The All or Nothing Diet Doesn’t Work

How the diet begins:

It’s Saturday night and you’ve had it. You need to start a diet.

This is the thousandth time in a row that you feel like you’ve consumed 10,000 calories over the weekend, and you feel pretty bad about yourself.

So you go through all of your cabinets, collect all the junk, and decide to throw it all out in the hope that this incessant problem stops. 

After all, if you don’t see it you won’t eat it, right? 

Wrong. 

You will eat it. Aren’t you human? You will either eat it somewhere else or you will buy it again when you cool off. 

Maybe you’re like me where you would love to throw out all the junk food in your house but you can’t, because your husband loves his junk food and has no intention whatsoever of throwing any of it out. 

(If that is the case you may think you are in a more difficult position but if you can learn how to reach your health goals while having that stuff in the house you’re way better off. )

Either way, whether you throw out all the junk food, some of it, or none of it, you decide to go on a MAJOR diet. 

You decide you are cutting out sugar and flour completely, and by next month you will be 10 pounds lighter. You are certain of it. 

Sure enough, the next day comes around and you begrudgingly chomp on your celery sticks while sneaking glances at the clock for your next meal of apples. 

starving yourself is never the answer:

This goes on for a few days. You do lose a few pounds but it’s really hard and barely sustainable. 

One day for some reason you come in contact with a delicious chocolate chip cookie and you eat it. And it’s delicious. But after you indulge in it and moan with pleasure you start admonishing yourself. 

“I can’t believe I just ate that cookie! What kind of pig am I? That cookie is going to make me gain back all the weight I lost!” And you go on and on and on. Sound familiar? 

I’ve done this. 

After a while, you feel so horrible about yourself (as anyone would after being told what a loser they are). You finally say, “oh whatever, I might as well eat another cookie. I already ate the first one.” 

So you eat another cookie and after the second one, you feel even worse! But then you tell yourself, “look, at this point it’s all downhill from here. A third is not that much different from a second.” So you have a third. 

Finally, after you’ve eaten 10 cookies you say, “well what was I doing trying to diet anyway?! This whole depriving thing is nonsense and quite frankly I am not interested.”

(Notice how after the first cookie you were a lot meaner to yourself than after the last, which makes no sense but happens nonetheless.)

One cookie doesn’t need to mean ten cookies:

You resolve that you love your body the way it is and therefore you must enjoy it to the fullest. So for the next few days or weeks, you eat mindlessly without too much thought until…..

It’s Motzei Shabbos and you’ve had it!

Does this or anything like this happen to you? Well, you are not alone. 

One of the problems with the scenario above is the mindset, and more specifically the “all or nothing mindset” as I call it. 

The all or nothing mindset gets in the way for a lot of people who are trying to reach or stick to their health goals. 

The reason people say that if they want to lose weight they must stay away from one or more food groups, be it sugar, flour, dairy, etc. is that if they eat a little bit they can’t stop. It so happens that all of these foods are addicting so it makes sense that they need to stay away from them completely. 

So why doesn’t it work? I mean it’s a great formula. This food group makes me gain weight so I will cut it out. Sounds promising, no? 

the all or nothing part:

The problem is psychology.

Unless you are allergic to something and have really bad consequences, the all or nothing mindset usually doesn’t work because:

1) People want what they can’t have.

2) A small amount of carbs, sugar, and dairy is good for most people.

3) It is much harder to accomplish goals if you are extreme.

(Of course, if you are happily and successfully living a vegan, vegetarian, carb-free, sugar-free, or any other diet, that is excellent. Maybe there are ideas here that you can incorporate into your lifestyle. This should specifically help those who don’t necessarily care to cut anything out and are just looking to lose weight and keep it off, or just generally eat healthier.)

When the consequence is only gaining a pound or two at a time it’s not enough to stop eating something that tastes so good. The problem is that these foods take on a threatening persona because so often they are tied to gaining weight. And because we make these foods so threatening, people use the all or nothing mindset and say it’s either none of those foods in my life, or it’s overeating those foods. 

don’t fall into the all or nothing trap:

Instead of eating healthy becoming a way of life it becomes the all or nothing mindset where sometimes you are all in and other times you are far from it. I’ll often hear people say, “I was so good today.” (on their diet that is) or “I was so bad today.” That puts the entire day into one bucket and as soon as they are “bad” they feel the entire day is “bad” and therefore they are more likely to keep overeating. A healthier approach would be to keep in mind to eat a healthier dinner if you ate a less healthy lunch. Or slice dessert in half if you had a heavy dinner. Let it become, “I eat healthy as often as I can and the rest of the time I am human.”

