**me ranting, about my lack of self control...any input/advice welcome!**

I mean seriously. I worked my butt off today, doing an hour of Bob Harper's "yoga for the warrior", and it felt amazing. i'm on day 8 of my 60 day workout trial. I'm back down to my lowest weight so far, and i was in such a good mood. I had eaten all i needed to eat today, a good 1600 calories, my BMR.
Then my fiance's mother took us out to eat, and i didn't even order a meal. But i was craving the restaurant's chocolate cake, and i didn't actually put in an order for it. But then my mother in law did. She had already ordered it, and i had already refused her meal for me..TnT I ate a good 500 calorie's worth..probably more...
The only tiny way i could justify eating that cake, was that i'm on my period. But it's ending....so...it doesn't really justify it? I know..

It felt nice to have the treat, but now my stomach feels just gross and bloated, and it's gurgling unpleasantly.
I've been coming to realize that it's not just the guilt, that makes me feel bad about eating bad foods, but now it's also the way my body feels afterwards. If i decide to eat bad and have a burrito or something, or fried food, i don't feel satisfied. I'll be full, yes, but i don't feel like i've really FED my body what it wanted.
This is not the first time i have worked out really hard, and blown it later that day. Just the second time..though?

How do you feel when you blow your workout? How do you come back from that?
I know i'm probably beating myself up waaayyy too much about this...because it's the food you have over a period of time that matters...but the thing is, i had just had birthday cake a couple days ago, and a lot of other crap at the superbowl party..
*sigh*

I am having a very weird deja vu reading your post, like I read it about a year ago....so strange. Anyhow, you move on. You chalk it up to being in the wrong place at the wrong time with someone else making a decision that affects you and no matter how well you did for the day, no matter how strong your willpower.....you caved. You're human...you'll do better tomorrow.

Tomorrow, drink lots more water to get that junk out of your system. The further you get away (time wise) from the superbowl and the birthday....the better off you'll be. Things will go back to "normal" for you.

Forgive yourself. You can't be 100%, 100% of the time. Also, capitalize on how the food made you feel ill...and don't forget it. Those feelings could be what saves you from an indiscretion next time temptation pops up.

thank you i needed to hear someone besides myself say that. lol

Recently I stopped thinking of food as "bad" or "good." It's just there—it's food. It has the purpose to sustain us and give us pleasure. Our culture is centered around it.

It was very freeing to not feel guilty about my food choices. Instead I look at something and say "will this help me towards my goals?" (i.e. higher protein, less carb in my circumstance so I can build muscle). Even if it doesn't, I realize that sometimes I want something, so I will find a way to make it work. If it doesn't fit into the day's calorie count (even if it is something most consider healthy) then I don't have it. I tell myself that I can have it tomorrow or another day, but I frequently find that I simply forget to even have what it was I desired.

Putting food in the "bad" category just makes it all the more desirable—i.e. "the forbidden fruit is all the more sweeter"—if you remove those labels from food and just figure out a way to make it work, then it is much easier to enjoy oneself

Another thing to keep in mind is that it is just a piece of cake. It hasn't undone all your hard work in one fell swoop. So, you ate 500 calories over your target for the day - so what? At most, that means you'll reach your goal weight a day later than you would have without the piece of cake. A day! No need to make yourself miserable over that. It feels like a lot when you have only been on plan for a couple of weeks. But once you have been at this for a year or two you will start to understand how little that one day matters.

Everyone slips up - well, nearly everyone, I know for sure I do, not infrequently either. But the process is more forgiving than you think - it doesn't require perfection, just consistency. And your body doesn't care whether you feel guilty and punish yourself or not. So as sontaikle says, take the moral component out of your thinking. Eating off plan is not a crime or a sin, it is not something for which punishment or penance is needed. It is just eating off plan. It is not something you want to do too often, and it's great to figure out ways to avoid it - but neither is it an occasion for self-flagellation. Try to see it as not such a big deal.

Sometimes you just need some chocolate cake

Just try not to let it derail you. Like well I ate the cake so I already blew it so I can have some chips and red wine and cheez it's.... (can you tell I've been there??!)

hey why are you beating yourself up? you had cake. it made you feel sick, don't do it next time- unless you want to.

if you ask yourself whether you really want something and the answer is yes- go ahead and indulge.

you have ONE SLICE OF CAKE!! it's only 500 cals. that's 1/7th of a lb. so? in the long run, it doesn't really matter.

i had a WHOLE mccain cake on sunday night for dinner. how did i react? i enjoyed every single second of it, i was really happy for 2 days, and then i REWARDED my body by a strong, powerful workout.

here is the thing, if you keep cutting your calories, your body is super tired and it doesn't go to the max. when it is a happy healthy body, it performs and cooperates with you. i actually find that i have REALLY strong workouts post "indulgence" and always see a whooosh 2-3 days thereafter.

I did this on Superbowl. And I suffered the next day. But I just followed my plan the last 3 days and it's like it never happened. Like emmy13 said, sometimes you just need chocolate cake. Now you've had it, check. Failure is not falling down, it's not getting back up. Get back up.

Oh, and I forgot to add...and I don't know if I read it here or heard it last fall at a WW meeting: Food is nutrition, not emotion. How is that for profound?!

I think of it this way. I'm not an alcoholic and never have been. Yet i'll drink on occasion...and even drink too much on occasion. But i'm still not an alcoholic. Now if i start binge drinking every week, THEN i'll start to be concerned.

Food should be the same. You're a healthy eater if you eat healthy 95% of the time. If you eat an occasional piece of cake...even if it makes you too full...that does make you a fat person or an overeater. Unless you do it all the time.

I think this is actually great. I did the same thing when I started a few months ago. I would look so forward to having some of the junky stuff I used to exist on, and would plan for it so I could have it once a week. After a couple times of eating a whole bag of some kind of chips or something, I felt gross the next day. So what did I do?

I did the SAME THING at least 3 more times. For some reason it took that long for me to go, hey, dumbass, you're not really enjoying this anymore,so what's the point? I think I had got where I so strongly associated certain foods with "whoo hoo, party time, mindless eating time!" that even though my body was now telling me it "knew better", it took my mind a while to catch up. It was really kind of great to realize I have retrained my body to learn what actual food IS, and it now has sense enough to reject things that are garbage.