Cheat grocery VS cheat meal | I’ll tell you why…
If you had pretty healthy minded parents, you had this experience too where you were aloud 1 naughty food item per grocery run. Maybe that was Froot Loops of Kraft Dinner or something from the frozen desserts? Whatever it was, it never did do much harm because it was just the 1 item. It didn’t make you want to eat Nutella all day, because you were nutritionally complete and most of the time, you didn’t even crave or think about the “cheat” item that was so desperately wanted on the grocery run.
Recently, I re-evaluated this concept as an adult. As a Mesomorph female with an ease of putting on lean muscle AND fat I of course have tried many diets and altering my eating habits. Recently after trying out the grocery cheat from my childhood memory bank, I have found it to be very helpful in a healthy lifestyle and overall good habits and I will explain why:
- You get to relax and stop being an ingredient investigator with the 1 item. Doesn’t matter if it’s not natural or contains a dangerous ingredient you saw in your Facebook news-feed, it’s just 1 item – pick it and forget about it.
- There is no obsessive anticipation and reward to feed binge eating or food addiction. You do not get rewarded until hours after the grocery run or even days later depending. You also do not know what it will be.
- You will consume far less calories than a big heavy cheat meal, loaded with preservatives and salt or sugar eating out and will likely consume your cheat in moderation (unless you are a binger).
- You wont stretch your stomach, demanding a larger portion next time! This is a huge reason cheat meals are dangerous. In some cases people have even ripped their digestive systems!
- You will not put up with a grocery store environment and line up etc. to get the same item/craving any time soon. Unlike a nearby burger joint that you could abuse on repeat if you really enjoyed it once.
I have done this now for 2 weeks. My typical grocery run is everything on the outside aisles, fruits and veggies, nuts, seeds and some yogurt. I have been eating mostly salads, fruit and seed smoothies, poached eggs – truly diet stuff and I have been enjoying it. I have allowed myself 1 small cheat item that I spend no time feeling guilty about. It’s not good to attach negative emotions to food anyways, my belief is that this contributes to not metabolizing the item later on. To be honest last week I do not remember now what I purchased. The craving is long over with and it just didn’t even matter that much at the time. This week it was a small box of LOAKER hazelnut and milk chocolate cookies. I had half the box a few nights ago which was pretty much just 4 slender little wafers and I ate the other 4 this morning with a coffee. I go to the grocery store maybe twice a week. I have no idea what I will get this week. Oh yes, last week I remember now, I got 4 pizza pockets! I have 3 left. Turns out, they were better off left in the yummy vault of teenage snacks. In fact I will give them to a guest. I find them too hot, and not filled with as much yummy pizza filling as I had hoped from the picture on the box haha!
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