The Low Sacrifice‘ Diet’ 65 When I get people to do an Eating Awareness Diary, in which I get them to list the emotions they have as they begin to eat different foods, I consistently find one emotion with eating HSFs such as chocolate, and foods like it – guilt! Worse, when I ask them how much savoring happened at the time, they say words like‘ Are you kidding? Because I shouldn’ t be eating it, I shovel it down so fast it doesn’ t touch the sides!’ In Chapter 5, I discussed why I ate one of my forbidden foods, chocolate chip cookies, for morning tea. This was all about this process of‘ allowing’. So for those of my patients who love chocolate, I prescribe it for morning tea for all the reasons I do it. Some people are really worried that if they start they won’ t stop. This is part of the deprivation – binge cycle. Take out the deprivation and the urge that drives the binge disappears. It may be there initially, when we start to‘ allow’, because our brain is not convinced yet. But, over time, usually no more than a couple of weeks, the drive to binge lessens. On top of this, people rarely binge or over-eat food in the morning. Unless you have the disorder, Bulimia Nervosa, over-eating is a‘ pm’ pursuit. A strange thing happens when I prescribe chocolate in the morning on a regular basis. A surprising number of my clients come back and tell me that not only did they find that they did not crave the chocolate later in the day when they were more likely to over-eat, but some days they skipped the chocolate altogether. This is where‘ allowing’ is more than just a way of avoiding the feeling of deprivation as the day progresses. It actually treats the craving for the food in the first place. This is simply because the craving was created by disallowing. How do you get a child to want something – tell them they can’ t have it! Previously uninteresting subjects like sex and alcohol suddenly claim a position of intense interest. For this reason it is important to be aware that foods will move in and out of our HSF group over time. An LSF, once we stop eating it, may become more attractive to us over time. If this happens, treat it as an HSF and add it back on your menu.