The Diet Myths: Should we deprive ourselves of our favourite food?

“I have to deprive myself of chocolate, biscuits etc….otherwise I would eat them all the time, every day.”

Exercise:

Choose a food that you love and you think you cannot do without, and buy two helpings of it. At lunchtime, when you’re hungry, eat one portion before you begin your meal normally. “It can be a chocolate éclair, a tray of chips, whatever,” says Marie-Laure Thollier. Pay attention to what you feel, and rate your levels of satisfaction, taste and pleasure experienced. The same day, but this time just after dinner, eat the same food and rate the satisfaction, taste and the pleasure experienced again.

Objectives:

– Discovering the sensation of pleasure. Official discourse, media and the environment all provide reasons to distrust a particular type of sweet or fatty food, yet “consuming dishes that we think well of reduces biological markers of stress and provides a sense of comfort,” reassures the Dr Jean-Philippe Zermati.

– Realising that food that you thought was “always good for you” is in fact not, unless you are hungry.

Read more in our ‘Diet Myths‘ report:

What makes us fat?
What makes us lose weight?
Is chocolate really fattening?
Do we have to follow a strict regime to lose weight?

Mathieu Rached