If you diet or are cutting back on calories, carbs or whatever to attain a certain physical goal, such as losing your love handles, do you feel deprived? Most people answer with an emphatic “yes”. I will tell you why that is both wrong and counterproductive.
You, the reader, if you’re being honest, can name 50 foods or more that you LOVE that you have not eaten in 6 months—or perhaps even years. Maybe one of these is a treat from your childhood from a locally-famous bakery, or something your late grandmother used to make. Do you feel deprived that you have not had these and other treats lately? No, you don’t. And not just because grandma’s gone and you haven’t been back to your hometown in years. It’s because you know you can’t eat 50-100 different favorite foods every day, due to factors like availability, logistics, calories and cost, as well as stomach capacity. It’s just not logical, realistic or healthy, and you fully realize that.
We can get over our present feelings of deprivation by acknowledging this reality, that there are dozens and dozens of delicious foods we love but don’t even think about, so in that context, obsessing right now about potato chips or grease-puddled pepperoni pizza makes little sense.
And why do people who claim feeling deprived because they can’t eat what they want in the quantity they want whenever the mood strikes NOT feel deprived because they don’t have the body or mobility or level of health they’d like to have?
Acknowledging that deprivation applies to both wants—both to food and to fitness goals, helps make the right choice, the more rewarding choice, easier.
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