Eating food as a way of rewarding yourself is a real challenge faced by many people who really want to experience permanent weight loss. For many years our social gatherings including birthdays, weddings, retirements and bar mitzvahs have all included a large component of eating and drinking. This celebration food is not always the kind that is ideal for losing weight and would rarely be found on a healthy calories loss menu.

Can you think of occasions when you celebrated recently at work or at home? Birthdays, engagements, promotions or any of a wide range of other reasons to celebrate, punctuate our lives as often as once a week. It comes as no shock then that rewarding ourselves for planning to get married, earning a raise, living another year or even a successful project at work can happen over a meal or a drink with food.

Perhaps you treat yourself to dinner at a restaurant after a frantic project at work or you may have been exercising regularly and want to acknowledge the effort this has taken with a bowl of wedges and a beer. The problem with this is that while the idea of reward is OK, even worthwhile, if you do this with food your capacity to stay committed to a calories loss menu will diminish. To alter this kind of thinking, it is important that you recognize how you are undermining your healthy eating and find other ways to celebrate in your life.

Discover how food has become a reward for your achievements, especially whether or not this has become a behavior you developed as a child or more recently during your adulthood. Interestingly but perhaps not surprisingly childhood is often the source of some of our eating behaviors and because these were learned in a different era when puddings with every meal and lashings of cream with cake were acceptable then, they are not always helpful now. When you have determined how you learned to eat food rewards as you do, you will be better able to change them.

Consciously decide NOT to reward yourself with food as part of your next celebration and replace the food and champagne at a dinner evening with rewards of a different non-calorie kind. There are plenty to choose from so go to a museum or a gallery, take an afternoon nap, take an art class or even take an extra long, hot bubble bath. Choices like these provide a reward especially tailored for you and allow you to continue with your calories loss diet and successfully lose weight.

Search out rewards that you can enjoy for an extended time, unlike food rewards that only last as long as it takes to eat them. Spend an afternoon at the beach, go to the craft store and blow $20 on any craft supplies that look fun, treat yourself to a day at a local spa or be like me and splurge of a new bottle of perfume or pair of shoes. There are endless ways of finding longer lasting rewards than foods and every time you use them, wear them or experience them they remind you that you are achieving your work or family goals as well as your health goal; sticking with your calories loss eating plan and continuing to lose weight.

Locate places for outings with friends and family that do not focus on eating so that you can alter the way you think about rewarding yourself differently. Find places where activity is the main reason for getting together rather than eating. Frisbee or a game of soccer in the park, hip Latin dance classes are all fun, involve the fine tuning of your skills, include no food and are more than likely going to appeal to those you choose to invite to join you.

Avoid situations in which food is made the center of the celebration as much as you can and remember that your long term goal is long term weight loss. If you have no choice, on occasions like office parties or weddings, join in the celebrations by interacting with the people around you or enjoying the music, rather than concentrating on the meal itself. Look for food items that can be part of your calories loss diet and enjoy the ‘win win’ outcome of being part of the celebration without compromising your journey to a healthier body and life.