Did Eating All The Forbidden Food You Wanted Make You Happy?

Before I started the low-carb nutritional lifestyle I had all the foods I wanted, whenever I wanted them and in whatever amounts I wanted them.  But the fact is, that kind of freedom didn’t really make me happy…it just made me fat!  And if we’ll all be truthful with ourselves, the more we ate, the worse we felt.  That few minutes of enjoying the seductive taste and texture of our favorite forbidden foods was swiftly followed by guilt, shame, remorse, embarrassment, disgust, regret and failure, just to name a few.

“Objectively, the state of deprivation may be a myth, but the feeling is very real.  What many people don’t realize is that it’s also a learned response.  And what has been learned can be unlearned.” ~~Dr. Stephen Gullo

Every action begins with a thought!  But every thought does not have to lead to an action!  We, as humans, have the ability to take charge of evil, damaging, destructive thoughts and extinguish them before we act on them.  And I know some of us are already saying, “thinking a bad thought is just as bad as doing it…so I may as well just go ahead and do it.” So, does that mean if I think about shooting you, that I should just go ahead and shoot you…merely because “I thought about it”?  I don’t think so!!!  I think you’ll agree that thinking about shooting you is not nearly as bad as actually shooting you.  It’s an extreme example, but you get my point.

So, just because you think…or even obsess, about eating something that’s not “on plan” doesn’t mean you might as well go ahead and eat it, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the thought is as bad as eating it.  That is self-serving, self-justifying thinking and it is in the end, self-destructive!  If your kids even suggested doing something stupid just because they thought about it, you’d be all over them like ugly on an ape!  You’d immediately give them ten reasons why you won’t ever allow it to happen.  And those reasons will be the “consequences” of their action!  Consequences…now there’s a word you’d never hear me use when I was an over-eater!  Ya think it might have something do with the fact that I wouldn’t allow myself to think beyond the momentary pleasures of the chocolate covered donut in my hand?  In order to overcome the Deprivation Mindset we’re all going to have to switch our thinking from the “pleasure mentality” to the “consequence mentality”!

Overcoming the Deprivation Mindset — Part 1

Overcoming the Deprivation Mindset — Part 3

Overcoming the Deprivation Mindset — Part 4

There Really is Life Without Donuts!

Ron, aka The Former Donut Junkie