Your Friday Five: The Science Behind “Delay, Don’t Deny”

This week’s Friday Five brings you inside a phrase that’s been echoing through my mind lately: delay, don’t deny. (here is a video where I talk about this experience)
It’s a simple strategy I’ve used for years in the clinic—and in my own life—but today I’m breaking down why it works and the science that makes it powerful.

I tell the real-life story of walking past my favorite bakery, spotting the rare chocolate donut, and making a very intentional decision:
 Yes, I’m going to have it… but not yet.

Inside this short episode, we explore:

1. Why “delay, don’t deny” keeps your metabolism stable

Putting protein + fiber into your system before a treat dramatically changes the blood sugar curve.
 A blunted rise = fewer cravings, fewer urges, and a calmer body afterward.

2. How your hunger hormone reacts to restriction (this will surprise you)

Research shows that even thinking you’re about to restrict increases ghrelin—the hormone that tells you you’re hungry.
Translation:
Telling yourself “I can’t have that” makes you want it more.

3. Why this approach breaks the urge-driven eating cycle

A pause—even 10–30 minutes—creates just enough space between the emotion and the action.
 You still have full permission to eat the food; it’s simply not dictating the timing.

4. What balanced first meals look like in real life

I walk you through exactly what I ate: spinach, cucumbers, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt with ranch, all tucked into little silicone molds. Nothing fancy—just quick, nourishing, and ready.

5. How to create your own “fast-action foods” list

This part is crucial.
 A fridge list takes the guesswork out of what to reach for when you’re ravenous and tempted to go straight for the pantry.
 Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, fruit, veggies—simple staples that are always there to stabilize your system.

If you ever find yourself walking through the door starving, tempted to eat whatever is closest, try this approach:

Delay, don’t deny. Nourish first. Pause. Reassess. Then decide.

Over time, this leads to totally different eating patterns—and a calmer, more predictable body.

Have an amazing weekend. Let me know how “delay, don’t deny” goes for you.
See you Monday.

All of the information on this podcast is for general informational purposes only. Please talk to your physician and medical team about what is right for you. No medical advice is being on this podcast.

If you live in Indiana or Illinois and want to work with doctor Matthea Rentea, you can find out more on www.RenteaClinic.com

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Transcript

0:29

Welcome back to another, your Friday five. Recently, the phrase that has just been burned into my brain is delay. Don't deny. Now, this is a strategy that I've used for a long time with patients in the clinic and I use it for myself, and it's a strategy that works, but I wanna explain to you some of the science behind it. So the principle of delay don't deny is that if let's say you are on a health journey. You are working on eating protein and fiber and whole based foods, but you want something that maybe traditionally is not necessarily gonna get you toward your health goals. So I'm gonna give the example that occurred with me today. So we have a bakery bias and they have a really amazing chocolate donut. It had been weeks since I'd had it and I was coming back from the post office and I said, I was going by it. And I was like, I would really like to see if they had one and they had one. Isn't this amazing? I knew I wanna have this, and it was a very calm decision. It wasn't, I I, it might sound like it's impulse dog. You went by it and then you got it. But for days I had not been having very many sweets and I like once or twice a week to have things like this. I got it and I knew I wanted it. And ironically, I was actually very hungry when I got home and I knew that I was gonna have it. But I was gonna delay it, not deny it, but delay it because I needed to first eat protein and fiber and eat a normal meal. Why would I choose to do this? I choose to do this because I want to nourish my body first. I want to give it what it needs first, number one. Sometimes you don't even end up wanting that thing. Still. That was not the case today. I still did want it. But I know that I feel very different afterward. I don't end up having increased urges and cravings, if I would have the donut just on its own. And the reason being that your blood sugar is very differently managed when you have protein and fiber. The blood sugar spike is a lot less. The curve is blunted, and so you have a more favorable metabolic result when you have the protein and fiber first, and then that carbohydrate. Versus if you had it on its own. I just started with making some spinach, cutting some cucumber up a little bit of Greek yogurt with Hidden Valley Ranch powder. What else? There's a little bit of cottage cheese. I have these cute little cupcake, oh gosh, they're like reusable. What? What is the word I'm thinking of? These little silicone reusable cupcake molds. I used those as like little ramekins, if you would. And so I had this different food. I felt amazing. And then I enjoyed the donut. And the psychology here, one of the things that happens, the reason that you actually need to care about eliminating restriction from your thought process and how you're living your life, it's because even the thought of restriction is gonna increase your ghrelin and hunger hormone, which is the one that says you're hungry. Start eating. And so this is fascinating. They did a study where they looked at, they had two groups of people and one group they said. This shake is indulgent that you're gonna have, and the other group, they said, this is a health conscious shake. So they were made to believe that it was low calorie, and then they measured the blood levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin, and those that thought they were gonna have a low calorie shake, their hunger hormone level ghrelin was increased. So just even the thought of restriction increases your hunger level. Now, we can't make decisions based on one-off studies like this, right? But what it really does show you is how powerful our brain is and how we have to work with it and not against it. If I tell myself I can really have whatever I want. But I'm gonna first balance it. Now I'm gonna then see if I even want it. I'm gonna put some pauses in. I'm gonna put some delays between what I'm wanting and when I'm having it so that it's not urge driven eating. There's actually a break between what the emotions are and the action that I take there's a lot that goes into this. You get an entirely different outcome long term, this is how some people, I think, really think it's garbage when it's like, oh, well listen. Like you're not actually saying that restriction can't happen. And because you do need to restrict the calories and you do need to do these things. But the way in which you work on it can be radically different. I wanted to bring up this concept to you. Delay. Don't deny. If you ever get home and you're so hungry, you just wanna rip through the pantry. Start out first with a veggie tray. Start out first with Ebola cottage cheese with some frozen blueberries on it. Have your list on the fridge. I'll make another episode. I'll do this for next week's episode. Make a list on the fridge. Even if you're super hungry, you can just look at the list and there are I. There are ideas that are easy and readily available in the house. This is the way that you give yourself a fighting chance in these scenarios. You pre-plan it. You have the ideas written on the fridge. You always have some fast action items that you can get to. Like in our fridge, we always have Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, some type of a veggie. These things are just always in there, and there's always a few kinds of fruit. And what I found over time, there's no shortage of combinations that can be made with the Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and the fruit or something salty. It's really up to me. If things are gonna go south, that's fine, but I have to very consciously pick that instead of just doing what really serves me well. Delay don't deny if that's something that's helpful to you. If you come home on a day and you're just so incredibly hungry, start with those foods first and then reassess. How you're feeling. Maybe you also drink some water and you just sit there for 30 minutes. You see, okay, how am I feeling now? And you just have that other check-in. Then you see if you still want that stuff, not that you can't have it. And I think that then the days to come, you won't have as high urges and cravings. It's not like this cycle that you have to break out of. I hope that this is helpful, but this has been something that I've used for a long time with people and typically when we do this, the food choices are just so different. Have an amazing weekend. If you need to use the delay, don't deny. Implement that in your world and let me know how it goes. See you Monday.