In 2006, I stumbled across a popular fitness blog that was promoting a new kind of diet challenge. The blogger invited any and all of his readers to join in on adhering to the 20 nutrition rules he’d made for himself. The purpose, he wrote, was to crack down on his eating behaviors and become the pinnacle of nutrition perfection. Anytime you broke one of the rules, you would add a point to your running total. By the end of the challenge, the individual with the fewest number of points was the winner.
Drink a gallon of water, eat six meals, and consume three servings of vegetables a day. No more than X number of calories per meal. Don’t go longer than 3 waking hours between meals. Eat half a grapefruit within 30 minutes of waking up. No added sugars. No artificial sweeteners. No trans fats.
Wow! I remember reading the list with astonishment. I was so impressed at how strict he was going to be with himself, and I excitedly shot an email to my dad that same night urging him to hop in on the challenge with me. Instead of 20 rules, however, I somehow came up with a whopping 100 rules that I was to adhere to every day — because the stricter I was, the better I’d do, right?
Looking back, I almost feel that I should slow clap for having the creativity to have come up with so many nutrition rules. Or perhaps I should be groaning in embarrassment that these were the kinds of things that occupied my free time at the age of 16.
In any case, my dad politely declined the challenge (much to my surprise at the time), and I forged ahead on my own – for a heroic three days. It didn’t take long for me to realize that 100 freakin’ rules was way too many for me to keep track of, and I quickly grew tired of my rapidly accruing points. Argh!
What had I done wrong?
I mistakenly believed for many years that eating perfectly and getting lean was all about being really, really strict on myself. Anytime I slipped up and ate the chocolate chip cookie I swore I’d never touch, I’d find myself clearing off the entire plate in a panic, then berating myself for obviously not trying hard enough. I’d vow to do better and never let this mistake happen again – but only after I’d inhaled the box of sugary cereal, too. Oh, and the ice cream.
That strategy never worked. And yet, I continued to stubbornly persist (unsuccessfully so) for years. It never crossed my mind that anything other than a black-and-white approach would elicit the results that I so desperately wanted.
As it turns out, however, rigid dieting is not a realistic long-term strategy, and it’s far from the most effective way to get and stay lean year-round.
Rigid vs. Flexible Eating
Westenhoefer (1991) defines rigid eating as adopting an “all or nothing” approach to eating, dieting, and bodyweight. Some examples of this include deeming some foods “good” and others “bad,” having a forbidden foods list (or conversely, a very short approved foods list), thinking of yourself as a failure if you exceed a given bodyweight, and crash dieting, starving, and binge eating.
