When we look at foods and are deciding what to eat, we will
often label certain foods in our minds as “good” or “bad” usually in respect to
their calories, carbohydrates, fats, or sugars.
For this reason, if we were choosing a dairy product to add into our
meal plan for the day, we would probably chose something like Greek yogurt over
something like ice cream. But, what if
on whatever particular day you’re having a strong craving for some ice
cream? Do you go ahead and just give
into your craving or do you settle for something a little less satisfying like
the yogurt? Often times, people will refuse
to give into their craving and will eat the yogurt, but will also eat a number
of other things in order to attempt to get the satisfaction they may have
gotten from just eating the ice cream – Amy would refer to this as “eating
around” the craving. Since I have begun
at Kindred Nutrition, I’ve heard many clients speak of “eating around” the
craving. In this situation, it usually
would have been better to have just eaten the ice cream but maybe sticking to
the serving size. I believe this is part
of the issue we have with labeling certain foods as “good” or “bad” in our
minds.
If you really think about it, your body cannot tell the
difference between the nutrients in the yogurt and the nutrients in the ice
cream. What I mean is, your body cannot
tell that you’re eating ice cream and that’s “bad” so it is just going to
automatically store it as fat. Either
way – whether you eat the ice cream or you eat the yogurt - your body is simply
going to recognize the nutrients, break them down and convert them into glucose
so that they may be used for ATP and energy.
Now, I don’t want people to read this post and think it’s
cool to have ice cream daily because they’ve read a nutrition blog that makes a
case for giving into a craving. However,
as I mentioned in my very first blog post I do think balance is extremely
important in diet. You ate ice cream or
some other high - calorie, carbohydrate, fat, or sugar food that normally you
would not have given into – so what?
Maybe you walk an extra 10 minutes every night this week or take out a
dairy or fat from your meal plan the next week to make up for it. Excess weight isn’t put on after one bad meal
or after one day of excess intake, it’s added up over a longer course of time
and there are many methods by which you can make up for it.
What it may ultimately come down to is re-framing your
mind. In order to survive you truly need
the fats, carbohydrates, and calories which you may be avoiding. So, say you indulge in ice cream one evening
– try looking at the ice cream from a different point of view rather than just
filing it under “bad”. From that ice
cream you are getting the fat you need for your fat soluble vitamins, you’re
getting calcium which serves a precursor for your hormones, and you’re getting
the carbohydrates that your heart needs just in order to beat, so why feel
guilty? Now in a perfect world you would
just eat that small ½ cup portion size, but say you over-indulge – all you have
to do is find a way to incorporate this over-indulgence into your meal and/or
activity plan for the next week so there is no damage.
Really, at the end of the day, balance is key. However, saying balance is key and actually
achieving balance are two very different things. Balance takes time and a fair amount of
brain-training. The way I see it though,
without balance any kind of health-diet is very unrealistic. I think it is borderline impossible to say
you’ll just never give into a craving or never go out with friends and enjoy
some foods or drinks that may not be the most nutritionally-dense. What kind of life is life without foods that
really make you happy or you find to be delicious (despite their poor
nutrition)? This is why I feel so
strongly about the re-framing of the mind and also just finding ways to
incorporate poor-nutrition choices into our meal/activity plan so that we are
able to live how we want to.
In good health,
Katie Wanger
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