Things They Never Told Me About Weight Loss: Honor System

You're getting ready for work in the morning. There is junk food in the kitchen. You could eat it, and no one would know as long as you didn't put it in your food tracker. It's only one doughnut. Just one.  

At lunch, you weren't really feeling like water. You ordered a soda, but it was just one soda. It couldn't make that much of a difference. 

Your coworkers brought in a cake to celebrate someone's birthday. You only had a teeny tiny slice. It was barely even anything worth eating. Even your coworkers gave you a hard time because it was such a small amount.


You ran by the bank, and on your way through the drive-thru, the teller gave you suckers for your kids. But one of them didn't want their sucker, so you decided to have it. It was only a single sucker, and you didn't even finish it. 


On your way home, you had to run in the grocery store to grab a couple of items. In the deli, there was a sample stand set up. The samples were super small, and smelled too heavenly to pass up. 

Your husband took you out to dinner. You were fantastic with your choices for your meal. You even checked the nutrition before you came out, and double checked your portion sizes. Then, he ordered cheesecake for dessert. You didn't order any, but you had one bite of his. 

After the kids went to bed, you decided to have half a glass of wine. It was only 4 ounces.


Little decisions throughout the day, as trivial as they may be, quickly add up to unaccounted for calories. In the list of scenarios above, if all of these occurred in the same day, it would add up to approximately an additional 535 calories. If you have that many unaccounted for calories everyday in a week, you're looking at an additional pound of fat gained, just in a "tiny" amount of things, repeated over and over.

One of the single-most important things that I have learned as I have continued on my journey is the importance of honesty in tracking. It doesn't matter if it is something big like a doughnut in the morning, or something small like a single bite of something. You absolutely have to do your best to account for everything that you put in your mouth. That also absolutely includes anything that you drink other than water, and condiments. Even a single bite of food can generally be around 25 calories, or more.

It's true that no one will know. Weight loss and tracking the food that you eat is definitely an honor system. But you have to keep in mind that the person that you are cheating is yourself. You are robbing yourself of the success that you could be experiencing, while wondering exactly where things are going wrong with your journey; because in your mind, you're making healthy choices and doing everything right. But if you're not including EVERYTHING, then you're potentially faking it without even realizing that you're doing so.

It's so important for your journey to be fully honest with yourself. It could be what is holding you back in your journey.