I skipped the fast food, ate my salad and passed on desert. I guess I deserve this Ice Cream treat. Sound familiar? This is called cheating on your diet. This is like the alcoholic who celebrates sobriety with a Jack and Coke. Like the smoker who has one smoke to congratulate himself on not having a cigarette for the week. It just doesn’t make sense.
When you change your diet, you are changing your behavior. If you successfully change your behavior for a day or a few days in a row, and then reward that by participating in the behavior you hope to change, you will fall right back into your old routine. You are basically telling yourself that your old behavior is good enough to be treated as a reward. And if it’s that good, why not do it all the time?
However, it does make sense to reward yourself for working hard on your diet. It’s just that these rewards can not be in the form of non-food items. Maybe it’s that new pair of shoes you’ve been eyeing. Or, for the guys, a round of golf at a course you’ve been wanting to play. You need to find what’s particularly rewarding for you.
These rewards should be frequent at first. Maybe daily for the first few months. In that case, new shoes or rounds of golf may be too expensive. You’ll have to find smaller rewards. As you become a master of your old behavior, you won’t need a reward as often. Instead, maybe if you have 2 solid weeks of good eating, then you go shopping.