Ten things that did not help me lose weight

One of the biggest hurdles in giving up sugar and flour is getting past the mental block that says it would be easier to just cut back, rather than give them up altogether.

If you've ever tried losing weight, maybe you too got caught up in the temptation to say, "I'll just cut back on my eating" or “I’ll have a cheat day” or “I can have anything in moderation.”

The more I live my life without sugar and flour, the more I realize how much moderation did not work.

Here are ten “moderation” things I tried that never, ever, even a bit helped me lose weight long-term:

-- Eating treat foods (desserts mostly) only on weekends

-- Eating treat foods only on a designated weekly "cheat day"

-- Eating only a certain number of treat foods (think, only 2 of something, or only 1 scoop)

-- Eating a mini version of a treat for dessert (one tiny square rather than a whole bar)

-- Eating an "it's healthy!" version of a treat

-- Buying only single-serving packages of treats, never an entire package

-- Taking two small bites of a favorite treat, then give the rest to someone else.

-- Getting an favorite restaurant treat to share with someone (I usually ended up eating most of it)

-- Buying a kind of treat you don't like and having that in the house for your family to enjoy (but I usually ended up eating anyway because, hey, it’s still a treat even if it’s not my fave)

-- Using a smaller plate so that my portion looked bigger.

Sound familiar? They all sound so logical and common sense. A bit of a release valve. The perfect way to avoid feeling deprived. Some commercial weight-loss programs are built around this enticing idea that moderation is the way to avoid feeling deprived and to make weight loss easier.

The problem is, I've never known any of these approaches to really work. Not long-term for someone with a real food issue. Certainly not one of those ten approaches ever worked for me.

For me, they just fed an insatiable obsession with thinking about food. After dinner, I'd obsessively think about my treat until I got it. At a party where I'd vowed to eat just two bites of something, I'd spend the entire time waiting for my two bites, trying to get the treatiest version of it, trying to convince myself I could have more than two bites (not much convincing was needed). At restaurants, I just lost it and ate the entire treat myself.

The more we know about the impact of sugar and flour on the brain, the most obvious it seems that these approaches don't work. 

They just give your brain a big ole zap of chemicals that make it go "zing" and want more, more, more.

The more we know about how sugar and flour affect the brain in much the same way as any drug, the more obvious it seems that abstinence, rather than moderation, is the way to go.

A major breakthrough in my journey came when I realized that giving up sugar and flour is so much easier than trying to cut back or moderate or have a cheat day.

Giving it up is much easier than trying to moderate.