What are your non-negotiables?

Lesson learned (yet again);  Deprivation does not work for me.

I already eat a diet that is pretty limited compared to most people.  I do not eat meat (poultry and seafood included).  I try to avoid dairy aside from a slice of light cheese every now and then.  I eat egg whites but avoid eating egg yolks.  I avoid sugar in terms of chocolate, candy, cake, cookies, etc.  I do not eat rice because I don't like it.  I avoid white bread and eating bread in general except for a few servings of reduced calorie bread a day.  You get the point.  However, it is a balance that I have personally struck between having mostly all healthy stuff with the right mix of indulgence thrown in to keep me appeased. 

Every now and then I get this extreme inclination to try to modify my diet to give up something else.  It pretty much results in me hyper-planning, initially executing successfully and then crashing when I realize that I feel deprived.  This week I decided that I was going to try an Atkins-ish induction type of plan.  I was not going to consume more than 20 net grams of carbohydrate per day to see how my body responded.  I tracked everything meticulously.  The first day went very well.  I was proud that I stuck with it.  Same with the 2nd and 3rd days.  I realized on the evening of day 3, I was starting to get slightly annoyed.  I wanted bread.  I wanted pasta.  I wanted vegetables!  I eat 5-15 servings of vegetables on any given day.  I love eating them.  But they did not fit in with the crazy plan that I had devised.  I could only have a small amount here and there to stay on plan.  

Late on night 3, I told myself to have a serving of SOMETHING to try to quiet the crazy feeling.  I could not stop fixating on all of the food that I was trying to eliminate.  In my head, I agreed to 1 portion of whatever looked the most appealing.  I ate 1 package of my kids' microwave mac and cheese.  I think it was the best mac and cheese ever.  The next day I woke up and went carb crazy.  Four servings of pita chips with hummus.  Four servings of biscuits and gravy.  I had 3 diet cokes.  I had french fries from McDonald's.  I felt gross and bloated.  But I finally felt satisfied and reached a point where I felt back in balance.  The crazy cravings were gone.

Lesson learned - when you have found that sweet spot that works, don't rock the boat.  For me, that means that I need to listen to my body and know what I can realistically give up and what I will never be able to part with, even in the short-term.  I think when you look at your diet and figure out what your non-negotiables are, you can start planning everything else around those things.

So, what are your non-negotiables?