The Fuck Yes Framework to Stop Mindless Over-Eating

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​We are mindful of desire when we experience it with an embodied awareness, recognizing the sensations and thoughts of wanting as arising and passing phenomena.
––Tara Brach

When you diet, you do most things right.

You’re in a moderate deficit; you’re not starving yourself.

You’re eating your protein, fibre, fruit, and veg regularly.

And yet, no matter how hard you try to be disciplined, you always eat too much when going out for a meal or when someone brings cake to work.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because I coach many people like you.
 
That’s why I’ve developed the Fuck Yes Framework as an effective mindset strategy to overcome mindless over-eating.
 
The Framework is simple: Only eat foods that are worth it, stop when they’re no longer worth it, and think about how they’ll make you feel after.
 
This Framework has three components:
 

1. Fuck Yes foods
2. Fuck Yes bites
3. Fuck Yes mood

#1. Fuck Yes foods

We live in an obesogenic environment, which means we’re surrounded by tempting food that’s designed for us to over-eat.

A bag of peanut M&Ms left open on the table at a birthday party, filling the air with the scent of roasted peanuts and chocolate.

A basket of freshly baked garlic bread at a fancy Italian restaurant, seducing you with its mouth-watering crust.

A delicious ice-cream you know you really don’t “need” after the meal you’ve just eaten, but it looks so good…

While there are many tempting foods, not all of them will be Fuck Yes foods.

Your mum’s homemade chocolate cake is way more of a Fuck Yes food than the box of stale supermarket doughnuts someone brought to the office two days ago.
 
So, before diving into that bag of M&Ms, bread basket, or ice-cream, ask yourself: “Is this a Fuck Yes food?”


If so, enjoy it using this Framework.
 
But if it isn’t, is it really worth the trade-offs?
 
#2. Fuck Yes bites

In most cases, the pleasure of eating has diminishing returns.

The first bite is the most delicious.
 
The second is still good.
 
The fifth is just fine.
 
By the tenth, you’re just eating because the food is there.
 
As you keep eating, you begin to feel full and to experience more and more palate fatigue – a fancy term that means you’re getting tired of the same flavour.
 
Eventually, you may only clean the plate because you didn’t want to waste it or because you were taught to eat everything growing up.

But, while pleasure decreases with each bite, the calories per bite are always the same. So, if you run out of Fuck Yes bites and continue eating anyway, you’re no longer investing those calories into enjoyment; you’re wasting them.

After every bite of a Fuck Yes food, check in with yourself: “Is this still a Fuck Yes?”
 
And if it isn’t, you don’t need to keep eating.

#3. Fuck Yes mood

You don’t just want to pick Fuck Yes foods and bites; you also want to eat food you love in quantities that make you feel like a Fuck Yes afterwards.
 
Most of us over-eat because we want the immediate gratification that comes with it, the dopamine hit when that delicious combination of sugar, salt, and fat lands on your tongue and makes fireworks go off in your brain.
 
But that immediate gratification lasts a few seconds, whereas how you feel long-term after over-eating isn’t quite as pleasant:
 

• That feeling like you’re out of control around food
• Shame and guilt for “messing up again”
• The crushing inability to achieve the fit physique you work so hard for the rest of the time

 
Now think about how eating just enough of a Fuck Yes food would make you feel instead:
 

• Like you scratched the itch without going overboard
• Confident and in control
• Like you can trust yourself

 
In other words, you’re going to feel like a Fuck Yes.

So, when making a choice about eating a highly palatable food, and how much of it to have, think beyond immediate gratification and ask yourself: “How do I want this food to make me feel later?”

Practising this three-pronged Fuck Yes framework will help you see food in a different light, and make choices that better serve your long-term goals.

Thank you for reading. May you make great gains.
 
Download my free copy of The Masc/Fem Physique Blueprint: a set of four programs to choose from, with an evidence-based guide to training and nutrition for your goal physique.
 
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