But I Deserve This Chocolate!: The Fifty Most Common Diet-Derailing Excuses and How to Outwit Them

by Susan Albers

Most of us are really, really good at devising reasons to indulge in foods that derail our diets and healthy eating plans. Who among us hasn’t thought, “I had a stressful day, so I deserve this chocolate,” or, “Buttery popcorn would go so well with this movie!” When we view food as a reward, emotional eating can be difficult to overcome.

Most fad diets tell you to “control” your eating, use willpower, ignore your cravings, or just stop eating. Recall for a moment where this got you in the past. Feeling frustrated or hopeless? Maybe it led you to make more excuses? Perhaps you’re thinking I need to get control . This is a sign that the diet mentality may be deeply ingrained in you. Rest assured that there are alternatives to fad dieting and trying to “control” your body.

In But I Deserve This Chocolate! , psychologist Susan Albers takes aim at the fifty most common self-sabotaging thoughts and excuses that keep you from eating right and looking great. This guide dismantles each excuse and offers a mindfulness exercise to help reroute your thoughts so you can meet your health goals. Whether you’re a man or woman, teen or adult, this book is for you if you are trying to eat more mindfully, manage your weight, lose weight, or take charge of your eating habits.

Forget the chocolate and unwrap some truly nourishing habits you can feel good about—your body will thank you!

Genres: Self Help, Food, Health

222 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2011

About the author

Dr. Susan Albers is a psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic and the author of nine books. Her work has been quoted in O, the Oprah Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Self Magazine and Natural Health. She provides mindful eating lectures at women's groups, organizations and colleges. Dr. Albers has been a guest on NPR and Dr. OZ T.V. show. www.eatingmindfully.com. Be a facebook fan https://www.facebook.com/eatdrinkmindful or INSTAGRAM: @DrSusanAlbers

Get a PRE-ORDER Bonus when you order HANGER MANAGEMENT: 28 DAY MINDFUL EATING VIDEO PROGRAM plus a stress management program to calm and soothe without food! (297.00 worth of bonuses) if you order BEFORE December 23rd, 2019. Just send your receipt to DrAlbers@eatingmindfully.com

Reviews

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"BUT I DESERVE THIS CHOCOLATE!" Offers Helpful Ideas for Vexing Problems


"BUT I DESERVE THIS CHOCOLATE!"
The 50 Most Common Diet Derailing Excuses and How to Outwit Them
Susan Albers, Psy.D.
E-book (KINDLE) File Size: 393 KB
Paperback Print Length: 204 pages
Publisher: New Harbinger Publications; 1 edition (September 1, 2011)
Sold by: Amazon Digital Services

“But I Deserve This Chocolate!” targets the fifty most common self-sabotaging thoughts and habits. Pervasive, insistent thoughts such as “I deserve this!” and “I’m buying these chips for the kids, not for me”, and discouraging, self-critical thoughts like “Who cares? I’m never going to lose this weight”, keep many people in the habit of unhealthy eating. eatingmindfully.com


Most of us are really, really good at devising reasons to indulge in foods that derail our diets and healthy eating plans. Who among us hasn’t thought, “I had a stressful day, so I deserve this chocolate,” or, “Buttery popcorn would go so well with this movie!”

In But I Deserve This Chocolate!, psychologist Susan Albers takes aim at the fifty most common self-sabotaging thoughts and excuses that keep you from eating right and looking great. This guide dismantles each excuse and offers a mindfulness exercise to help reroute your thoughts so you can meet your health goals. Forget the chocolate and unwrap some truly nourishing habits you can feel good about—your body will thank you! NewHarbinger.com

As I started to write this post I found myself mindlessly pushing the last of my regular breakfast, a banana, into my mouth. Like many, if not most, women my age I struggle with food, body image and weight loss. I have managed to stay within what some diet programs like Weight Watchers consider a safe weight range for about 20 years. Since November I've slowly worked my way from the top of the range to the bottom.

