How to Survive a Caloric Deficit

     In this diet game, there are rules. Now sure, if you break these rules a referee won’t drop out of the sky and blow a whistle all up in your face, but by following them you’ll increase the likelihood of emerging on the other side looking and feeling a lot better than you do now.

1. Secure Home Base

      There is a tasty killer lurking in your house, and he is out to try and desexify your body. The most disturbing part of all is that you are the one that let him in. A lot of the damage that occurs during a diet happens right at home – late night binging, mindless tv snacking, etc – and often involves all of the comfort foods that are tasty as hell, but pack a ton of calories and are easy to devour with reckless abandon. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it make sense to avoid this pitfall entirely by getting those foods out of the place where they’re most likely to be eaten?

      The first rule of Rogonian law is that if a yummy food is in your house, it will eventually end up in your stomach. Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang wrote an op-ed for the New York Times discussing how will power is a finite resource and that while demonstrating zen-like will power on one task, you “deplete” your reserves and are therefore less likely to display that same amount of self-control when performing another, seemingly unrelated task. I don’t say that to give you a reason to obliterate the cookie jar when stressed – quite the contrary, because with practice our will power reserves can be bolstered. Simply put, the best way to avoid eating something is not to have it around at all. If you’re not ready to make this plunge just yet, you can always slowly get these foods out of your house, first by reducing the portion size of what you buy then by decreasing the frequency of how often you buy them. 100 calorie snack packs serve this purpose well.

What would the Fresh Prince do?

2. Don’t Roll Solo 

     Once you leave the comfort and safety of home base, that’s when it gets real; not just real, but realer than real. You’re away from all of your prepared meals and now you’re venturing out into a world where you’re rarely more than 5 minutes away from something you can eat. This is where will power is critical, but if you’re like me and lack it when you need it the most, its best to come prepared. Bag up something non perishable and keep it in your pocket or in your car – ½ to 1oz portion sizes of walnuts or almonds are a personal favorite of mine, but fruit and beef jerky are also viable options. By employing this strategy, you don’t even have to go through the whole mental rigamarole of deciding between a piece of fruit or two ginormous slices of pizza with a piece of chocolate cake in between – you’ve already made a choice that will keep you on track towards your goals.

The only dude in the universe who can roll solo

 3. Tame the Beast Before Going to the Zoo

     When on a diet, one fact that is you’re going to have to accept is that you’re going to be hungry. Maybe not all the time, and not ravishingly so, but you and hunger are going to be homies during this whole process. With that said. its only natural that you’re going to have to interact with other folks while in a state of hunger, and this is where people (myself included) usually jump off the wagon. If you simply eat something in line with your goals before you head out the house, you can drastically decrease the chances of you binging on food at a party or get together only to feel like crap about it later on. A social gathering with food is just that – a gathering where food just happens to be. You don’t have to eat, and if you do eat you don’t have to eat a lot. Instead of saying that I’m on a diet, which tends to cause people to get on my case, I just say that I ate more than I should have recently and I’m pretty full. Problem solved, caloric disaster averted, and you’re now free to have fun without stuffing your face.

      This rule applies for grocery shopping as well. I’m sure that we’ve all gone grocery shopping while hungry at least once, and the result was madness on a grand scale. That list probably snowballed from 6 simple items into pretty much anything within arms reach that looked like it might make your stomach smile with delight. Once the beast within takes over, everything starts to look like it could taste good and you make purchases that you never would under a more sane state of mind. And lets be honest here, do you really want to get home only to find out that 5 cans of Spam managed to find their way into your cart?

No. Just no.