A while back, 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, plus one cheesecake too often, and on and on.

People who tell you to do stuff like eat the donut for National Donut Day don’t seem to understand how food and sugar addiction work.

If they did, they’d realize that telling a sugar addict to have one donut is like telling a recovering alcoholic to have just one drink.

The “have just one” and “everything in moderation” mindsets DO NOT WORK with addiction.

Seriously, think about it.

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 REALLY do sweets in moderation?

You know the answer to all three of those questions.

Some people (maybe even including the guy who said to eat donuts on National Donut Day) can do moderation in general, or at least with some stuff.

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

On Code Red, we work mostly with people who are addicted to food, sugar, or both, so 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 include cheats or moderation and fall off the wagon.

In maintenance, I teach you how to reintroduce foods we avoid in weight loss mode…though to be clear, just because you can reintroduce it doesn’t mean you should.

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.

Look, 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 and otherwise intelligent health and fitness experts online INSIST that you should.

This also applies to the people who claim that if you just hit your macros, you can eat whatever you want…that mentality doesn’t take food or sugar addiction into account.

As always, all I ask is that you be honest with yourself, even if the answer isn’t what part of you wants to hear.