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Smaller amounts, less often – Day 25

IceCreamSundaeSmYou don’t need to stop eating all of your favorite foods in order to manage your weight.

Instead of avoiding yummy treats such as ice cream or chocolate-chip cookies, plan them into your program.

But do it with this special guideline:

Smaller amounts, less often

Think about a favorite food, such as ice cream, that gets you into trouble. First, decide how much is a smaller amount.

For example, if you typically eat a large bowl of ice cream every night, you might decrease the amount to one-half cup, or a small cone at the ice cream shop.

Then determine how often you’ll eat ice cream, perhaps every Friday instead of nightly.
Once you’ve planned a favorite food such as ice cream into your diet, you can look forward to it all week.

Because you love them so much, it’s easy to give your favorite foods a lot of power. But this allows food to control your diet, and sometimes, your life.

On the other hand, when you plan specific times and amounts for eating what you love, you get back to you being in charge of the food, not the other way around.

And because you know you eventually get to have your favorites, you won’t be as likely to feel deprived or left out when others are eating them.

Today’s assignment (my answers are in blue)

1. Write a list of your favorite foods. Put as many on the list as you want.

Cookies, ice cream, cheesecake, carrot cake, pumpkin pie, lasagna, scalloped potatoes, macaroni and cheese

2. Choose three of the best ones and write a plan for eating these foods in ?smaller amounts, less often. Be specific about when and how much you’ll eat.

Ice cream – once a month, 1/2 cup (measure this to be sure I’m accurate)
Cheesecake- a small slice (or perhaps two bites) about once every three months.
Cookies – 1/2 large cookie, once a month (this is one of my hardest challenges because I seem to be craving cookies a lot lately.)

3. If you wish, record the days and amounts on a calendar. Add your notes below.

I’ve always loved this exercise! It gives me a way to eat all of my favorite foods, but to plan for them in ways the keep the damage low.
Sometimes, knowing that I have a food (such as ice cream) planned in, I end up skipping it because it doesn’t have as much power as when I’m trying so hard to NOT eat it.

Excerpted from Day 25 in the book, 100 Days of Weight Loss

Filed Under: Long-term Success

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