"One Bad Meal"

Today's PotM (picture of the month) is all about cheating on your diet with "One Bad Meal". I can't over emphasize how important it is to have a good diet and stick to it. Your diet is the most important factor to helping yourself lose weight. Because no matter how hard you work out if you eat too many calories and are not at a caloric deficit you will not be very successful in weight loss. However one bad meal won't break you and in fact I would recommend, depending on your personal diet and eating schedule, to have a cheat meal once every week or two weeks.

Just as the picture indicates being on a diet is a change in how you eat overall for the majority of your meals. If you stick to eating clean for 20 of your 21 meals for the week or 41 of your 42 meals for 2 weeks or however your meal schedule breaks down you will still be able to get results. When you do cheat though just make it a small cheat and plan for it. After your cheat meal is done enjoy it and make sure to get back on your diet. Having a cheat meal every so often that is planned for and scheduled can be helpful for many people. Let's face it if you are like me and you love to eat all sorts of things that are tasty treats it can be very helpful to help curb your cravings. If you are constantly eating a particular set of food because it's easy to make and healthy for you sooner or later you will get tired of it and have cravings. So once in a while plan to indulge those cravings so that they don't get out of control. Humans are creatures that enjoy diversity so give yourself a little treat once in a while and eat something you love, just make sure once your done get back to your diet and don't beat yourself up over it.

A lot of times people get too down on themselves for eating a single bad meal and start to beat themselves up over it. If at all possible please try to avoid this. Having one bad meal is not the end of the world and having negative thoughts like I cheated, I ruined my diet, or I failed my diet are steps in the wrong direction. When you start being negative and getting down on yourself like that it just leads to bad results. Have you ever heard the statement "I think, therefore I am"? If you continuously think things like I cheated, I failed,  or I ruined my progress you quite simply will wind up doing so.

So again if you have one bad meal that is fine, just remember what counts is what you are doing with the other 95% of your diet that will make the difference in achieving your results. Worst case scenario if you do this you will lose 1-2 lbs instead of 1.2-2.2 lbs. If you struggle with cravings and wanting to eat tasty stuff try incorporating "One Bad Meal" into your diet and see if it helps you!!