Just like any other skill, there’s a learning curve to food freedom. Creating new habits will require commitment and practice before they start feeling effortless. However, changing a habit is a lot easier when you have the right tools at your disposal, and there are four techniques straight out of habit, stress, and willpower research that can buy you the time, space, and distance you’ll need to practice good decision-making. Pick one, or combine them all for maximum effectiveness.

Note, however, that the goal here isn’t to resist at all costs; it’s simply to make the right decision for you in that moment. Now that your reset is over, there is no need to arbitrarily deny yourself a delicious, special, worth-it treat, even if it happens to be spectacularly unhealthy. That’s old dieting mentality, and only leads to the same yo-yo pattern you’ve been stuck in for years: resist, resist, resist . . . binge. These tools aren’t supposed to help you say no—they’re supposed to help you wait, evaluate, then decide based on what is right for you in that moment.

Deep breaths: This one is so simple, and yet so effective. When faced with temptation, your brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter responsible for your motivation to pursue a specific rewarding behavior. Dopamine does not provide happiness, only the promise of happiness. And when dopamine has your attention, you become fixated on that reward. (To keep things simple, you can think of dopamine as your Sugar Dragon, breathing fire and insisting you do as you’re told while promising delicious bliss and immediate satisfaction.)

This is also perceived by the body as stress, which is why you feel anxious and slightly out of control thinking about your treat. “Am I going to eat it? Should I eat it? I probably shouldn’t . . . but I probably will.” In the face of this stress, your breathing also changes to a stressful breath pattern—it becomes more shallow, faster, and takes place higher up in the chest. Kind of like panic breathing.

There is no need to panic here. It’s just a cupcake.

By changing your breathing pattern, you can send a signal to your nervous system that you’re actually DOING JUST FINE, which helps you activate the willpower center of your brain and feel more in control. Practice slowing your breathing down to a 2:1 ratio of exhale to inhale (like an eight-count exhale followed by a four-count inhale), and breathe into your diaphragm; this is known as belly breathing. You can practice this throughout the day, and put it into immediate effect when faced with a decision to eat something you know makes you less healthy. It may sound like voodoo, but deep breathing has been successfully used by U.S. soldiers, Hurricane Katrina survivors, and kids being cyberbullied; it will probably help with your cupcake. (For other stress-relieving breathing techniques, do an Internet search for “tactical breathing” or “4-7-8 breathing.”)

“I can have it later”: Temptation overwhelms you the most when the reward is immediately available and staring you in the face. To combat this effect, put that food or drink in a brief time-out.

Institute a 15-minute, 1-hour, or 1-day waiting period; whatever feels appropriate. Tell yourself you’re not going to eat it now, but if you still really want it 15 minutes from now (or an hour from now, or tomorrow), you’ll allow yourself to enjoy it then. This gives your brain the space it needs to evaluate whether you truly want it, whether you’re just feeling bored/anxious/lonely, etc., and whether or not it will actually be worth it. Employ this waiting period every time you’re faced with a potentially worth-it food. Even if you only give yourself until the waiter comes back, removing or delaying the possibility of “right now” will help relieve some of the pressure.

Employ distraction: In Walter Mischel’s famous “Marshmallow Test” from 1960, four- to six-year-olds’ willpower was tested using marshmallows as a reward. The children who were successfully able to delay gratification (the joy of eating one marshmallow placed right in front of them) for a bigger reward (two marshmallows to eat when the experiment was over) succeeded by employing a variety of distraction techniques. Some covered their eyes, some turned their backs on the tempting marshmallow, and others sang to themselves.

While you probably shouldn’t start belting out Taylor Swift when they roll out the donuts at your business meeting, you can employ similar distraction techniques when you have an unexpected encounter with tempting food. Remove yourself from the temptation by closing the dessert menu, leaving the break room, or moving the chips and salsa out of your immediate reach. Tell a story to shift the focus of the room off the treats, engage with someone next to you, or start taking meticulous meeting notes (scoring bonus points with your boss in the process).

