Bad Days

I just log everything from a "bad weekend", and continue my journey the next day. Life happens and you can't avoid it. Just get up, dust yourself off, and continue on your way.

After a bad day of eating, I'll sit down and write down where I went wrong, e.g. no breakfast, chose a mars bar over a banana at breaktime, skipped lunch, leading to eating a pack of biscuits in the late afternoon... etc, to try and see what the reasons were.

Then I tend to log EVERYTHING, and try to work out if I can still be at or under my calorie goal for the week, by eating a bit less for the rest of the week i.e. if I ate an extra 1000 calories on a bad day, over the course of the week that works out as 143 extra calories a day, so I will try and be at least 143 calories under my goal each day for the rest of the week food wise, or burn an extra 143 calories a day at the gym.

Don't beat yourself up - my biggest mistakes in the past have been working hard for a few weeks, then having one bad day/weekend and thinking "sod it, might as well give up now!"

I've been working to accept that it just happens! I am human and I am not always going to follow a strict eating regime, and that's okay. What makes us fat in the long term is not one odd weekend, week, or even holiday season necessarily - it's that kind of consumption on an on-going basis. Being mindful of all this helps me get back on track, as long as I keep my goal in the forefront of my mind, I know I am doing far better than I would be on the couch with a family bag of peanut m&ms hahaha. Awareness!

I don't beat myself up.. I just see it as an exception and get back on track. One of the main reason I had so many issues in the past was that I beat myself up so much about eating, or developed a .."See you can't do it" attitude. Now, I just see it as an exception and try to develop a plan for next time. One mantra I use when faced with yummy stuff "That is not the only piece of pie I will ever get to eat" then i may take a bite, if my day affords it.. or skip it. I log it all, even when I've been stupid..

Exceptions do not need to be a rule, but if you keep making the same mistakes without examining why and thinking about what you will do next time .. then the exception becomes a rule.. if that happens then yo-yo will be in your future. To be able to deal with the mistakes, you have to be honest with yourself. To see a change in your eating habits, you have to REPLACE one behavior or food choice with another, until that replacement becomes the norm.