Jason started to get off track and stopped counting calories for the rest of the day. This is very common. Often when dieters get off track, they don’t want to face how many calories they’re eating so they tell themselves, “I’m already over for the day. I’ll just stop counting and start again tomorrow.”
In session this week with my client, Maddy, we spent most of the session discussing a new skill for her: no wine Sunday through Thursday. Maddy told me that she had gotten into the habit of having a glass or two most nights of the week, and at 120 calories a glass, she was easily spending 1,200 calories just on wine each week, which is a lot for someone trying to lose weight. Maddy decided it was realistic that she would have a glass or two on Fridays and Saturdays, but that cutting out the rest of the week’s wine would be reasonable.
Especially during stressful times, unexpected food is an inevitable obstacle. These guidelines will provide structure and advice for making smart eating decisions for any unexpected food in your house.
I have found that many dieters I work with initially have a “witching hour:” a period of an hour or two each day where cravings are strong and staying on track feels much harder. For most dieters, this is either the period right before dinner (around 4 PM – 6 PM) or in the hours after dinner but before bed (8 PM -10 PM). Dieters often think that they just can’t get through it without eating, but this is only because they don’t have skills that they need.
When I saw that what we were doing just wasn’t working, I knew we had to try a different strategy. As usual, I asked Katie to describe some of the situations from the past week in which she went off track. She told me that she ate a roll at dinner when she didn’t plan to and she had unplanned desserts in the evening.
My client, Megan, is going through a really hard time. Her mother is facing a major health crisis and when Megan and I met this week, she told me she was having trouble staying in control of her eating. She kept having thoughts like, “I just can’t deal with worrying about my eating right now. It’s too hard.”
A client I worked with a few years ago recently had her second baby and was having trouble getting her eating back under control. Lara told me that during her pregnancy, she let herself eat whatever she wanted and ended up gaining more weight than was healthy. Now at six months postpartum, she’s still struggling to put the skills that we had worked on back in place.
It’s not always reasonable in every situation to lose weight, or even to maintain weight. If the scale goes up, it doesn’t mean you didn’t do well; it just means it wasn’t reasonable not to gain a little.
If you’ve gotten off track with your New Year’s resolution, this is exactly what you need to do, too! Stop expecting yourself to do everything and instead figure out what feels completely doable this week. Recommit to it, do it (and give yourself so much credit for doing so!), and then add one or more things next week.
The Beck Diet Program was developed by Dr. Judith S. Beck with Deborah Beck Busis, LCSW.
Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy is a leading international source for training, therapy, and resources in CBT.
One Belmont Avenue, Suite 700
Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004-1610
PHONE: 610-664-3020
FAX: 610-709-5336