Use your imagination: You can also harness the power of imagination to help you decide. Studies find that trying not to think about a particular food (like chocolate) only makes you want it more, but imagining the consumption of that food can actually decrease your appetite for it. You can take that a step further by thinking about how you’ll feel later in the day if you do choose to indulge. Do you know from experience that you’ll be mad at yourself for giving in when you know darn well it’s not worth it? Can you see yourself running to the bathroom all day, something you can’t afford with your big presentation coming up? Will you get home too lethargic to play with your kids, knowing you promised them you’d go to the park before dinner? Those are all strikes against the indulgence. However, if you picture yourself feeling not quite as awesome but still happy you decided to go for it, that’s a pretty good indication of “worth it.”

One trick I use is telling myself the opposite of what I think I want, and then evaluating how I feel about it: I’ll pretend that someone just told me, “Oops, sorry. There aren’t any cupcakes left.” If I feel indifferent or relieved, then I know this is a food I can skip. If I get super-bummed, that tells me this may be a treat worth indulging in. Little tricks like this only take a mental moment, and can all help you get to the root of the questions “Is it worth it?” and “Do I really want it?”

Using one or more of these strategies when faced with a delicious treat means your Sugar Dragon is less likely to automatically win this round, and should buy you the time, space, and mental energy to decide whether that food or drink is really worth it for you. If you decide it’s not, you can move on down the road without feeling deprived, because you were the one who chose not to indulge. If you decide it is worth it, yay! But before you take that first bite . . .

Food freedom thinks we should talk about it just a little bit more first. Just tell your treat to wait for like, five more minutes.

When You Indulge

So let’s recap: You’re eating your post-reintroduction food freedom diet, and something amazingly delicious (and spectacularly unhealthy) comes your way—say, a peanut butter chocolate chip vanilla frosted cookie. You run through your checklist, and create the distance and space you need to accurately evaluate whether it’s actually worth it, and whether you actually want it. (It is, and you do!) You accept the delicious treat and consciously, deliberately take your first bite. From here, this experience could go one of two ways.

The first way: It tastes like vanilla-frosted rainbows (or just meh, but you convince yourself otherwise), and since you’ve already started to eat it, you might as well finish it. You consume the rest quickly and excitedly, your brain exploding with joy as you cram it into your face-hole. In this instance, the treat is gone before you even realize it, you barely got to enjoy the experience, and your brain is already screaming for more.

Please don’t do that.

To make the most out of this experience, to really make the potential health consequences worth it . . .

You have to savor it.

Take your time. Pay attention to the taste, flavor, texture. Create the kind of environment that will allow you to enjoy what you’re eating. Get downright romantic with that cookie. This starts with the very first bite.

It might stop with the very first bite, too.

THE ONE-BITE RULE: Here’s a bonus in-the-moment success strategy you may find helpful: If you think your less-healthy treat is going to be so delicious, so incredible, so worth it . . . and then you take your first bite and discover it’s not, STOP EATING. (I call this “Melissa’s One-Bite Rule,” in existence since the infamous Portland Donut Incident of 2015. The summary: Everyone promised it would be orgasmic, but it was just okay—SORRY, CITY OF PORTLAND.)

The only reason to indulge in a less-healthy treat in the first place is if it’s so incredibly, deliriously worth it that you’re willing to accept the less-healthy consequences. So if you discover it’s not what you imagined, why keep eating? (It’s not like it’s good for you, after all.) If the black-and-white rules of your reset really worked for you, create a hard-and-fast rule for this, too. “Every time I eat a less-healthy food, the One-Bite Rule goes into effect.” That helps to take some of the effort of decision-making out of your hands and keeps you from that icky feeling you get while continuing to eat something unhealthy that’s not even that good.

Clean Your Plate?

