My workplace recently celebrated a milestone birthday. You know what comes with birthdays right, birthday cake. Chocolate birthday cake to be exact. The cake was for the patients to say thank you and so they could join us in the celebrations.

When I turned up at work, I’d forgotten that there was going to be cake. I didn’t have chocolate cake on my plan. I was unprepared for the mind games that followed.

My first thought was “Flag the plan, I’m going to allow myself one piece of cake and really enjoy it”. That wasn’t a great thought to start with and it only went downhill from there. Just having one piece of cake went out the window after having that one piece of cake. The cake was sitting on the reception desk calling my name.

I ate more than one piece and didn’t even take the time to think about my actions.

I later realised none of my go to weight loss tools popped into my head. Bummer! I guess I still have plenty of work to do on my mindset around emotional eating. But it’s a journey right, and I’m ok with that.

Instead, I instantly reverted back to one of my childhood habits of sneaking food and eating it when no one was looking. Like when you eat cake and no one knows, it doesn’t count… right? The calories don’t matter and it never happened…

Have you ever done this before? I felt out of control. I had to eat the cake and that was all I could think about. So I just ate the cake.

Driving home after work I felt disappointed in myself but I choose to reflect on the experience rather than beat myself up. Finally the mindset tools I’ve been learning about and practicing started to kick in. A few hours too late but better late than never.

I accepted the fact that I ate off plan but I was ready to learn from the experience. I wasn’t going to cause suffering for myself so I took some time to think about what happened to prepare myself for the next time I was in a similar situation. There was going to be cake at work for the rest of the week so I had plenty of time to put what I’ve learnt into practice.

I asked myself, “How did seeing the cake make me feel?”. I had a desire to eat the cake and not eating the cake made me feel uncomfortable. That’s normally where the work stops. We feel uncomfortable so we eat the cake. That’s what I did.

But I don’t want to do that again so I have to be ready to feel uncomfortable. I will remind myself it’s ok to feel uncomfortable. It’s just a vibration in my body. I’m not going to die. Nothing bad is going to happen while I feel uncomfortable.

I just have to allow the feeling of being uncomfortable and know that I’m going to be ok. I know the feeling will pass and that this is doing the work. This is allowing the urge. Next time I’m going to take a marble for my Urge Jar.

Now I’m ready and prepared to allow for future chocolate cake urges. The next step is to process the initial urge. So it’s time to do a Model.

Current Model

C – Chocolate cake

T – I want to eat the chocolate cake

F – Desire

R – Urge to eat the chocolate cake

A – Eat the chocolate cake

This action confirms my thought that I want to eat the chocolate cake.

New Model

C – Chocolate cake

T – I have chosen not to have chocolate cake on my meal plan. I only eat what’s on my meal plan because I want to reach my weight release goal this week.

F – Determined

R – I’m not tempted to eat the chocolate cake

A – I don’t eat any chocolate cake

This confirms my thought that I only eat what is on my 24 Hour Meal Plan.

So on reflection, what I learnt from overeating chocolate cake was to have compassion for myself when I don’t stay on plan and to allow myself to learn from the experience from a place of love. It’s clear I still have work to do on practicing being uncomfortable, allowing urges and managing my thoughts but I’m on the journey and that what’s important!

Now I want to hear from you. Have you been in a similar situation? Do you have strong urges and feel out of control around certain foods? If so, have you used any weight loss tools to overcome this successfully?

Have you tried doing a Model? If so, please leave a comment below and share with me how you felt working through this and you learnt. The more we talk about our struggles and wins with each other, the more support we feel. This also helps us all to achieve our health goals.

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