If we could just decide to be good and chill out, then we would have less anxiety about it and probably make better decisions. Instead we stress, worry and have angst over making good decisions and that causes stress which causes us to make bad decisions. It is the exact reason why I ate a chocolate chip cookie today.
Yup. That is right. I have in and ate that damn cookie and now I feel horribly guilty about it. What was interesting is that I woke up this morning all worried about dialing in my nutrition. Making better decisions regarding what I was eating. Need to calculate my macro intake, work on meal prep plans, alternatives while on the road. Mechanisms to transport healthy food while on the go. I was worried about this and having all sorts of anxiety over it. I was getting rather discouraged about it and was feeling stressed.
That is when I saw a cookie and just ate it. You see what I learned this morning, from Peter Defty (someone I will introduce at a future date), is that stress causes our glycogen burning part of our system to kick in. We burn carbohydrates and simple sugars better when we are stressed. Consequently, when we are stressed out we tend to crave sugary, quicker energy sources. Wow. That explains a lot and really explains why my over analysis of my eating caused me to do the exact opposite of what I should be doing. I was stressed, I ate a sugary snack!
So here is an interesting thought. You are overindulging in your passion to follow your new “keto diet” and you are inspecting on a granular level every carb from every source. This causes anxiety, which actually increases the impulse to eat a carb loaded snack. So your behavior is exasperating the problem. If you were to chill out a little bit and just eat generally ok, and not get so wigged out over every little carb infraction then you would have less cravings and you would be more likely to maintain your new healthy eating habits.
Funny how sometimes the people that are worried about being the best end up falling the hardest. A weird paradox of human behavior. My younger self is screaming – No! You weakling! Stand tall always! Do not give into mediocrity! My older wiser self realizes that creating a false sense of hyper conditioning over what is good actually will lead to the opposite behavior once the stress levels get to high.
Guy Reams
