How To Cheat On Your Diet
Fact: We live in a time of plenty. This is a good thing. Yes, it is true that statistically most of us will end up blind and wheelchair-bound from Type-2 Diabetes, but the alternative is still worse. If you don’t believe us, go ask your grandparents about the Great Depression.
One side effect of living in a time of plenty is that temptation is everywhere. Unless you possess super-human will power, you will occasionally fall off of your diet. Rather than chastise or embarrass you, we have developed strategies to help you cheat. It is not that we encourage cheating. We don’t. Cheating on Drink Your Carbs will slow or stop your weight loss. We’d prefer if you never strayed from the Food List and our exercise recommendations. We acknowledge, however, that cheating happens and our goal is to help you contain the damage.
There are two ways people cheat on their diet: planned and unplanned cheating. This also is true for cheating on spouses, exams and in poker games, but that is outside of our current scope.
Unplanned Cheating means that you started the day with the best of intentions, but somehow found yourself eating half a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. This is usually a problem of availability. You might never buy this crap, but someone else brings the box of doughnuts to a meeting and sets it on the table in front of you. Nearly a whole day’s worth of calories vanish into your belly before you even realize what you are doing.
Sometimes you lay waste to your diet because a restaurant’s special is an absolute favorite. Or you arrive at a bar after work to discover that your friends have taken the liberty of ordering pitchers of sickly sweet margarita and the All-the-Fried-Food-You-Can-Hold-Down Pu Pu platter. The fact is that we all occasionally fall short of our best intentions.
There are two ways people cheat on their diet: planned and unplanned cheating. This also is true for cheating on spouses, exams and in poker games, but that is outside of our current scope.
Unplanned Cheating means that you started the day with the best of intentions, but somehow found yourself eating half a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. This is usually a problem of availability. You might never buy this crap, but someone else brings the box of doughnuts to a meeting and sets it on the table in front of you. Nearly a whole day’s worth of calories vanish into your belly before you even realize what you are doing.
Sometimes you lay waste to your diet because a restaurant’s special is an absolute favorite. Or you arrive at a bar after work to discover that your friends have taken the liberty of ordering pitchers of sickly sweet margarita and the All-the-Fried-Food-You-Can-Hold-Down Pu Pu platter. The fact is that we all occasionally fall short of our best intentions.
Fact: The key to overcoming an unplanned cheat is not to beat yourself up about it. Guilt and self-loathing burn surprisingly few calories, so there is little advantage to dwelling on your transgression.
It is also not worth trying to burn all of those extra calories in a single, extended session at the gym. You’ll need to run 11 miles to burn off the 1,400 calories packed into six glazed donuts. If you’re training for a half marathon, it might be an option. Otherwise, you risk hurting yourself by attempting a level of exercise for which your body simply is not ready. Burning it all off at once isn’t realistic most of the time.
Nor is shame starving. It is neither healthy nor effective to starve yourself in penance. Though this is an extremely common response to an unplanned cheat, it has exactly the opposite effect than desired. Starvation leaves you ravenously hungry, which makes you more likely to cheat on your diet again. If you allow yourself to get hungry enough, your evolutionary conditioning takes over. You will inevitably find yourself gorging on the nearest available food, whatever that food may be. The odds are that the nearest available food is as bad for you or worse than the unplanned cheat which started the cycle.
Nor is shame starving. It is neither healthy nor effective to starve yourself in penance. Though this is an extremely common response to an unplanned cheat, it has exactly the opposite effect than desired. Starvation leaves you ravenously hungry, which makes you more likely to cheat on your diet again. If you allow yourself to get hungry enough, your evolutionary conditioning takes over. You will inevitably find yourself gorging on the nearest available food, whatever that food may be. The odds are that the nearest available food is as bad for you or worse than the unplanned cheat which started the cycle.
Fact: The starve-and-binge cycle - appallingly common among dieters - is the same strategy sumo wrestlers use to bulk up for competition.
Some researchers claim that this cycle shocks the body’s metabolism into slowing down and storing more weight than it would have if the same calories were spread evenly over a day. Other researchers argue that starving and binging is all about calories consumed; they believe that the cycle simply allows people to eat more than would be possible without the periods of starvation in between. Differences of findings aside, they all conclude that starving yourself is only a good strategy if you are actively trying to pack on pounds.
The best way to overcome an unplanned cheat is simply move on. Acknowledge that it happened and go back to strict Drink Your Carbs. If you are really worried that you have slowed your weight loss, spend a few days in Austerity Mode. Either way, the key to getting through an unplanned cheat is to get back on your diet as quickly as possible.
Most diets ignore Planned Cheating
Most diets spend multiple chapters on unplanned cheating, how to avoid it and how to properly flagellate yourself afterwards. For some reason, planned cheating is completely off their radar, even though it is universal to all dieters. This idea is so blindingly obvious that we fully expect every major diet to steal it and claim it as their own invention. It is just a matter of time until we see the headline and think, like David Bowie hearing Ice Ice Baby for the first time, “that sounds really familiar.”