Many of you have been conditioned not to waste food. I was raised with a “clear your plate” mentality, too, so I get it. Do your best to prevent this dilemma in the first place. Help yourself to just a tiny serving to begin with, take a bite of a friend’s dish first, or ask the waiter for a taste before you order a full glass. But if you do get partway through something and realize you don’t want the rest, you’ll have to ask yourself what’s more important: maintaining your health, self-confidence, and sense of control around food, or not throwing out half a cookie you’ve already paid for? In that moment, I will always encourage you to stop eating. Always. This is your health, and eating the rest of that cookie isn’t going to benefit your local homeless shelter anyway. If you end up with something you don’t actually want, see if a friend or co-worker wants the rest, or bring it home for your roommates. But wrap your head around the idea that throwing the rest away may be the best decision for you—and that you don’t need to punish yourself for a bad judgment call by sacrificing your own health.

If that first bite is as delicious as you had hoped, fantastic! Give yourself a minute to truly appreciate what you’re eating, pausing to take part in the social interaction, or simply taking a quiet moment by yourself to be happy with what’s on your plate. Then take your second bite . . . and repeat the process. Is the second bite as good as the first? Is it still worth it? Is this bite enough to make you feel satisfied with the experience?

Continue with this evaluation until you’ve decided you are satisfied with the flavor, the food, or the experience. Maybe this is half a cookie. Maybe this is three cookies. Both are okay, as long as every bite is conscious, deliberate, and worth it.

Here’s where it gets tricky: Every time you’re faced with a new social dynamic, a new situation, or a new combination of ingredients, you have to evaluate all over again, taking your environment, emotional state, and health goals into consideration. Just because that famous-brand donut was worth it yesterday morning doesn’t mean it will still be worth it this morning. If you enjoyed gluten-free toast with breakfast last week, that doesn’t mean you’ll want to do it every week. Your context changes. Your goals change. Your health changes. That means what’s worth it will also always be changing.

Every time you have the opportunity to enjoy a potentially less-healthy food, you have to reevaluate whether or not it’s worth it. I’ll illustrate with a story: I generally avoid gluten, because if I eat too much, my belly gets so bloated people start asking when I’m due. During the last holiday season, I indulged more than usual, because I came across lots of once-a-year, totally-worth-it baked treats, and I didn’t mind being a little bloated under my stretchy jeans. But in February before my Costa Rica yoga retreat, I declined all gluten, even if the treat was incredibly tempting or special, because I knew I’d be in formfitting yoga clothes and I wanted to look my best.

Vanity is a perfectly acceptable reason for declining a less-healthy treat.

My point is this: You should always be paying attention, always evaluating “worth it” potential, and always making conscious, deliberate decisions when considering a less-healthy food. That’s the kind of attentiveness that food freedom demands.

Oh, but this time, it will actually work.

Yes, every other diet in the world tells you to “eat mindfully” and “listen to your body.” And no, that’s never actually worked for you before. But remember, this time, you didn’t diet, you reset. You changed your blood sugar regulation, hormonal balance, and taste buds, so you can trust the signals your body is sending you. You tamed your Sugar Dragon, reduced or eliminated cravings, and regained control of your food choices. You remained well fed and well nourished, so there’s no physiological urge to rebound by eating All the Things. You’re now totally set up to actually eat mindfully and truly listen to your body. And for the first time in a long time, your body is no longer lying to you.

Given that this is your new context, you really can listen and pay attention every time you eat something less healthy.

Take a Pause

Another trick that may help in the moment: Make a habit of putting down your fork or glass between every bite or sip. This gives you a physical cue to think about what you’re eating and how it’s making you feel. It also buys your digestive tract some time to send the signal to your brain that you’re full or satisfied. (True story: There is a product called the HAPIfork that measures your time between bites and vibrates if you’re eating too quickly. It also connects with your smartphone via Bluetooth, transmitting statistics like “fork servings” and intervals between bites. Or, you know, you could just save yourself the $79 and stop eating like you’re in prison.)

On paper, this may sound like overkill: tedious and artificial, like you’re psychoanalyzing everything you put in your mouth. But in practice, this is actually the process that keeps you connected to what you’re eating, feeling in control and listening to the signals your body is sending you. It may be hard to follow this strategy perfectly in every situation; sometimes you’re eating the cake while standing up, minding your toddler, and trying to carry on a conversation with your friend. But that doesn’t give you an excuse to mindlessly hoover whatever sweet treat is on your plate.

