Food guilt?!

Food is amazing! Fearing food is not good.

Like others have said, you have to put it in perspective. I am working on this myself. When I feel guilty, my go-to is to then just binge because I've already "ruined it" anyway. I think I'll start over the next day, after the weekend, maybe even the next week. I truly believe that this was the cause of most of my weight gain! Going over by a couple hundred calories one day isn't really going to make a difference.

Do you know anyone who maintains a normal weight naturally? Take a closer look at how they eat. You'll notice some days they are hungrier and eat more, other days they are less hungry and eat less. That's just how the normal human body operates. Why would you blame yourself for the tendency to feel hungrier sometimes, and the very normal tendency to want to satisfy that hunger?

Eating more sometimes is going to happen regardless of how you feel about it, so you can either accept it as a normal part of the process or keep ruminating and blaming yourself. You'll find a spontaneous increase in hunger sometimes, being tempted by food when not hungry sometimes, holidays and gatherings, really wanting a higher calorie dish vs a lower calorie one, occasional overeating driven by poor planning or feelings...etc. These are all normal events to overeat and everyone goes through them.

The only difference between those who lose weight and those who gain it is that those who lose are consistently in a deficit outside of these events. Accepting them as normal allows them to move on right away instead of the vicious cycle of overeating, feeling guilty, doubling down, feeling restricted, which leads to overeating, and repeat.

Looking at your post, you didn't even overeat since you were within your calories (exercise calories are meant to be eaten). You're feeling guilty for doing what you're supposed to be doing. Isn't that a bit harsh?

I think it’s really important to think about why you feel guilty. Is it because you’ve expected yourself every single day of your life to stay within a certain calorie count? If so, is that reasonable? If not, how many days per week or month are you going to allow yourself some leeway, and how much? It helps me to have a certain number of days each month when I know I’m going over. If i don’t work this out in advance, I do feel bad when I go over OR end going over frequently. But otherwise, I think, “Great, dinner out with my son is going to be one of my over days, and I’ll have two more left in July afterwards!” What I want to avoid is both never having the chance to enjoy the pleasure of foods, but also not using the pleasure of foods to derail the rest of my work.