Slip ups

You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have a slip up and come off your healthy eating regime sometimes. Learn how to get straight back on track....

On any diet plan it is normal to have the odd occasion where you take a break and just have whatever you fancy –even if you have had bariatric surgery. Sometimes simply having a stressful day can be enough to think “forget it – I deserve a treat” and before you know it you’ve had a load of extra snacks and feel guilty about it. Often after this it can be difficult to get back on track again. Try to think differently about these episodes. View them simply as “slip up’s”, learn from them and try to stop them from happening again. If you feel this is about to happen try the following:

• Stop and think about the reasons why you are going to come off track– if the benefits of losing weight outweigh the food you are about to have then that can be enough to keep you on track
• Is there anything else you can do - have a bath, phone a friend, go out for a walk – anything to distract yourself
• Remember that it is normal to feel this way sometimes so don’t beat yourself up about it – you are not a failure, you are just a human!
• Think back to why you wanted to lose weight in the first place and use this to keep you motivated to continue
• Write some new reasons for keeping going – maybe you have lost a lot of weight already and the thought of returning to your old weight can be enough to spur you on
• Ask a friend or partner to help you get through the tough times – you can never have too much support!
• Reduce the damage done by a slip up – if you fancy chocolate for example then just have a fun size bar to take the craving away

If you aren’t able to prevent a slip up this time then instead of worrying about it and feeling guilty, learn from it straight away. Thinks about what you were thinking and feeling before it happened, try and work out if you could have done anything differently and how you could stop it from happening again.
And when it does happen again look at the overall picture rather than just the slip up – one day where you had extra calories needn’t really affect your weight loss if the rest of the week was good. You need to eat an extra 3500 Kcal to gain a single pound of fat so that’s a lot of extra calories!! So forget your slip up and get straight back on track – a little extra exercise that week and you could still loose weight