I have been known to say to my toddler, “Hold on, love. Mama’s taking a bite of her peanut butter cup.”

The Language of Food

Over time and with practice, you’ll learn to reconnect (and stay connected) to your food using these techniques, which will help you feel like you’re always in control of what you’re eating. This is also the key to eliminating feelings of guilt or shame around your food choices. Wait, let me say that again, because it’s really important.

Eliminate “guilt” and “shame” from your food vocabulary.

Food freedom catalyzes you to change your relationship with food. It also requires you to take an honest look at one more aspect of your life-changing transformation: your vocabulary.

Negative self-talk is one of the fastest ways of destroying self-esteem, sabotaging your goals, and upsetting your mood and emotions. “Fat-talk” (speaking disapprovingly about your body) can lead to body dysmorphia, disordered eating habits, and low self-esteem. Statements like “I could have,” “I should be,” and “I used to” short-circuit progress toward your goals, and keep you focused on the past or future, not your accomplishments here in the present. But what about the words you use to describe your food choices?

“I was so good today; I ate really healthy.”

“I was so bad today! I had ice cream and cake at the party.”

“I cheated on my diet with a glass of wine.”

“I totally failed—there were bread crumbs in that dish.”

“I’ve been behaving with my diet; no gluten or dairy.”

“I’m a disaster—I can’t stop eating sugar.”

The words you choose to describe your food and yourself have real power. Treating yourself like a child who needs to “be good” on their diet is misguided. What happens when a child misbehaves? They are punished. Food should never be associated with punishment. Imagining your diet as a jealous lover who will be critical and disapproving if you “cheat” is damaging. Feeling guilt and shame over your “infidelities” will never lead to true food freedom. Linking your food choices with your “success” or “failure” as a person is destructive. Who you are and your self-worth has nothing to do with the potato chips or broccoli on your plate.

Insulting yourself for your choices—any choices—is perhaps the most harmful behavior of all. You aren’t a mess, a disaster, or a train wreck. You aren’t hopeless, worthless, or pathetic. You are a committed, motivated, healthy person working hard to change your relationship with food, grappling with strong emotional ties and the pull of long-standing habits. You are so much more than the results of your struggles.

Someone asked me on Facebook recently, “I ate a Whole30-inspired diet all day, and I know what to call that—I just say I ate Whole30. But what should I call it when later, I eat some pizza? Cheat? Slip? Fail?”

What if you just called it “eating pizza”?

As you change your relationship with food through this program, I invite you to develop a new language around your food. You are not good or bad based on your choices. They are simply choices.

You do not cheat; you make a choice.

You do not fail; you make a choice.

Your choices do not define you as a person.

There is no guilt, shame, or punishment, only consequence.

Imagine, for a moment, that your food is just food, and that your choices are just choices. What you eat is not a statement about your self-worth, your value, or your significance in this world.

Believe this, and everything changes.

You used to feel guilty about the treats you ate because it felt like you were “cheating” on your diet, or you mindlessly ate it up so fast it barely registered, or you lost control and overconsumed, giving in to cravings and eating things you didn’t even want to eat. But this is not that. Here, you are consciously and deliberately choosing to include this “worth it” food in your diet—it’s a choice, not a cheat. Here, you are savoring each morsel, allowing yourself to enjoy the taste and texture and appreciate the pleasure it brings. Here, you are making a conscious, deliberate decision with every single bite, eating only as much as you need to satisfy the experience; stopping when you decide you’ve had enough, not because you’re stuffed and feeling sick.

As part of your food freedom, “guilt” and “shame” are no longer words in your food vocabulary. There is no guilt, only consequences, and you’re not doing anything wrong. In fact, just the opposite, because you’re making educated decisions that are uniquely right for you. Isn’t that refreshing?

This practice will also minimize most of your post-consumption regret, something that used to happen every time you indulged.

Most, but not all.

Regret Is Inevitable

Occasionally, you’ll make a conscious, deliberate decision to indulge; confirm every bite is worth it; stop when you’ve satisfied the experience . . . and sometime later, realize you’ve made a horrible mistake. You experience stomach pain or digestive distress, your energy plummets, your cravings return with a vengeance, or your joints become swollen. When all is said and done, you think, “Well that wasn’t worth it at all.”

