Deprivation is not my friend. Although I have tried to make use of it in past diets—depriving myself of particular foods I deem off-limits or forbidden—it always comes back to haunt me. Most people who have tried to restrict their calories or change their diet will say the same thing; they end up eating more than if they had not tried to cut down in the first place. It is the rare person who can sustain deprivation for any length of time, and even those who can (such as anorexics), often become bulimic or overweight when they can no longer endure the physical and emotional fatigue that accompanies scarcity. It is for this reason that diets do not typically work.
When we are told (or when we tell ourselves) that we cannot have something, we want it all the more. I experienced this recently with my two-year-old. She wanted to chew on a greasy, filthy kitchen sponge, and my best efforts to talk her out of it only intensified her interest in doing so. If I had a greater tolerance for germs, I might have avoided a power struggle by letting her chomp away. But my squeamish nature got the better of me and I vied it from her hands once it became clear that she wasn’t backing down (you can imagine how this ended up).
I often think of the classic psych experiment in which participants are told not to think of a white bear. These instructions result in one thing: participants inevitably think of a white bear. Thought suppression does not eliminate the unwanted thought. It is the same with that temping chocolate chip cookie or that slice of cheesecake in the fridge: if you tell yourself you can’t have it, they you will want it even more. There is great appeal in things that are forbidden.
If you find yourself obsessed with a particular food that you’re trying to avoid, or if your diet of the month is not paying off, here are a couple of things to try.
