Can You Lose Weight and Still Eat Chocolate Biscuits?

One of the biggest problems with many weight loss programs is that if you want to eat some "forbidden" foods you either have to spend a week taking notes of the number of points you have racked up with your normal meals to see if you are allowed a little treat; or you have to add up all of the calories to see what you have eaten in a day to see if you could have a bit of chocolate; or worse still you are told your favorite treat, even a tiny bit of it, is absolutely not allowed by the diet you are following.

There is a lot of solid evidence to show that we should all be eating healthier foods and a lot less unprocessed meals. A diet rich in fruit and vegetables, with a balance of grains and proteins is going to go a long way to addressing any potential health problems as you get older. However to totally abstain from a particular type of food, simply because it is not on your diet, can cause you to go through that typical scenario of resisting for as long as you can; then giving in and binging on your favorite food and then chucking in your diet altogether because you have failed yourself again.

This type of thinking is not going to help you stay healthy and live longer. Logically you know that a couple of chocolate biscuits eaten every week is not going undermine an otherwise healthy diet. In fact your occasional indulgence in a treat can help stop your body going into that dreaded plateau phase that seems to happen to even the most dedicated of dieters. The key to dieting and still enjoying a little chocolate biscuit treat is to have your treats in moderation.

If you are on a diet and you have this feeling of "not being allowed" to eat something that you enjoy, then whether you are conscious of it or not, you are going to be resentful about that control on your life. It is a perfectly natural way to feel and one that not many diet programs address. If you have chosen to go on any type of diet program you know that chances are the authors of that program are going to know what is good and healthy for you and if your favorite food isn't on the list of acceptable eats, well you just have to go without if you want your diet to succeed - at least that is what the experts tell us.

However, if 95% or even 80% of your diet consists of healthy foods then allowing yourself to have a little treat once in a while is a good idea. It is likely to still be a better lifestyle than you were living before you went on a diet and by allowing yourself the occasional treat it removes that concept of "want but can't have". Having the occasional chocolate biscuit is not going to undermine all of the hard work you have put into your dieting efforts and provided you do have only 3 - 4 chocolate biscuits out of the packet at any one sitting then you can carry on with your diet without feeling guilty about the occasional treat.

Lisa Oliver is the author of "The Happiness Diet: How to lose weight quickly and with a minimum of fuss" and a lover of chocolate biscuits. You can find her book through Amazon.com. A Kindle version is also available. Providing quality counselling articles, hynotherapy writings and other mind help resources online, counselling hypnotherapist and life coach in London.