Self-Denial & Diet

The mindset for dealing with cravings and staying on track with your diet

Mike had just agreed to go to his friend’s favorite dinner spot for his birthday. The place just so happens to also be the best pizza joint in the city. The problem is Mike just recently made a commitment to eat better. He was tired of his pants fitting too tight, lacking confidence, and not having enough energy to get to the gym and lift weights like he has been trying to do for months.

Mike thinks for a second that maybe he can just get a salad at the pizza place. After all, they do have a great cobb salad that his wife ordered for them a few years back when they were first dating. But Mike quickly retreats, knowing that it will be incredibly hard for him to make it through the dining experience without having any pizza. Instead, Mike tells himself, “I’ll just have one”. He plans to eat a big lunch so he’s not as hungry at the dinner and plans to have one of his premade healthy meals ready to go when he gets home. Great plan Mike!

Does a scenario like this sound familiar to you? If it does, then what Mike does when he gets to the restaurant may also sound familiar. Absolute binge sesh. Once he said yes to one breadstick it was game over. 7 slices of pizza, 4 beers, and a chocolate dessert pie later and Mike is feeling miserable and upset with himself for taking a step back with his diet.

We’ve all been there before.

First and foremost it should be acknowledged that when this happens, the best thing for Mike to do is simply get back on track. No amount of guilt, fasting, or punishment in the gym is going to change a bad meal and that bad meal isn’t going to completely derail his progress, as long as he gets back on track.

But wouldn’t it be nice to not fall off track in these situations? Wouldn’t it be great to just one time leave a social situation like that feeling good about yourself knowing you have maintained on the path towards your health goals?

The answer is yes! Of course, we all want that, but achieving it proves to be harder and harder every time we find ourselves in a social situation where delicious cuisine is in abundance.

So what’s the solution?

I think the answer can be found in what the Stoics refer to as self-denial. Self-denial is the act of denying ourselves certain pleasures with the goal of improving our ability to control our cravings and desires in the future.

The stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus said, “We should periodically cause ourselves to experience discomfort that we could easily have avoided.” He says we should “allow ourselves to become thirsty or hungry, even though water and food are at hand.”

Why would we do such a thing to ourselves? Philosophy professor William B. Irvine says there are 3 major benefits to doing so.

The first one is that “we harden ourselves against misfortunes that might befall us in the future.” Irvine explains that if all we know is comfort, what are we going to do when we lose our jobs and can no longer afford the luxurious cuisines we now enjoy. Or when we are facing an illness and know that what is required for us to get better is abstinence from certain dietary pleasures. Practicing self-denial will make these potential hardships in the future easier for us to manage.

The second benefit to self-denial, Irvine says, is the immediate boost in confidence we feel when we achieve self-denial. “A person who periodically experiences minor discomforts will grow confident that he can withstand major discomforts as well, so the prospect of experiencing such discomforts at some future time will not, at present, be a source of anxiety.” In the example story of Mike, he could have left that dinner feeling confident in his ability to control his urges and cravings and that confidence could spill over into his social interactions at the dinner, his quality time with his wife when he gets home, and even his performance at his job the next day.

The third benefit Irvine discusses is appreciation. When we voluntarily forgo some of the many pleasures we have the opportunity to enjoy each day, it makes us especially appreciate the pleasures that we do experience. Hopefully more meaningful ones like a quality real food meal prepared by your spouse or even the pizza you decide to treat yourself when visiting New York because you have been dialed in with your diet for so long now (I just did that last week).

In essence, self-denial hardens us to have better control in tougher situations in the future. For Mike, it means being able to stick with the plan he had set for himself and using that win as momentum to continue on his health journey.

Still, you may be thinking, “why would I want to deny myself the things that I want? Especially when I can have them?” I think the Stoics had a great answer to that question as well.

Marcus Aurelius says, “if we cannot resist pleasures, we will end up playing the role of slave.” He says we will spend our life “ever grumbling at today and lamenting over tomorrow.”

In short, Marcus is saying that if we cannot resist the pleasures that tempt us, then we are not in control of our lives, we are simply slaves to our own desires and vices. And I think we can all agree that the best approach to living a happy and healthy life, is to be in control in the driver’s seat.

Thanks for reading,

Chris Irvin

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