How to eat sweets duing weight loss?

Chocolate cake and sausage rolls might not sound like the kinds of foods you should eat on a diet. But planning a 'cheat' day on which you eat your favourite treats can help you battle the bulge.

Scheduled ‘goal deviations’ give us an emotional boost and increase our motivation, which results in us being more likely to stick with the diet long-term, the researchers suggested.

However, they strongly emphasised that the cheating must be planned in advance; unscheduled lapses can be a disaster, with dieters at risk of giving up altogether if they feel they have ‘failed’, they warned.

‘It may be beneficial for long-term success to occasionally be bad, as long as it is planned,’ said the researchers from Tilburg University in Holland and the Catholic University of Portugal in Lisbon.

‘It is however crucial that the hedonic (pleasurable) goal deviations are planned because unplanned goal deviations might easily be interpreted as failures, which may reduce consumers’ mood, and may lead to a “what-the-hell” effect with goal pursuit being stopped altogether.

‘When consumers share the belief that any deviation from current goal-striving represents a failure, they may end up overemphasising any initial lapse, such that even small misalignments result in total abandonment of the goal,’ they added.

For the study, 36 men and women with concerns about their weight were assigned to one of two groups who were to follow a diet plan for two weeks.

The first group dieted continuously (the straight-striving condition) while the second incorporated a cheat day once a week (the intermittent-striving condition).

Straight-striving participants were given a diet plan which totalled 1,500 calories a day and told that they should strictly follow it.

Intermittent-striving participants, meanwhile, were given a plan totalling 1,300 calories a day, but told that at the end of each week they were allowed to eat any kind of food, up to a total amount of 2,700 calories.

Each person completed an online diary each day of the diet and also returned to the lab twice to be tested.

The researchers found that, for those in the straight-striving group, their motivation to continue with the diet was negatively influenced whenever they ate something naughty, and was also affected by the mood they were experiencing that day.

In contrast, the motivation of those in the cheat-day group was not affected if they slipped up, or were having a bad day.

Additionally, those in the cheat-day group experienced more positive emotions as they continued on the diet compared to the other group.

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