You have to stop restricting your diet.
Desire comes from lack.
Let’s say you love doughnuts. What do you think will happen if you tell yourself that you cannot have doughnuts, like, ever? You’re going to want the doughnuts even more!
You do without them for a while, but one day - days, weeks, months, or years from now - you’ll eat a doughnut. The world won’t end, but you’ll say, “Shit. I just ruined my diet.”
NEWSFLASH - ONE LITTLE DOUGHNUT DOESN’T RUIN YOUR LIFE UNLESS YOU ARE DEATHLY ALLERGIC TO SAID DOUGHNUT!
But, because you don’t recognize that truth, you say, “eff it”, stop eating healthy food altogether, stop working out altogether, and make a loose commitment to start again in that fairytale land called “tomorrow”.
Eat What Makes You Feel Good
I want to encourage you to prioritize the amount of protein you're getting each day instead of putting restrictions on the food you are allowed to eat.
Eventually, you can start looking at your food a bit more critically, but in the beginning, when you are reprogramming your subconscious to see food as fuel, just prioritize protein.
Once again, I will use myself and my love of doughnuts to illustrate this idea - It would be a terrible idea for me to eat doughnuts every single day, especially in the quantity that I enjoy eating them. But, when I eat several doughnuts because I want them, I'm less likely to want them the next day, because I've been satisfied. I wanted them, I had them, and I probably will not want them again for a couple of weeks or a few months. It doesn't matter when I want them again, because they're always going to be there, and I can have them whenever I want. I just have to be honest about when I want them.
There are many other elements to this, like knowing the difference between food and foodstuff, but we aren’t talking about that in this article. We need to begin at the beginning, and the beginning is understanding that food deprivation is not the key to healthy, sustainable weight loss.
A list of studies on the subject of desire and deprivation -
A study published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2000 found that deprivation can increase desire for the deprived item. Participants in the study who were deprived of a specific food for a certain period reported a stronger desire for that food compared to participants who had access to the food.
A study published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 2011 found that deprivation increased desire for forbidden foods. Participants who were asked to restrict their caloric intake for a certain period reported increased cravings for high-calorie, palatable foods compared to a control group.
A study published in the journal Health Psychology in 2006 found that deprivation led to increased desire for similar items. Participants who were asked to restrict their consumption of a specific food reported increased cravings for similar foods compared to a control group. The results suggest that deprivation leads to increased desire for items that are similar in taste or appearance to the restricted item.