If this catches you by surprise, this experience can derail you from your food freedom track because it feels a like failure. You made the wrong decision, and chose poorly. You feel like crap as a result. You think all the good work you’ve put in has been erased with one bad choice. You consider the experience a giant crash-and-burn, and beat yourself up about it for the rest of the day. Or week. Or month. And you know where that leads—a reckless return to Carb-a-Palooza, because you’ve messed it all up and what’s the point, anyway?

Stop and reframe. You haven’t failed. You actually followed your plan to the letter; a win in and of itself! But some regret is inevitable.

How else are you supposed to learn?

Remember, reintroduction is a lifelong process. While it would be lovely if you were able to accurately predict how everything you eat will impact you, in practice, that’s impossible. The only way to know for sure is to try, and sometimes, it will not go well. This isn’t a failure—it’s actually a really valuable teaching tool. Now you get to log the experience in your notebook (mental or otherwise) and add it to your evaluations of “worth it” or “not worth it” in future situations, making you more effective at accurately predicting the consequences of future off-plan indulgences.

An experiment gone wrong is no longer a failure—it’s a learning experience . . . which means there is no reason to beat yourself up, punish yourself, or comfort yourself with more less-healthy food. This is such an important concept, and one that’s probably totally new. I promise, if you can truly pick up what I’m putting down here, it will make all the difference.

Having said that, I’ll also acknowledge that your brain can be a stubborn brat, and you may need to learn your lesson the hard way more than once.

That’s how it was with me and gluten-free toast. Every time I ordered it, I thought, “This time, the toast will be delicious and worth it.” And every single time, it just wasn’t tasty. More like damp cardboard. Not at all worth it. Still, I persisted, because I was hopeful I’d find a delicious toast option that I could eat occasionally without the effects of gluten. But every time, I’d take a bite and say, “Oh, that’s why I never order this.”

My brain still plays tricks on me, too.

The difference is that now, when I order something that isn’t worth it, I don’t finish it just because I told myself I could; instead, I pawn it off on friends who do enjoy it. I don’t get mad at myself for making the wrong choice; I tell myself, “Remember this for next time,” and ask the waitress for a side of mixed berries instead. I don’t eat everything else in sight because I’ve already “ruined” my diet for the day. That’s old diet-think, and I’ve left all that behind. (P.S. Eventually, this particular lesson stuck. Now I no longer order gluten-free toast, and if I want the flavor and texture of toast that much, I order the sourdough and accept the consequences.)

If you find yourself reliving the same lesson again and again, don’t be discouraged. You’re trying to overwrite decades of habits and associations, and the brain really likes to be rewarded (even if your taste buds aren’t that jazzed about it). Be patient, and be persistent. The day will come when that lesson will click just like it did for me, and you’ll have yet another milestone to celebrate on your food freedom path.

We Now Return to Your Regularly Scheduled Diet

The final part of enjoying your food freedom is returning right back to your regularly scheduled diet as soon as your indulgence is over. This is called Avoiding the “What the Hell” Effect, and yes, that is a legitimate psychological term. Okay, willpower expert Roy Baumeister says this is technically called counter-regulatory eating, but the slang is catchy, right? Also, I’m pretty sure you already know what this is.

You give in to a craving, deviating from your normal diet to enjoy a treat. As soon as you do, your brain tries to persuade you that all is already lost (your health, waistline, and willpower), so you might as well eat All the Things. It’s the dietary equivalent of making a detour for gas on your way to study at the library, then saying, “What the hell, I’m already off course” and driving to Vegas instead.

Hey, if you’re going to fail, you might as well fail spectacularly.

Happily, there is far less room for your brain to invoke the WTH Effect in your Food Freedom plan. You’re making conscious decisions to eat something less healthy because you’ve decided it’s worth it. You are fully aware of how this food is likely to impact you, physically and psychologically. You eat mindfully, savoring the experience and stopping when you’re satisfied. You experience no guilt or shame, because you made a deliberate choice, and you don’t think about food like that anymore. And because you haven’t been starving yourself or arbitrarily restricting, you feel less physiological pull to overconsume sugar or carbs.