When you visit relatives, you give up significant control over your food choices. Unless you are lucky enough to be visiting relatives who also live the Drink Your Carbs lifestyle, they will feed you whatever it is that they normally eat. In most cases, especially if they are American, they eat garbage and lots of it.
We can tell you with absolute certainty that next Thanksgiving everything served at Steven’s childhood home will be either starch, deep-fried, or, more commonly, deep-fried starch.
Knowing this a full year in advance leaves us with two choices: we can wait until Thanksgiving, swearing to ourselves that we will stick to dry turkey and over-steamed green beans, then find ourselves in the middle of an unplanned cheat or we can acknowledge up front that we are going to fall off of our diet for a few days.
The advantage to the second path is that it enables us to plan. A few days before Thanksgiving, we shift into Austerity Mode. We are incredibly strict with our diets. We sometimes even add a few extra sessions at the gym. Before the first family meal is served, we have banked enough calories that we can approach the holiday guilt-free.
Everyone should have planned cheats on their calendar coinciding with events where you just won’t be able to stick to your diet. A birthday is an obvious planned cheat day. A dinner with your boss or co-workers is likely to be a cheat meal. It is difficult, if not impossible, to keep to strict Drink Your Carbs on Christmas, Valentine’s Day or the Fourth of July. This is equally true of weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Baptisms and even funerals.
Holidays, life-cycle events and vacations all share one thing - the possibility of advance planning. The moment you agree to attend, you know that at best your diet will slip a little, and at worst your caloric intake will rival that of a veal calf. This knowledge allows you to perform the Drink Your Carbs equivalent to the Polio booster and immunize yourself by going into Austerity Mode to build up a calorie deficit before any cheating takes place.
The key to successful planned cheating is to figure out the extent of your upcoming calorie splurge. A birthday blowout can easily be prepared for with a few days in Austerity Mode. A week-long culinary tour of Tuscany or a deep-fried weekend in New Orleans will take longer. Before embarking on that kind of trip, we would go strict Austerity for at least a few weeks.
Try to be realistic and prepare sufficiently so that you can enjoy your planned cheat without any of the shame or regret that ordinarily accompanies unplanned cheats. Remember that if you go into Austerity Mode for longer than needed, the only side effect is that you might lose a little extra weight.
Most diets ignore Planned Cheating
Most diets spend multiple chapters on unplanned cheating, how to avoid it and how to properly flagellate yourself afterwards. For some reason, planned cheating is completely off their radar, even though it is universal to all dieters. This idea is so blindingly obvious that we fully expect every major diet to steal it and claim it as their own invention. It is just a matter of time until we see the headline and think, like David Bowie hearing Ice Ice Baby for the first time, “that sounds really familiar.”
When you visit relatives, you give up significant control over your food choices. Unless you are lucky enough to be visiting relatives who also live the Drink Your Carbs lifestyle, they will feed you whatever it is that they normally eat. In most cases, especially if they are American, they eat garbage and lots of it.
We can tell you with absolute certainty that next Thanksgiving everything served at Steven’s childhood home will be either starch, deep-fried, or, more commonly, deep-fried starch.
Knowing this a full year in advance leaves us with two choices: we can wait until Thanksgiving, swearing to ourselves that we will stick to dry turkey and over-steamed green beans, then find ourselves in the middle of an unplanned cheat or we can acknowledge up front that we are going to fall off of our diet for a few days.
The advantage to the second path is that it enables us to plan. A few days before Thanksgiving, we shift into Austerity Mode. We are incredibly strict with our diets. We sometimes even add a few extra sessions at the gym. Before the first family meal is served, we have banked enough calories that we can approach the holiday guilt-free.
Everyone should have planned cheats on their calendar coinciding with events where you just won’t be able to stick to your diet. A birthday is an obvious planned cheat day. A dinner with your boss or co-workers is likely to be a cheat meal. It is difficult, if not impossible, to keep to strict Drink Your Carbs on Christmas, Valentine’s Day or the Fourth of July. This is equally true of weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, Baptisms and even funerals.
Holidays, life-cycle events and vacations all share one thing - the possibility of advance planning. The moment you agree to attend, you know that at best your diet will slip a little, and at worst your caloric intake will rival that of a veal calf. This knowledge allows you to perform the Drink Your Carbs equivalent to the Polio booster and immunize yourself by going into Austerity Mode to build up a calorie deficit before any cheating takes place.
The key to successful planned cheating is to figure out the extent of your upcoming calorie splurge. A birthday blowout can easily be prepared for with a few days in Austerity Mode. A week-long culinary tour of Tuscany or a deep-fried weekend in New Orleans will take longer. Before embarking on that kind of trip, we would go strict Austerity for at least a few weeks.
Try to be realistic and prepare sufficiently so that you can enjoy your planned cheat without any of the shame or regret that ordinarily accompanies unplanned cheats. Remember that if you go into Austerity Mode for longer than needed, the only side effect is that you might lose a little extra weight.