Join the Conversation: Have you had a diet relapse? If you like, share when and why, too.
Have you broken your diet?
Have your circumstances — whehter due to to hearbreak, stress, trauma or grief — led you to ditch your resolve to eat eat cleanly so you can shed your dreaded excess weight?
Now that you’ve blown your diet, are you beating yourself up now for letting yourself go and mindlessly shoveling in unhealthy, sugary, fatty or salty unreal foods?
Please take a brief time out.
It’s time to hit the pause button.
Beating up on yourself after you blow your diet won’t make your life or your body better.
Instead, at this time, the first step you want to take to Get Back on Track is to Shower Yourself with Compassion.
Yes, it’s time to cut yourself lots of slack.
Yes, you blew your diet. Yes, you gained weight. But probably had some darn good reasons for falling off the diet wagon.
It’s imperative to give yourself compassion after you blow your diet.
A year and a half ago, I learned a lot about the power and health ramifications of mindfully giving yourself loving-kindness, acceptance, empathy, and compassion after you blow your diet or do anything else self-destructive or counter productive.
In fact, I decided to learn more about the power of compassion by attending a fabulous fsix-day workshop on Mindful Self-Compassion for Professionals with renowned self-compassion researchers and advocates Kristen Neff, Ph.D., and Christopher Geremer, Ph.D.,
You see, I needed to become compassionate myself, because I, too, had blown my clean way of eating.
You can read My Carb Confession here, where I reveal that I had a major relapse while healing from My Bittersweet Last Year with Mom.
At the time, after gaining 20 extra pounds, I was absolutely mortified.
I even hid out, especially from fellow health experts, because it was agonizingly difficult to admit that I’d fallen off the wagon since Ii’m a recognized sugar and carb expert, who has eating cleanly since 1998 (well, for the most part).
You derive many benefits from giving yourself self-compassion, according to Dr. Krisin Neff:
- You reduce your anxiiety, depression, stress, desire for perfectionism, body shame, and fear of failure.
- You also increase your life satisfaction, happiness, self-confidence, optimism, curiosity, creativity, and gratitude.
If you’ve blown your diet or are beating up on yourself for other self-destructive behaviior, I highly recommend that you check out Dr. Neff’s book, Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.
Stay tuned for more tips and tactics to help you Rebound After Relapse.
Join the Conversation: Have you had a diet relapse? If you like, share when and why, too.
About Connie: Since 1998, after kicking sugar and fast carbs on doctor’s orders and bidding 44 ailments farewell, Connie Bennett achieved acclaim as a health expert, Sweet Freedom Coach and author of the bestselling books, Sugar Shock and Beyond Sugar Shock. But in 2012, after the grueling, year-long traumatic terminal illness and subsequent death of her mother, Connie did massive Heartbreak Carb Bingeing™. The upshot? She gained 21 pounds. Oops! Now, Connie’s back to help you, too, Rebound After Relapse™. Sign up for Connie’s mailing list to get tips so you can Bounce Back After Relapse™. And stay tuned for Connie’s upcoming book and companion program.