Instinctive Resentment

Reading the forum posts of others is a helpful weight-loss and maintenance tool for me. Most of us share common problems in our quest to follow ANY diet or food plan, no matter which one we independently choose. One of my favorite weight-loss forums is the No S Diet Forum, and I've put a link to it here, under RESOURCES, Links.

One of the threads I read there today talked about feeling resentful because we can't eat whatever we want, whenever we want. This is a common problem for almost everyone … including me. The following quote from a forum member on that thread gives excellent advice.

"The resentment comes from a part of your brain that doesn't work on logic and reason, it's more instinctive than that. I have heard it described on this board as the "tummy toddler". Like a toddler, it wants what it wants, RIGHT NOW, and you can't really reason with it. But also like a toddler, it can't be allowed to do whatever it wants whenever it wants, because that's not good for you (and therefore for it, since it's part of you).

The resentment does go away, but it takes time for that to happen. The worst of it for me was in the first couple of months.

One thing that can help is to keep your expectations reasonable. Don't expect quick weight loss, or to adapt to new eating habits overnight with no resentment or screw-ups. Habits just do not work that way. If you expect them to work that way, you're going to get frustrated, and it's not going to help anything. That would be like dropping a glass and expecting it to hover in front of you, rather than falling down, and getting upset with yourself or with the glass when it doesn't do that. Or, to keep going with the toddler analogy, it's as if you had let your toddler eat only junk food, decided that you were going to try to get him or her to eat healthier food, and expecting the toddler not to complain about the change.

You're changing your eating habits. That's a hard thing to do. It just is. Don't beat yourself up over it if it doesn't come easy- it doesn't for the vast majority of people who have ever tried it."