cave may be enough to stop you in your tracks. Doing so often builds momentum and makes similar future decisions easier and easier over time.

The consequences of debilitating health conditions such as Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease are just not worth it, especially if your family history has the odds stacked against you! Whenever I think about going for a binge or not gyming it for a week or two, I remind myself that I’d prefer not to go blind or lose a limb! I imagine myself getting old before my time, being a burden on people, being broke because my health care costs me a truckload and then being completely stuck in that vicious cycle because I’m so down on myself! When I think about this real possibility, putting in that little bit of effort to stay healthy doesn’t seem like a whole lot after all!

Step 3: Be kind to yourself – always!

Being kind to yourself helps you to feel better about yourself and about life in general, and as we have already discussed so many times, this is the key to a life of freedom, peace, joy and ease!

Accept that you will cave occasionally – you’re an imperfect, conditioned human being. Caving is essential to remind you of three things:

• Sometimes things that aren’t ‘good’ for you do feel good in the moment but that feeling rarely lasts. Acknowledge this when you do decide to cave and remind yourself that this is the long game and life still has to be lived and enjoyed
• Strict and unrealistic = unsustainable. You can’t expect to instantly overcome a lifetime of conditioning by suddenly going flat out towards your dreams. Your body and brain aren’t used to this and if you go too hard too quickly, they will go into shock and retaliate by making those cravings much, much worse!
• Imagine how much easier your life would be and how much more quickly you’d achieve your goals if you occasionally let yourself enjoy the not-so-healthy things in life! You gotta live a little!

FUTURE PACE

Imagine the next time you feel like caving. But this time is different. You stop, close your eyes and observe the physical sensations and the mental chaos. You give yourself some time for it all to calm down a little and then remind yourself that it’ll only feel good right now but certainly not later. You think about the other likely consequences, particularly those that you’ll experience in the future… that future you really want… And realise that future cannot be your reality if you do what you have always done.  So, you decide to do the opposite. You thank your mind (most likely for trying to protect you from that ‘scary’ future) and then get busy doing something that feels good. Before you go to sleep, you journal this experience to remind yourself of your success and how good it felt, for the next time that it happens.

Fully absorb the feelings of pride in yourself for successfully breaking down a habitual behaviour in your brain, for making life easier for yourself and for making the possibility of the life you dream about so often an even greater certainty.