How to Stop the Unhealthy Diet Mentality of “All-or-Nothing”

Picture this: You’ve been extremely strict with your diet and eating ‘healthy’ all week by cycling the same types of food from Monday to Friday - Steamed chicken breast, brown rice, boiled eggs, and broccoli. You go all out tracking your food, chasing every grain of rice that falls off the food scale. You stay away from all kinds of snacks and desserts across the weekdays, just to follow the guidelines you have set for yourself.

And then comes the weekend. By then, you’ve been so sick of eating the same foods over and over again, and enough of being overly stressed about your food restrictions. Your willpower snaps, and you give yourself the license in indulge in whatever you want. You stuff yourself with desserts and drinks, eating way beyond what you usually do. The worst thing is that you feel terribly guilty after, hating yourself for the lack of control, and promise yourself you would restrict yourself for the whole week as a form of punishment.

Does that sound like you? If it is, it can be very tiring, right? Well, the good news is, this vicious cycle of restrict, indulge and guilt should not be the way you diet! In fact, the biggest reason why people fail their diet plans is because they are too restrictive, as seen in this study.

In this article, we will look at some of the common unhealthy “All-or-Nothing” mentalities and how to curb them. Let’s dive in.