You can eat exciting foods on a diet:

Shifting your mindset to this way of thinking is the first step to learning how to balance your diet and not give up after one so-called “mistake”. Cutting out entire food groups, starving for hours on end, and restricting calories are not sustainable ways to live long-term.

(This is probably a good place to mention that I am not, nor do I claim to be a doctor or nutritionist, or anything of that sort. I’m just a girl who lost 20 pounds and kept them off, and I learned a lot during the process. I love the relationship I have with food and I feel that it brings a lot of joy into my life. If sharing what I’ve learned helps even a few people I would be very happy. Of course, these are just my opinions and things that work for me so feel free to take a lot, a little, or nothing at all from my experience.)

Some solutions:

There are a couple of things to think about when trying to adopt and develop good eating habits. 

The first one is if you are willing to cut out an entire food group and you have done it before then maybe you can cut it out 80% of the way? I mean, the proof is there – you successfully cut out the entire food group, so you know you are capable of self-control.

Just something to think about. Most people are not willing to cut out a food group for the rest of their lives. And why would they? It’s unnecessary. Some people say that it is the only way for them to lose weight and keep it off, but often those people end up gaining the weight back. You are more likely to keep the weight off if you reduce something you eat vs. never eating it again. 

The balanced diet:

The hardest part about this approach is in the beginning. You might think that there is no way you can have one cookie without having a second. Or if you feel like when you eat carbs you can’t stop, it might be harder to have one slice of bread and stop than no bread at all.

But harder sometimes means better. And if you can learn to master the ability to have a little bit and stop you will be in a better position to take control of your goals. You will no longer be afraid of the food groups you used to be afraid of.

I’ll give you an experiment to try to prove to yourself that you can do this. Try to eat healthy all day and after dinner in the evening have a delicious dessert. Whatever your favorite dessert is. A brownie, ice cream, cake, etc. But have only one serving and then don’t eat again until the next morning. Whatever you do, just don’t eat again until the next morning. I’m certain you can do that.

When you wake up the next morning you will see that you did it. The next day do it again. It’s important to get into the habit of balancing healthy foods and not-so-healthy treats in your life because then you can learn how to live with those foods and still reach and stick to your health goals.

Practice portion control:

If you do this for a bit you will see that sometimes you don’t need a treat at all. You will start listening to your body and feeding it what it needs without overthinking it or feeling guilty.

Another reason that people try to cut out entire food groups when they go on a diet is that they feel that something addictive like pizza, pasta, or a sugary treat is not worth it unless you eat a lot of it. But what will happen as you let go of the “all or nothing mindset” and start approaching eating healthy in a more graceful way is that you will learn how to indulge on a smaller scale which will make all the difference.

Realizing when you are full and you’ve had enough and that you satisfied your craving and can now stop will become easier and easier for you. And you will feel stronger and better. If you can learn how to handle carbs, sugar, fried foods, etc., and realize that there is a healthy way to have them in your life, your entire health journey will be easier and more enjoyable. 

try a new approach:

It’s the idea that the little win will take you a lot further than the drastic measures you take. We all want instant results in anything we do in life but sometimes it takes time and if you are consistent and patient you will get there. 

Imagine in the scenario previously with the cookies how much better it would have been if instead of beating yourself up about having a weakness you would have treated yourself kindly.

So say you ate a cookie, couldn’t stop, and so you ate four more. It happens, right? 

We’re human. We’re not perfect. We’re not supposed to be perfect. Very few people can accomplish eating healthy all the time, and even those people veer off track in their own way.

Say you told yourself in the cookie scenario, “I’m human, I’ve been eating healthy all week and if I continue right now with my health goals there is no reason these few cookies will make a big difference. Next time I will try to only have one or two.”

This is a completely different strategy but so much more effective! People don’t respond well to being hard on themselves and self-loathing.

The problem with falling off the wagon is never the first cookie. It’s having the second, third and fourth time and time again that prevents us from seeing results. If you can learn to be kind to yourself, think positively, and keep on going, you will get a lot further than if you starve yourself, are hard on yourself, or take on a lot of restrictions.

You can do it!

This might be the biggest opportunity for you to prove to yourself that you can pick yourself back up and have the rest of your day or week to be healthy. 

It is possible.

It is hard and requires self-control, but it does get easier the more you do it. 

The more you don’t beat yourself up about not being perfect the closer you will actually get to your health goals. 

This is the beauty of the balanced mindset where you forgive yourself for being human and you keep going. Being healthy is a journey, it is not just a goal. It is a constant balancing act to try to stay on track or get back on track, especially in a world filled with excessive amounts of food. 

So remember that every day is a new day, and every minute is a new minute. You can start fresh every second and it is never too late. Best of luck and stay positive!

Head to our recipe index for some balanced recipes.