Do you feel entitled to eat whatever you want? Read this.

I was talking with a client the other day about how to stop eating junk. This client is very happy and assures me she's not emotionally eating. (Plenty of happy people emotionally eat.)

I then said if that's the case, she most likely feels entitled to eat whatever she wants. When I said the word "entitled" she said that word really hit home.

"I guess I feel entitled to eat whatever I want," she said.

Bingo.

Let's explore this a leeeettle bit...shall we?

She feels entitled to eat whatever she wants, HOWEVER, every time she does so she hates how she feels afterward.

Here's the thing: We're all entitled to eat whatever we want. We can eat 5 cookies or 1000 cookies a day. And guess what? No one can stop us!

But unfortunately (or fortunately) every single action we take has a consequence. Whether we take no action at all (that's still an action) or do take action -- there is a consequence - which can be a good or bad one.

The consequence in this case?

Not only will we feel like crap afterward, but we'll also hate how we look LATER.

Which leads us to the now versus later mentality. So many of us only think about today.

As we know, the major difference between human beings and every other organism is that we think about the past, present and future.

Thinking about the future causes us to act differently. But so many of us 'must', 'need', 'want' to have that cookie now. Then when it comes time to get dressed up, or put on a bathing suit, or take our shirts off -- we scream and cry and hate how we look and feel...

Now versus later.

The only way to look good later is to eat right now. Of course, we can't eat healthy later now because now is, well, now.

Just as much as we're entitled to eat whatever we want, we're entitled to feel however we want too. And if we feel we're entitled to eat whatever we want now, we're going to feel bad later on.

Another thing that really helps is to think about how you WANT to feel.

As I asked this client, "Have you ever felt better from eating junk than you have from eating healthy food?" She replied, "Of course not. I hate how I feel when I eat junk!"

Exactly. And until eating junk makes me feel better than eating healthy, I will keep doing what I do.

If we focus on how we want to feel, and think about how certain foods make us feel physically and mentally it becomes so much easier to say no to a five minute high (aka, "food trance" as I like to call it) as opposed to an all day high (satisfaction and empowerment).

I will remind us of this. Food is only food. It's not our best friend. It's not our worst friend. It's only food.

If we had a friend that made us feel awful after we spoke with him/her, and then made us feel guilty so we wanted to speak to him/her again to try to get rid of the awful feeling THEY gave us, we'd call that an abusive relationship. (Many times, because we feel guilty for eating crap, we wind up eating more of it to suppress those guilty feelings!)

Focus on how you WANT to feel. We're absolutely entitled to eat whatever we want but remember every action has a consequence.

And that's the key. Thinking BEFORE we eat. "How will this make me feel?"

The idea is to eat food that makes us feel good before (no trepidation), during (we feel empowered) and after (Energized! Satisfied! NOT guilty) we eat it. And, of course, this is never about not eating your favorite foods again. It's about picking and choosing what and when is really and truly worth it.

And when it is -- when it's absolutely memorable, and we're not eating to change the way we feel, we won't feel guilty. We'll say, "Hmm, that was so worth it!"

Exactly the way we feel when we make our health and fitness a priority! :)

-Adam

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