So you eat, enjoy, deal with the consequences, and go right back to your new, healthful way of eating. You stay there until the next time something special, significant, or delicious comes across your plate, when you repeat the entire process; from asking, “Is this worth it?” to returning to your normal, healthy eating plan.

That’s it. Simple, right?

Sometimes, an amazing food or drink will enter your field of vision five times a day, like if you’re on vacation in Napa. Sometimes, an entire week will go by where it turns out nothing you encounter is actually special or tasty enough to indulge in. Either way, as long as you’re following the plan, you’ll continue to stay in control and generally feel awesome . . . once the effect of all that zinfandel wears off.

Now, another reality check.

Despite your best-laid plans and all the tips I’ve provided thus far, from time to time you’re still going to ride the struggle-bus down Food Freedom Road. Staying conscientious, making sure it’s worth it, and retaining control in today’s busy, stressful world is hard. Overriding decades of habits, associations, and behaviors around less-healthy foods is really hard. Trying to implement your new Food Freedom plan when that cute bartender in Mexico sends your whole group a round of poolside tequila shots is COME ON NOW THAT’S NOT EVEN FAIR.

No Cheat Days

The idea of a “cheat day” flies in the face of food freedom. First, think about what you’ll want to eat for dinner next Tuesday. Wait—you have no idea, because that’s days from now, and how are you supposed to know what you’ll be in the mood for? The same principle applies to sweets and treats. How do you know you’re going to want to eat French fries, cookies, and candy on Sunday? You won’t, until it’s Sunday and you evaluate these foods individually and deliberately in the moment. But if you tell yourself you can have them, on Sunday morning, the plane is landing all over again—reward is on the horizon; let the uncontrollable cravings commence. You can’t plan for worth-it foods, even if you know you’ve got something potentially tempting on the horizon. Until you arrive at your birthday dinner and are face-to-face with the dessert menu, you can’t accurately evaluate whether, in that moment, the cake is worth it or not. The lesson? There are no cheat days when you’re enjoying food freedom, because if everything is a careful, conscious decision, there is absolutely nothing to cheat on.

I wish I could say, “Just do this!” and provide you with a magical trick to keep you on track. Unfortunately, there is no one universal tip that will work to keep everyone on the right path equally well. The key to making lasting changes is having plenty of tools in your toolbox, and pulling them out one by one when you need them until you figure out which is right for the particular job.

First, gather lots of coping strategies—as many as you can think of. Write them all down, because in the heat of the moment, you may come up blank when trying to recall them. Then, when tempted with a rewarding food (especially in the face of stress or other emotions), run through your list, on paper or in your head. Choose a strategy that seems applicable to your current situation. Try it.

Did it work? Sweet! You’re one step further in your food freedom journey. Did it not work? NO PROBLEM—pick another strategy. Try that one, too. Did it work? Success! If not, keep running down your list, pulling out as many different tools as you need to get you through the moment while staying true to your long-term goal. Remember:

Your goal is not to avoid eating the delicious treat.

Your goal is to conscientiously evaluate whether it’s worth it and you want it, and make the decision that’s right for you in the moment. Maybe that’s eating the food. Maybe that’s passing. Either way, what’s important is that it’s a deliberate decision, and not an involuntary snap judgment based on impulse, habit, or emotion.

I’ve already given you some effective tools, taken straight out of habit and willpower research. (Feel free to add to this list based on successful in-the-moment strategies that have worked for you in the past.)

  • Calming breathing techniques
  • Creating temporal distance (“I can have it in fifteen minutes/one hour/one day.”)
  • Employing distraction
  • Using your imagination
  • Enacting the One-Bite Rule
  • Pausing between sips or bites

These quick tactics can be used right in the moment to help you make good choices when temptation looms. However, there are also some big-picture practices you can implement to maintain your hard-earned food freedom. Let’s talk about those next.