Recently I saw a fitness guy on Instagram talking about National Donut Day.

He said to buy a box and have one if you want, or eat one bite of all 12, because no one gets fat from eating one donut.

Look, he’s not wrong. If you only ever ate one donut in your life, and your eating was otherwise perfect, no, you wouldn’t get fat.

Heck, even one donut a month with an otherwise pristine diet probably wouldn’t make you fat.

The problem here isn’t “one donut.”

The problem is eating one donut too often, along with one pizza too often, one plate of nachos too often, one whole bag of potato chips too often, one cheesecake too often, and on and on.

The “everything in moderation” mindset is seriously flawed, because some people, with some things, cannot do moderation.

Can a crack addict have crack in moderation?

Can an alcoholic have alcohol in moderation?

If you just TASTE sweetness and go on a binge, can you do sweets in moderation?

You know the answer to all three of those questions.

Some people can do moderation in general, or at least with some stuff.

A lot of people cannot, and of those people, a certain percentage lie to themselves and say they can…only to eat a whole bag of Oreos and call it “moderation.”

That’s why, on Code Red, we don’t do moderation in weight loss mode.

You eat the foods to eat, you avoid the foods to avoid, and in so doing, you get your weight off faster than people who try to do “moderation” and fall off the wagon.

In maintenance, I teach you how to reintroduce foods we avoid in weight loss mode, but that doesn’t mean you should reintroduce everything.

If it’s a trigger food and you can’t do it in moderation now, you probably won’t be able to in maintenance, either.

It also doesn’t help that most of today’s processed food is chemically engineered to be addictive.

That makes it pretty tough to eat it in moderation.

Bottom line: I don’t want you to fear food, but I do want you to get real with yourself when it comes to moderation…

Even if other people in your life – or your favorite influencers – don’t get it.