Tracking, tracking, tracking. It’s all you seem to do on some diets. Sometimes you pass through calories and then carbs/fat/protein, and even go so far as to count the amount of sodium in each thing you eat.
This is good stuff. Being aware of what you eat and what makes it up is very important – in fact some studies have even shown that just being aware of what you eat rather than consciously trying to reduce it actually results in weight loss. That’s cool!
But how does that relate to the title of this post? Well, in reverse order, “Losing makes you a winner” because the ultimate aim of most diets is to lose weight or fat – you win the diet by losing weight.
But “Cheating makes you a loser” does not refer to weight loss. It refers to your methods.
If you are tracking *something*, track it properly. If you have to estimate, great, do it – but always err on the side of caution and OVERESTIMATE. If you are sticking to a certain amount of calories a day and estimate that a cream cake has between 175 and 210 calories, assume it is 210. If you don’t, you will find creative ways of using the extra 35 calories you have spare, and probably find a way to use them twice when you already ate them in the original cake. By picking the lower number you are cheating the system, and by cheating the system you are cheating yourself.
Would you rather mess about for the sake of a few calories, or be honest with yourself and stick to your diet? It is entirely your decision, but once you start down this road it is hard to stop – a little cheat leads to a bigger cheat leads to a larger cheat leads to a massive cheat….and soon you will convince yourself there are no calories in cakes if it is your birthday, and there are no calories in McDonald’s fries if you take them out of a box that is not yours!
Nobody said losing fat would be easy, and it is fine if you aren’t perfect. If you really really need the cream cake and the fries, then do what you have to, but just be honest about it. Record your numbers, figure out where you are going wrong, do something about it.
You owe it to yourself and your body – anything less would be cheating.
