Cheating on a mental health or why cheat days are a bad idea 🤨

Image: Wix

Food must provide nourishment and enjoyment. That's a fact. Now imagine that you’ve been eating fruits, oatmeal and tuna salad for six days in a row. Yes, you body is happy: you provided it with essential nutrients. In turn, it produced much more energy 😌 Seems perfect, right?

Now, what about the mind? 👀 You told yourself that your favourite French crepes are harmful. From now on you are going to eat them only on special occasions. Let's wait until birthday, New Year or when everything will be settled (and it is not just about crepes 🙃).

If you treat you favourite food as a bad choice, you won't feel any joy tasting it, even during those special occasions.

There is another important aspect 👇 At the end of the week, we all need to unwind, which also means (for some of us) eating whatever we want. And here comes the cheat day followed by a nasty guilt. Because you see, cheat days tend to make us believe that diet is all or nothing, and there's no middle ground. You rather succeed following the instruction … or you fail.

What we have to understand is that life happens. Sometimes circumstances require a glass of wine (or a bottle) to get rid of stress 🍷. And that's completely okay. We don't need any instructions to cultivate guilt inside.

Guilt isn't the worse what could happen though. Obsession with “healthy” eating may lead to extreme anxiety and mental health issues known as orthorexia nervosa.

So, instead of punishing yourself for eating crepes for dinner, think about it as something that makes you feel good ❤️