Restricting yourself from your favourite food is difficult, and often leads to larger than usual cheat days where we overdo it; and ultimately end up feeling guilty for it.
This is why National Eat What You Want Day is celebrated once a year; with the aim to remind you that a healthy eating plan makes room for the things you love. We encourage you to treat yourself with your favourite food and drink, because on this day no one can tell you what NOT to eat.
What is the National Eat What You Want Day?
This day was created by a husband-and-wife team, Thomas and Ruth Roy to help people break away from the frustrating health and diet trends of our times. Many people spend time stressing over their diet and what they should or shouldn’t eat, mainly because we are surrounded by advertisements and magazines showing perfectly toned and tanned models that constantly make us feel inadequate.
Benefits of taking a break from your diet:
Having a day where you can give yourself a break is beneficial for your mental health and wellbeing. Embracing a healthy and balanced diet is the first step towards better health. However, evidence shows that some people become obsessed over it, resulting in serious psychological problems. Dietary restraint can lead to greater reactivity to food clues, increased cravings and disinhibition, overeating and binge eating.
Biologically, excessive dieting can lead to unhealthy changes in body composition, hormonal changes, reduced bone density, menstrual disturbances, and lower resting energy expenditure. Research shows that aggressive dieting lowers the base metabolic rate, inducing people to burn less energy when resting. This results in significantly lower daily needs in order to sustain achieved weight after the diet is over. For these reasons, National Eat What You Want day was introduced as a day to give you the freedom of choosing what you want without feeling guilty about it. It is also perfect if there is something that you have wanted to try for a while, but you have been holding out, because you don’t want to cheat your diet.
How do people celebrate this day?
People celebrate this day in different ways. The majority of people stop counting calories and go berserk, eating everything from ice-cream, chocolates, cakes and pies. Other people would treat themselves by eating expensive and luxury foods such as caviar or lobsters. There are also people that try to recreate their favourite childhood meal in their home. The key is to eat something that you truly enjoy, so whatever food is for you, get celebrating!
Activities to do during National What You Eat Day:
There are a number of different ways to make this day fun. Why not switch the typical meals around? You can have dinner for breakfast, and breakfast for dinner. You can also engage your children to cook dinner for you or cook together with them.
Another way to make National Eat What You Want day fun is to break your typical routine. You can try to eat at different times or go for lunch with your colleagues instead of bringing your usual packed lunch at work.
National Eat What You Want day is not only about eating what you want but is also about feeling happy and good with yourself. So, why not going to your favourite theme park to have fun, or taking a small holiday to enjoy this day?
Why stop there?
Instead of celebrating once a year, and restricting yourself throughout; why not use this as your opportunity to start creating healthy, lasting habits. Formulating a proper eating plan that allows you to indulge a little, includes cheat days, and sneaky snacks to keep cravings at bay will empower you to change your relationship with food.
Dieting and eating healthy shouldn't mean plain, boring meals, and weekends spent food prepping for the week ahead. Our aim is to help you change your relationship with food, by providing nutritious, fresh meals. To help create healthy, consistent habits one meal at a time.