My weight affects a lot of my life. How I feel about myself, my health, how I move, my expenses, even how much room there is in my closet.
But, I worry about my weight all the time. Staying within an approved healthy range has never been an easy thing and has affected my life and health hugely. As a former Weight Watchers Program Leader I know, really know, that weight loss isn't so much about WHAT you eat as much as it is about HOW you eat and your relationship with food.

Having some helpful tools to help work on the HOW we eat, how we think about ourselves and food is always great when they are sound and healthy. Sometimes I have found myself using the wrong wrench to remove an idea I have had bolted into my head since puberty.

Downloaded from eatingmindfully.com and converted to jpg
Albers, who appears to have the creds to offer these kinds of tools, writes about how we eat, about paying attention to how we eat and what we think when we're eating.

Many of our reactions and thoughts about food cause an automatic response that leads to mindless consumption. When we think we can't change we can't. She offers some tools to take the "T"s out of our "CAN"s. This is incredibly important as we face America's (and more and more the industrialized world's) largest health crisis.

The reactions we have that lead to mindless eating can be changed. Albers offers the tools to change them through mindful eating and she points out the pitfalls, as well, that can happen when we work on changing thought, and then eating, patterns. The ideas about changing our behaviors are arranged by the types of derailing thoughts and excuses we might have.

Her ideas are sound and helpful. For the most part they are easily accessible without having to fill out pages of workbooks, buying more stuff, or going to a weight-loss boot camp.

To me it seems like a reference book as much as self-help. She provides a good explanation of mindfulness and the background of her theories backed up by academic papers. After reading the introduction and initial ideas, I looked at the checklist of excuses and self-judgements. Then I looked through the problems and tools offered for handling them. At root they often share a basic solution. The problem thoughts and excuses are well indexed at the front so it serves as an easy to reference guide to the excuses and thoughts that are less than helpful to our healthful eating. I do recommend definitely skimming through the chapters and their ideas so you can identify them. Identification is often he first step to your goal.

One problem she looks at are those "I can't resist!" thoughts. While some of her solution isn't novel, ex. waiting, doing something else, the idea of imagining the item of resistance as something else that isn't food. So there are new ideas in this book. She often offered a helpful analogy or situation that clarified a problem and helped me see it a different way.

This book is less about diet and more about becoming the person you want to be, only healthier and more mindful. It is a collection of helpful tools to use everyday to achieve that goal. No book holds all the answers, I wouldn't trust one that did. But this gives you a place to start and some very good ways to look at your thinking and behavior. I highly recommend Alber's tool box of a book. It may have just the set of "wrenches" you need to replace how you behave in thought and action with food.

[Leila Chandler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

[Spook Sulek · Rating 4 out of 5]

The most interesting idea in this book, for me, was to treat self-care as a hobby. I invest loads of time, effort, and money into my hobbies but I don't care for myself with the same intensity. It was a really interesting idea and I'm still putting it into practice!

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finally did put the chocolate down long enough to finish this book. It wasn't too bad... but a bit boring after a while. The author repeats herself a lot; an alternate subtitle could be "50 most common ways to say eat mindfully." But for those of us that need that reminder, it does offer some helpful tips.

[Renae · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book, amazing author

Susan Albers really hit home with this wonderful book. I related to way more of the 50 key points than I wish, but seeing my own thoughts there before me, well, it made it sink in. I highly recommend this book and I can't wait to get my hands on more of her books.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I know all the bad habits I have when it comes to allowing myself to eat too much or not the right things and none of the things she suggested really seemed like anything new that could change my bad behavior. I hope it will help someone else, but I was cnynical about the self-talk helping me.

[Leenda dela Luna · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not one to "justify" my eating so I was not the target market for this book. And while I agree that mindless, unconscious, eating is bad, I found the author's "Mindful" eating techniques to be ridiculous.

[Lianna Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice review of excuses and how to deal with them. The book takes a very Zen approach (which I like) as in her emphasis on "mindful eating."

[Kay Kay · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was OK. The same as the others.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of fantastic tips on how to become a mindful eater.