Sweets on BFL
 

I bought the book and now I'm wondering, where do sweets fit in? I dont eat that many, but I hate the idea of not being able to have something if I want it. Help!!!!!!!

heya

depends what you mean by sweets.... fruits can be used as carbs, you can put splenda and cocoa and 1tsp natural peanut butter in your oatmeal (tastes like cookies), find a good PP or MRP and it can satisfy your need for chocolate. Things like berries are good as they are tasty and full of vitamins. But sitting down with a bag of chips or candy.... save it for freeday. You really have to decide whats more important. The 3 seconds of taste you get from eating a candy or losing that extra inch.

After a year (!) doing BFL I KNOW my lack of progress (or rather, my plateau) is purely food-based, and Ive got a new plan of attack. Eating clean really DOES make 90% of the difference. Everything you put into your mouth counts. Every single thing.

Once you get thru the fear of denying yourself, you will realise that its just food! Thats it. YOU are in charge, not your taste buds. Its not some wonder-drug that will solve your problems, or put you in a better mood. Chocolate wont help you ace a test, make a new friend, or get that last rep with perfect form. Once you get into the routine of NOT eating this stuff, you wont even miss it. The first 4 weeks seemed so LONG to get to freeday for me. Now the week flys by and it seems like only yesterday I was having my latté.

If you need something to get you thru the rough beginnings, go with something sugar free. I used sugarfree hard candy and sugar/fat free hot chocolate. Now Im not even buying those things and I can spend my money on meat and tasty protein powder :D

Incidently, I ate about 2 small handfuls of candy last night and spent about 3 hours regretting it (nausea, cramps, etc). Your body will thank you for treating it better.

Tidey

Re: Sweets on BFL
 

Originally Posted by :
Originally posted by mellywelly
I bought the book and now I'm wondering, where do sweets fit in? I dont eat that many, but I hate the idea of not being able to have something if I want it. Help!!!!!!!

That's exactly why Bill Phillips put the "FREE DAY" into the BFL program - so you would be able to 'fit' treats in. I don't have my book here (it's at WORK!) but if memory serves, the part on Free Day is in the "Eating for Life" chapter.

Word of warning though...the way Bill writes about FD in the book, it sounds as though you can and SHOULD eat huge quantities of food that day, from sunup to sundown. IMO this is a BAD idea - those calories still count, even on FD. At this point, what I do is on the weekends, I allow myself a couple of treats or free meals - maybe a frozen yogurt, or perhaps a burrito from my favorite taqueria.

I like what Hussman says about free day at his website (www.hussman.org/fitness):

Originally Posted by :
A few words about your free day. You should think of the free day as an opportunity to choose "unauthorized" foods. It's not about losing control. It's about making choices and enjoying those choices. The danger of going overboard is that a wild pig-out style free day can blow several days of "caloric deficits" that are essential for fat loss, and can also be detrimental for people who tend to be binge eaters. If you're not a little careful, the idea of "free days" can create an "all or nothing" mindset and sets up binge eating patterns that are hard to eliminate later. That said, kept in perspective, the free day may help counter the risk that your body senses a fasting state. Metabolically, you're trying to convince your body that it doesn't have to lower its metabolism, shed muscle, or defend its fat stores in response to the change in its "environment". You don't need a huge number of extra calories to do that. It's good if your free meals make you feel warm, and it's great if you actually break a light sweat. The free day gives you something to look forward to, keeps your body "confused", and gives you a chance to have that pizza and ice cream you've been eyeing all week, but don't go way overboard. There's some evidence that cycling high and low caloric periods with weight training can help muscle gains, but the effective cycle is evidently about two weeks, not one day. And if your primary concern is fat loss, I wouldn't try to get that fancy.

If you prefer, my impression is that you can substitute the free day with 2 "free meals" between any Sunday-Saturday period (following the program for other meals on those days). Don't try to "spread" your free day across the whole week and then kid yourself that you're following the program. That said, if you do have something that's "unauthorized," don't fall into all-or-nothing thinking and say "I blew it! I'm a loser! The day is ruined! Now it's a free day!" followed by a self-destructive binge. Just have a little bit less to eat later that day, or the next day, to make up for that small amount of lost ground. The main thing is that you don't turn small indiscretions into self-destructive binges. We're all human. If you ate the cookie, you ate the cookie. Now get on with your program.

Something I used to do in the early days...when I was craving something on my 'clean days', I would write it down on a little pad stuck on my fridge to remember for Sunday (the day I chose for Free Day - although if there is a holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas, I would move my FD to that day for the week - note the key here is PLANNING AHEAD).

And I would like to second what Hussman says about the all-day pig out. Shoot, I had many free days like that - waking up and immediately starting to stuff food into my mouth - you should have seen the huge breakfasts that Jim and I would have at Stacks' in the morning, followed later in the afternoon with an early Mexican dinner. Needless to say, I couldn't do much, if anything, that day since I was STUFFED to the gills - uncomfortably so - and Monday at work I would feel sick until about 4:00 pm. So...I would advise that if you want ice cream on your free day - don't eat a whole pint of Ben & Jerry's. Have a SCOOP, or better yet, have some frozen yogurt (sometimes if I'm really craving decadence, I'll get my soft-serve frozen yogurt with a topping like crushed Oreos - makes it a bit more naughty and rich :lol: but really it's just maybe 2 cookies crushed up in a Carbolite frozen yogurt which is WAY better than having, say, a whole PACKAGE of Oreos followed by that Ben & Jerrys...)

Hopefully you get my point here...really the bottom line can be summed up in these words: HOW BADLY DO YOU WANT THIS? What's more important - eating the sweets and that momentary pleasure or losing the bodyfat? (I must also recommend that you read the new Dr. Phil Weight Loss Solution book in addition to the BFL book to get more into the 'head stuff' - I'm finding some really good info in there!)