If you’re someone who tries to eat a healthy diet, you might find yourself feeling guilty when you eat “unhealthy” foods. You want to have a balanced diet, and you might feel like that shouldn’t include things that are higher in fat, sugar or salt. But just because you’re trying to be healthy, it doesn’t mean that you have to deny yourself your favorite treats. In fact, it can be more difficult to keep going with a healthy and balanced diet if you deny yourself the things that you really love to eat. Here’s why you should treat yourself even when you’re trying to be healthy.
Make It Easier to Maintain a Healthy Diet
Treating yourself can make it easier to keep up with a healthy diet. When you start to eat more healthily, whether it’s a long-term change or a short-term diet, you need to stay motivated. But setting strict rules for yourself with no flexibility can make it easy to slip up. Once you’ve “slipped”, you might decide to just give up altogether. You’ve already eaten something that you weren’t “supposed to”, so why not just give in completely? Maintaining your diet is easier if you allow yourself to have these treats in the first place, as part of your balanced diet.
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Prevent Spontaneous Binges
Have you ever given in to the urge to suddenly binge on a lot of food? Afterward, you’re left feeling too full, nauseous, and guilty too. While occasionally pigging out might not be a big deal for most people, it’s not something that you want to make a habit of. If you allow yourself to have treats sometimes, you can have more control over when you treat yourself. It can be a healthy decision that you decide to make when you feel like it, rather than a spontaneous thing that you do when you give in to the impulse.
Remove Morality from Food
Food doesn’t have to be divided into good and bad food. The most important thing is to enjoy everything in moderation. Carrots are a generally healthy food, but you wouldn’t want to eat nothing but carrots forever. When you treat yourself to your favorite foods, it doesn’t have to be allowing yourself to have something naughty. You can look up pizza places open everyday guilt-free, and enjoy your favorite toppings just because you feel like it. Having a treat doesn’t mean you’re cheating on your healthy diet. It can just be something you do because you feel like it.
Enjoy What You Eat
Food should be enjoyed, whether it’s a salad or a piece of cake. While a healthy and balanced diet is important, it shouldn’t be at the expense of your enjoyment of food. Even when you’re eating “healthy” food, it should be things that you enjoy and not something that you suffer through because you think that you have to.
Treating yourself to all of the foods that you love, no matter how unhealthy they might be, is an important part of maintaining a healthy diet.
This is a collaborative post.
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