“I’ll get back on my diet tomorrow…” but at what cost?

The most fascinating—and destructive—behavior pattern associated with dieting occurs when you break the “rules” of whatever diet you’re attempting to follow. Odds are if you have any history of dieting you’ll recognize this behavior pattern immediately. 

There are a host of cognitive distortions (irrational thoughts) that come into play—basically setting you up for a big fall over the slightest perceived transgression.

First a few definitions:

• All-or-nothing thinking: thinking in absolute terms like “always”, “never”, and “every”, which sets up both unrealistic expectations and a false situation that allows for only two alternatives (no shades of gray).
• Disqualifying the positive: ignorring everything you are doing right.
• Catastrophizing: blowing things out of proportion regarding anticipated ramifications of a perceived transgression (in this case regarding one’s diet).
• Emotional reasoning: resistance to shifting from emotional self-judgments, or emotional situational assessments, to analytical evaluation of factual details.

So let’s look at the pattern by way of a story.

Imagine you have had a totally together week; you’ve hit your physical activity goals and followed your food plan (including weighing and measuring for accurate food records). Then on Friday—out of the blue—there is a birthday party at your office. Everyone heads into the conference room where in addition to cake you’re faced with an array of homemade goodies including your favorite—peanut butter cookies. Here comes the tray of cookies, and as it’s passed to you you take a cookie; you eat the cookie. Then you think to yourself, “darn, I’ve been on track all week and now I’ve blown it.”

At this point you are upset (disappointed, frustrated, angry) with yourself. But why is that? Because you ate a peanut butter cookie that you “feel” breaks the (arbitrary) dieting “rules” that you’re trying to hold yourself to.

You automatically judge yourself a “failure” (all or nothing thinking—as if you are either “on” your diet, or “off” your diet). You’re uncomfortable and uneasy with a swarm of yucky feelings from your scathing self-judgment.

Your next thought is, “oh well, I’ve had a tough week.” And, “it’s just too hard not to eat in this situation.” Fair enough. But you’re not done yet. Your next thought is, “oh well, I’ll get back on my diet tomorrow.”

Now you are actually hanging on the precipice of (the first) real trouble. Due to the twisted "reasoning" of dieters, the promise you just made to yourself (“I’ll get back on track tomorrow”) frees you to party — like it’s the last supper — until tomorrow. Meanwhile, you’re still surrounded by calorie-dense goodies that you now have no intention of not eating!

What I’ve just described is the most critical part of this maladaptive behavior pattern—the avoidance response. The avoidance response consists of two parts:

1. A rationalization, reason, justification (basically any excuse, valid or not) for your perceived lapse, followed by
2. A promise for future action tomorrow, or Monday--but not today.

It’s the promise for future action which — combined with throwing in the towel for the rest of the day — that ensures the (calorie) damage.

The insidious and powerful thing about the avoidance response is that it’s self-reinforcing. Here’s why: the split-second that you speak your excuse and promise (for future action) all your yucky feelings and anxiety are instantly gone! Poof! You instantaneously feel better, and you’re free to eat for the rest of the afternoon/evening/day/weekend! Here’s the deal—the closer a reinforcement for a behavior occurs to the behavior, the stronger it reinforces repeating that behavior.

Generally this is where one cookie turns into more cookies than you care to think about, or want to admit. I call that compounded overeating (basically a binge). Here’s another kicker though. The compounded overeating results in the return of even worse anxiety and negative self-judgments than you had originally, which in turn often leads to further avoidance of “getting back on track.” This is—in a nut shell—how people gain weight, while trying to lose weight.

The surest way to avoid this pattern is to understand it. You can see that it’s a completely irrational dynamic. It’s easier to be analytical about it, however, when you’re not in the middle of it. The challenge is to bring rational assessment to the table when you actually find yourself in the pattern.

Closing thoughts – Despite being “sold” as magical combinations of “how” and “what to eat” to create weight loss, the reality is that rules (from popular diets) regarding “what to eat” and “not eat” are arbitrary. All they actually do is create a structure that limits calorie intake. At the end of the day a calorie deficit is the ONLY thing that creates weight loss. In fact, as long as you under-eat your calorie needs you could lose weight on just cookies and ice cream. Not a healthy choice, but you get the point.

Actionable Advice – You are far better off to learn to eat a healthy diet at an appropriate calorie level for your goal weight. Doing so will lead to gradual weight loss and when you reach your goal you will already know how to stay there! If you want to lose weight a little faster see Choosing a Calorie Level for Weight Loss, and be sure to add physical activity into the mix.

All the Best!

-Dorene