On Mother’s Day, I went to Cracker Barrel. I had three pancakes, two servings of eggs and bacon. I also went to Chipotle and had what I usually get there, and then I had Cold Stone ice cream for dessert. I ate what I wanted and I enjoyed it.

For a long time, I would have denied myself these things, then binged or overate on other things that maybe I really didn’t want, then deprived myself extremely the next day. I have given that up.

Now I actually plan for these indulgences. I say OK, I want to indulge in this. I allow myself to have it, no guilt. The next day, I just eat like I normally do. If I’m in a fat-loss phase, I take a 500-calorie deficit off my maintenance calories. If I am maintaining my weight, I just eat at my maintenance calories.

I don’t beat myself up for that anymore, and I’m going to urge you to do the same. If you have a treat or a day where you eat off what you normally would, don’t beat yourself up for it. Don’t deprive yourself of food the next day for two reasons.

One, your body wants to get back to its normal state, its homeostasis. Two, what happens mentally if you go into the day knowing you were “bad” the day before and feeling like you have to cut way back on what you’re eating and over-exercise to make up for it?

First, you’re not going to enjoy the food that you had the previous day as much because you feel like there’s a punishment attached to it. And second, chances are it’s going to be hard for you the next day, right? You’re not going to feel as good as you would.

I’m sharing this with you because I was in that cycle for a long, long time. I’m telling you, you don’t have to extremely restrict the day after having an off day where maybe you ate way above what you would normally eat or you ate things you wouldn’t normally eat.

Your body will readjust down as soon as you get back to your normal way of eating. I’m going to urge you to do that. Enjoy food. Enjoy the day that you’re in when you’re having it. The next day, just get back to what you normally do. You don’t have to extremely restrict. I’ll tell you now, if you do eat a lot of carbs and sugar, holy mackerel will it bring about an improvement on your workout! After my Mother’s Day meals, I deadlifted 205 pounds, five sets of five. I have not been able to do that. That’s all carbs, baby.

You have a great day. Pick up where you were and just keep moving forward. Don’t deprive yourself today.

Several of my coaching clients have come to me with questions that they weren’t sure were within our scope of coach and coachee. When I ask if it plays into their eating behaviors and exercise, most often it does.

For example, if you struggle with feelings of self-worth and every time you say yes to somebody else — to prove yourself, to feel validated, to feel important — you say no to your healthy habits, then that needs to be addressed. If you try to eat in a healthy way but your boss yells at you and then you go home and binge because you don’t have proper communication skills, that is something that needs to be addressed.

My coaching clients ask, “Heather, is this really important for us to talk about? Is this really going to help me with my weight loss?” My response is to ask, “How does it impact your relationship with food and your view of yourself? How does it influence your decisions on whether or not you’re going to take care of yourself?” Answering these questions will let you know if you need to address it.

You have to look at your life holistically. If you’re struggling, it’s not just because you haven’t managed to get the right calories or macros or points, or because you don’t have the right workout program. I wish it were that simple because it would be an easier problem to fix. The real reasons are those other things that happen on a daily basis that knock you off your game and cause you to run into the arms of food and/or feel bad about yourself, which leads to not wanting to do whatever healthy habit it is that you’re working on.

I’m going to challenge you this week to look at all the life factors that go into why you choose to do what you choose to do. When you’re feeling lonely, do you turn to food? When you don’t have constructive things to do at night with your time, do you try to entertain yourself by going out to eat and eating large quantities of fun food?

I encourage you to go a layer deeper; don’t stay on the surface. Ask yourself, “Why is it I do what I do with food? What are the situations that trip me up, and where is that coming from?” Then try to figure out some ways to start handling those situations differently.

One of the things I’ve found transformational in my weight loss journey was creating personal boundaries and codes for myself.

For a long time, I did not have those in my life. I generally got what was right and wrong, but because I didn’t establish what I would and would not allow into my life, I found that I would compromise what was important to me sometimes because I didn’t have that structure.

