There you were, working hard on your nutrition. Meal prepping on a Sunday, three lunchboxes of healthy, home cooked food each day, planned out snacks, the works. You’re now eating more green vegetables than you’ve seen in your entire life up to this point and suddenly, unexpectedly, somebody shoves a box of donuts under your nose and asks if you want one. 60 seconds later you’re licking icing off your fingers and all that’s left of the tasty sugary goodness you just demolished is that solitary crumb that’s staring accusingly at you from between the space key and the letter ‘v’ on your keyboard.
“Oh my God, my diet is ruined”!! “All that hard work, down the drain”.
Well, no. You had a donut.
This whole nutrition thing is a marathon, not a sprint. Sure its possible to make progress over short amounts of time but the changes and habits you build over longer periods is the more important progress. These are the changes that will change your health long term.
One donut, one slice of pizza, one <insert your favourite treat here> every so often isn’t going to make any real difference in the long term. It’s what you do for every other day, of every week, of every month that will.
That one treat can feel like a huge issue at the time, especially if unplanned. But, even if we call the treat 1 meal out of the 3 or 4 you’ll have that day. Then multiply that by the 365 days in the year. That’s just one meal out of over 1400. If most of those 1400 meals are healthy and nutritious meals then that one treat doesn’t even feature any more.
This isn’t license to eat donuts all day and then say “ah well, I’ll start my diet on Monday”. It’s more a case of shit happens, just move on and it’ll be fine.
In fact I’d say have a treat every so often. Doing so will make us feel like we’re not depriving ourselves of the nice things in life and still be able to hit our nutritional goals.