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Epiphany of the Week

Posted by Kristen on July 16th, 2009 at 03:29pm

Epiphany: Cheat less and get better results from your diet regimen.

I’m getting married in a year from tomorrow. The scariest thing about this whole endeavor is the threat of being not-my-ideal-weight when it comes time to walk down the aisle in a hopefully-flattering white gown. So after many months of keeping this thought in the back of my mind and eating cautiously on a not-so regular basis, I’ve had an epiphany: You get better results when you don’t cheat.

You may think this is really not such a break through – duh – stick to a program and the pounds will fall off. Easier said than done. Diet plans like Weight Watchers, for example, emphasize the importance of writing down everything you eat because otherwise it’s easy to lose track of what you put in your mouth. So cheating isn’t necessarily something we do consciously. We just do.

So what am I eating? Salad mostly. I’m stockpiling the lettuce and veggies in my fridge and making glorious huge salads for lunch and dinner. Glorious! On the weekends, I eat outside the diet if I’m out with friends or hanging out at my parents’ house. If I’m at a restaurant I’ll order a salad. But if I didn’t grant myself the freedom to enjoy my social life, I would go crazy.

So what’s made the biggest difference? Lightening up on dinner. For several months prior to this epiphany week, I would eat clean all day long and then have a nice hearty dinner of pasta or chicken and rice, with the justification that I had eaten well all day and I deserved it. So not true. What I deserve is to feel great on my wedding day (and beyond)! End of story.

Here are some salads on Favediets.com that I’m putting into my daily repertoire:

Vegan Asparagus with Roasted Red Pepper Salad

Vegetable Salad in 24 Hours

Broccoli Salad with Pinenuts and Cranberry

Strawberry Spinach Salad with Poppyseed Dressing