One of the things that I feel very passionately about is diet bets. I often see people on Instagram and Facebook spearheading diet bets. I’ve been contacted by these companies, and I just decline and delete. The reason I feel so passionately about not putting that out there, and why you don’t see me doing that, is because, as a child growing up, I watched somebody who was very close to me, who struggled with his weight, over and over and over again doing diet bets.

This was before the internet; we’re talking the ‘80s here. We’re talking a bunch of guys at work betting money on who could lose the most weight. And guess what? He could lose the most weight. He could also binge and put all that weight back on when the diet bet was over.

I watched this over and over again, and it really affected me and my thoughts around weight loss. This is why I don’t put diet bets out there — because I don’t see this whole getting healthy, weight loss thing as being something with an end point.

Because I know my boundaries and parameters, because I know my real views on these things, it makes it easy for me to hit delete. I want to encourage you to really look at your life. Look at your feelings about weight loss. Look at what’s worked for you and what hasn’t worked for you, and start to really think about what healthy boundaries you want to set.

I decided earlier in my journey that I would not lose weight for money. I would not bet on my health because I had seen it crash and burn so many times, and it just wasn’t a healthy situation. So I created that boundary for myself, and it’s been something I’ve really stuck with.

I share this with you because, as somebody who puts out a podcast, as somebody who does a blog, I feel a responsibility to you not to condone things I know don’t work. I’ve maybe seen one case where somebody got started on a diet bet and actually got somewhere, and that was Tracy Reifkind. I think that’s the only person I’ve ever met who started from that place and actually progressed. The majority of people do not.

If you’re seeing the same people doing diet bets over and over and over again, I think that should be a signal that maybe the emphasis isn’t on maintenance. If the emphasis were on maintenance, then we wouldn’t need to do the diet bets over and over again, right?

I’m not coming from a judgmental place. I’m really coming from a place of wanting to protect you and encourage you to just observe and say, “What’s good for me, and what are the parameters that I want in my life, and what am I willing to do? What am I not willing to do?” I think creating those boundaries is an essential, healthy part of getting to a healthier body and maintaining it.

This is just something that’s been weighing on my mind. I know that with the new year, we are coming up on diet bet season. I encourage you to start thinking about how you want to create your own boundaries going into that season.

I recently got two emails asking me the exact same thing, so I thought this was something I should clarify. They both said: Here’s my problem; will your program help me? Here’s the funny thing: My program is no program. My program is to keep you off diet programs. What I’m trying to do is to help you reshape your thinking to where you can lose the weight and keep it off for the rest of your life.

There are some very basic, simple truths, and I’m just going to give them to you now, so you can take them and run with them. One, if you want to lose weight, you have to eat at a calorie deficit. Two, if you prioritize protein in your diet, it makes that whole venture so much easier. And three, make sure you’re getting lots of fruits and vegetables.

And stay off the programs! Get off the shakes; get off the pills; get off all the crazy stuff people are telling you to do. Find something that is sustainable and stick with it. If you have dieted for so long that you can’t take a small deficit off your daily burn, work your way back up by slowly reintroducing calories.

If I burn 2,300 to 2,500 calories a day, I should be able to take 500 to 700 off that and easily lose weight, which is what I’ve been doing. If I have been dieting for so long that I can only eat 1,500 calories and maintain my weight, then I need to actually go in the opposite direction.

If I burn 2,300 to 2,500 calories a day, I should be able to take 500 to 700 off that and easily lose weight, which is what I’ve been doing. If I have been dieting for so long that I can only eat 1,500 calories and maintain my weight, then I need to actually go in the opposite direction.

My program, again, is no program. My program is to help you get past the idea that you need to be on a program to begin with. Take a calorie deficit. Treat yourself well. Move your body in a way that feels good. Eat food that you like. Start to change your whole outlook on this thing. Remember, there’s no point in dropping that 20 pounds for the summer, just to gain it back in the fall. Right? We want to keep this weight off for the rest of your life. I hope that helps answer your questions about the program.

Remember, there’s no point in dropping that 20 pounds for the summer, just to gain it back in the fall. Right? We want to keep this weight off for the rest of your life. I hope that helps answer your questions about the program.