I eat so healthy....for a few days

I had decided to start dieting last week and it was going very well. Dramatically threw away all the horrible food in my apartment and went to the grocery store to buy all the food a personal trainer would stock their fridge with. I ate fruit for breakfast and salads for lunch. I was doing great! Then I had a beer yesterday and thought well I guess I should just count this as a cheat day so I ate some pizza too. Then the cheat day turned into two days. So now I'm at work with a cucumber and water hoping to make up for my slip up. I'm only one pound down from when I started. Feeling lame.

i think where i fail after slip ups is trying to over-compensate for what i have done. that's where i burn out on dieting. if you're like me, the best advice is to try to forget about what you did to "cheat" on the diet (be aware of it, but no need to dwell) and just move on like you've been following the diet all along.

eventually certain cravings will disappear or you'll know how to combat them appropriately. and then it becomes more of a lifestyle change than a diet.

i hate that this is all coming out like i think i know what i'm talking about. we're all struggling to do the best we can here with what knowledge we have. good luck!

Food is addictive and habits are really hard to break so don't beat yourself up too much about slip ups.

I think the best tactic is not to go cold turkey (even though its super tempting when you want to see results quickly). If you make changes in stages, its easier to focus and your brain wont go so crazy trying to adapt to not getting the same chemicals its used to.

If I'm trying to cut down my calories, I do it in stages, every two days. So if I usually eat 2000 cals (*cough* and then some *cough*), then day one & two I'd to 1750, then 1500, etc until I get to 1000.

If I've been eating too much of a certain type of food (normally wheat for me), I'll attack it one meal at a time. I'll do three days of just altering breakfast, then three of breakfast and lunch...

The other tactic I find is to lie to myself and instead of saying "I'm not going to eat..." I say "I'm going to eat more carrots (or whatever)." Then every time it comes to food, I have a carrot (I think carrots are good because they require some effort to eat so forget about whatever you were craving whilst you're concentrating on chewing them), which means I've focuses my mind on something different, distracted myself from falling back into a bad habit, and had a yummy calcium filled carrot to boot.

I've tried a similar thing with snacking and water which has worked in the past. Whenever I feel like snacking (which is usually when I'm bored rather than hungry) I wont let myself eat anything until I've drunk a litre of water. Usually, by the time I'm done with the water, I'm not really bothered about eating anymore. Pluuuussss, you might burn a few extra calories walking to the bathroom more often.

They're some things that I've found have worked in the past, but changing your diet is sooooooooo much the hardest part and its basically guaranteed to not go smoothly.

There's only a few things that will break my dieting will:

Chinese Food
Pizza
Hamburgers
Doritos

We have a gigantic bag of Doritos in the house. I mean huge. The price tag is $7.50 to give you a glimpse. A handful of those damn things is like 150 calories. A HANDFUL. Can you eat one handful of those delicious triangles of seduction? I CAN'T. So after my wife called me out due to my orange-dusted face, I've decided - NO DORITOS ALLOWED IN THE HOUSE. Back in the saddle.....