Day 29 during which I consider the question: to cheat, or not to cheat?

So tomorrow is the big day: I will have had no refined carbohydrates or alcohol (two foods that I find it easy to consume in quantities high enough that they immediately and directly affect my weight).

And all week, I’ve been considering the question, “What now?”

I am, by nature, a very “all on or all off” person. If I’m off the sauce, I’m OFF. If I’m on, I’m having a glass of wine/martini/bourbon with dinner every night. Ditto with desserts, noodles (my real Moriarty, if you must know), bread, and so on.

Telling myself that it’s OK SOMETIMES doesn’t seem to work; within a few weeks, every one of the 10 times a week I eat my food wrapped in (or fried in) flour is the ‘sometimes’. If I decide that it’s O.K. to have pad thai once a week, and it’s Sunday, that once will come Sunday, and then again on Thursday because, you know, it’s next week now.

I think that this is all a way of saying that, for me, having to make a decision not to eat or not to drink something at any given moment is much more difficult for me than making and sticking to the decision not to eat or drink it at all. In the moment, I might be hungry, or concerned about refusing someone’s homemade whatever, or distracted, or tired and therefore out of willpower. 100% is much easier than 90%.

The next best thing to complete abstinence, at least according to the pop psychology of the last decade, is to have a “cheat day” during which it’s OK to relax one’s ‘diet’. Supposedly, the promise of a cheat day makes the rest of the week…bearable? Less bleak? More like the days leading up to one’s release from prison?

That’s what bothers me about the idea of a cheat day: that there are foods that are forbidden, and that on some dietary sabbath, they become allowable, and that the rest of the time I just have to suffer through not eating yummy things.

It SHOULD be the case that if I really want a particular food, I can eat it, in moderation, when I want it rather than white-knuckling my way to the day when I can burst from my cage of rules and go down on that whatever-it-is like the Tasmanian Devil on a haunch of meat.

Oh, and then there’s that: the fact that cheat day becomes the day when I get to have EVERYTHING I’ve had even a passing craving for all week. Chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast, sausage and potato chips for lunch, penne with blue cheese pesto for dinner, Aglamesis for dessert, mmm mmm mmm mmmm mmmm. 12,000 calories on one day, blood sugar through the roof, a rocky next morning full of hunger pangs, but who cares, it’s CHEAT DAY.

But, on the other hand, I do want to color with all the crayons, so it’s not as if I’m going to decide on (and stick to) a plan in which I never again eat pasta or drink a Bombay sapphire martini, up and dirty, for the rest of my life.

I think the slippery slope of “one treat becomes an entire day of cheating (because why not, I’ve already messed up) becomes a week becomes a lifestyle” actually starts with the trigger for the “one treat”. If I throw all of my nutrition plans to the wind because I’m stressed, or upset, or spontaneously celebrating, or with people with whom I ALWAYS drink, it’s easy to do it the next time, or for a longer period this time, when the addition of sugar and alcohol doesn’t actually make the underlying problem go away.

So here’s what I’m going to try: I’ll TASTE anything that’s in front of me that looks good; no more passing up a bite of desert because I just don’t eat sugar. 

I’ll PLAN for how to handle it when I know I’ll be exposed to binge food (Ethiopia, if I lived in you, I’d weigh 300 pounds. How ironic.); how I’ll limit what I order or eat. 

I’ll PLAN for how to handle it when I know I’ll be exhausted and without willpower (like next Saturday, when I have yet another all-day seminar to teach. What’s wrong with me???); probably by telling the smartboy in the morning what to get me, so that I don’t have to face a menu when I’m worn out. 

And if there IS to be a “party”, it will be one that’s prepared for with LESS food and MORE exercise, well in advance.

I think that will work better for me than a random cheat day, or than complete abstinence. I’ll let you know on Saturday.