Delayed gratification is not something we hear about today. Everything is so fast paced and geared toward instant gratification. With all of our technology we have so many things right at our fingertips. When it comes to how and what we eat, we need to retrain our brains to understand the benefits of healthy eating. It is so easy to just grab some tasty fast food on the way home from a stressful day or have some comfort food in your house ready to be gobbled up as soon as you get home. When we eat these “comfort foods” we get instant gratification. Our day has just become wonderful and stress free for those few precious moments that we are enjoying that delicious food. But in reality what we’ve just done is set ourselves up for a stressful tomorrow because we will be sluggish and tired because our diet hasn’t provided the nutrients our body needs to thrive. We create an endless cycle of eating to feel better instantly. So how do we deny ourselves those “comfort foods” when we are feeling down or stressed? We have to prove to ourselves that the delayed gratification of eating healthy is a higher reward! Most of us know this to be true but we don’t really believe it because we’ve never experienced this kind of reward. Eating healthy on a regular basis allows our bodies to thrive. We are able to handle the everyday stress of life so much better because we have the energy to take it all on. We must identify what foods we like that will give us this high later in the day or even the next day. Eating healthy and learning this delayed gratification makes it so much easier to say no to all the delicious “comfort food” because we know all the facts! The choice becomes feel good now for 20 minutes or feel great all day tomorrow!
On a personal note I didn’t always eat very healthy. Looking back I can tell you I never truly felt good. I thought I felt good but I didn’t really know what feeling good was. To put that into perspective when I’m feeling sluggish and not having a very good day I still feel significantly better than my best days when I was not eating properly in the past. Now I feel GREAT 99% of the time! I also know that most of the time that 1% of not feeling well is because I ate something that was absolutely delicious but very unhealthy!
