Trying to Eat Better? Ask Yourself This Important Question by Gretchen Rubin
Quiz: Are you a moderator or an abstainer?
In honor of many people's New Year's resolutions-"Eat more healthfully," "Cut out sweets," "Lose weight," and the like-I'm re-posting this quiz, to help you determine whether you're a moderator or an abstainer. When I figured out that I'm an "abstainer," it helped me tremendously in terms of eating better.
Often, we know we'd have more long-term happiness if we gave up something that gives us a rush of satisfaction in the short-term. That morning doughnut, that late-night ice cream.
A piece of advice I often see is, "Be moderate. Don't have dessert every night, but if you try to deny yourself altogether, you'll fall off the wagon. Allow yourself to have the occasional treat, it will help you stick to your plan."
I've come to believe that this is good advice for some people: the moderators. They do better when they try to make moderate changes, when they avoid absolutes and bright lines.
For a long time, I kept trying this strategy of moderation-and failing. Then I read a line from Samuel Johnson, about drinking wine: "Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult." Like Dr. Johnson, I'm an abstainer.
I find it far easier to give something up altogether than to indulge moderately. When I admitted to myself that I was eating my favorite frozen "fake food" treat, Tasti D-Lite, two and even three times a day, I gave it up cold turkey. That was far easier for me to do than to eat Tasti D-Lite twice a week. If I try to be moderate, I exhaust myself debating, "Today, tomorrow?" "Does this time 'count?'" etc. If I never do something, it requires no self-control for me; if I do something sometimes, it requires enormous self-control.
For instance, we keep a bag of cookies in our cupboard. If I ever ate one of those cookies, they'd prey on my mind constantly. I'd constantly struggle not to eat them. But because I've never once eaten one of those cookies, I never think about them. I don't have to use any will-power not to reach into that bag. It might as well be a bag of flour.
When I told a moderator friend about this, she shook her head pityingly and said, "That's just sad. Really. Life is too short not to have a cookie."
"No," I answered, "for me, life is too short to use up my precious mental energy on a few cookies. I'm happier if I don't eat them."
There's no right way or wrong way-it's just a matter of knowing which strategy works better for you. Once again, back to the Fifth Splendid Truth: you can build a happy life only on the foundation of your own nature. If moderators try to abstain, they feel trapped and rebellious. If abstainers try to be moderate, they spend a lot of mental energy battling their temptations.
You're a moderator if you…
-- find that occasional indulgence heightens your pleasure-and strengthens your resolve
-- get panicky at the thought of "never" getting or doing something
You're an abstainer if you…
-- have trouble stopping something once you've started
-- aren't tempted by things that you've decided are off-limits
People can be surprisingly judgmental about which approach you take. As an abstainer, I often get disapproving comments like, "It's not healthy to take such a severe approach" or "It would be better to learn how to manage yourself" or "Can't you let yourself have a little fun?" On the other hand, I hear fellow abstainer-types saying to moderators, "You can't keep cheating and expect to make progress" or "Why don't you just go cold turkey?" But different approaches work for different people. (Exception: with an actual addiction, like alcohol or cigarettes, people generally accept that abstaining is the only solution.)
Does this ring true for you? Do you identify as a moderator or abstainer?
This is actually brilliant, IMO. As a woman who has been battling her weight most of her life, almost every bit of dieting advice I've seen has said somewhere that it's important to eat junk food in moderation; if you give it up completely, you risk binging when the opportunity arises.
My problem is that, when it comes to food, I don't know the meaning of the word "moderation." Moderation, to me, is eating eight golden oreos instead of half the package. You might laugh, but I'm one of those people who can knock back that half package of oreos in one setting without a second thought. I feel like crap after it's over, but I've been known to do it time and again. I've thought many times that I'm much better off if I don't even have junk food in the house, because then I have to go without, or I have to make a trip to the store to get what I want.
I don't know why I never made the connection that I'm not a moderator (because when it comes to junk food, I'm clearly not), but an abstainer; after all, I have a few foods that I knocked off my list years ago and never looked back.
Way back in 1999 I gave up caffeine. Ok, I know this in itself isn't a food, but it's in some foods and drinks. Why did I give it up? It makes me nauseated (side note from the English major: it's nauseated, not nauseous. Nauseated is when you have a feeling of nausea in your stomach. Nauseous is when you make someone else feels nausea. Anyway, I digress...). It's horrible. So I gave up caffeinated coffee, tea, and sodas.
I noticed a few months later, while working in a mall kiosk candy store and eating a LOT of chocolate, that on the days I ate the most chocolate I felt the worst. Duh. An eight ounce chocolate bar has as much caffeine as a cup of regular coffee.
So in 2000 (maybe it was 2001, I can't remember) I said good-bye to chocolate. Twice. After I gave it up the first time, I got the Girl Scout Thin Mints I ordered a few weeks before. Yeah, I wasn't gonna NOT eat the thin mints. So I gave it up again.
The point is, once I made up my mind, and felt the results I was looking for (reduced nausea, YAY), I didn't regret my decision and I didn't look back. Even when I was pregnant with our son and CRAVING brownies, I didn't eat any chocolate.
I've done the abstaining thing before in an effort to lose weight, and it worked. When I've tried the "everything in moderation" approach, I crash and burn about three days into it.
And yet I've never made the connection.
I decided right before Christmas that after Christmas I would be changing my eating patterns. My goal, starting at the beginning of this weak, was to eat as clean as possible, which meant lots of whole foods, very little processed food, with an emphasis on fruits, veggies, and fish (I eat little to no land-dwelling animal proteins). The main objective was to see how I felt eating like this compared to how I've been eating for the past few years, which has been pretty carb heavy and too many processed foods. I've been complaining of feeling tired and sluggish for years now, and I know that how I eat might factor into that. So I'm experimenting on myself to see if I feel any better this week eating cleanly.
Anyway, I wanted to post the article for you to see. If you are a moderator, great! I wish I could be, because I've wanted the last three or four golden oreos in the package a few times this week (I let Jeff eat them instead), but knew that if I ate one, I'd eat them all. If you are a fellow abstainer, what have you given up successfully in the past, and how do you feel for having done so?
