I ate too much cake!

 

The amazing wedding cake
 
I went to a wedding on Saturday.
Beautiful weather and a really lovely day from start to finish.
Very importantly for me, amazing food!
The reception, for those local to mid Sussex, was at Jeremy’s restaurant, which is probably the best restaurant in Sussex in my humble and fairly experienced opinion. Proper fine dining but unbelievably good food.
Social events where food is laid out in any kind of buffet are always a danger for me, because I absolutely love food and very much enjoy eating it.
I have a massive sweet tooth and because I eat well most of the time, I like to make the most of situations where I can enjoy a bit of everything I fancy (not a strategy I recommend to clients but currently the way I am!).
In this situation, after an amazing three course meal, a selection of fudge pieces were laid out, as well as small slices of each of the three tiers of wedding cake. Naturally as each tier of the wedding cake was different (lemon, chocolate and victoria sponge) I had to try them all. Aand a fair amount of the fudge.
Did really enjoy all the foods, but definitely got to a point where I was more than ‘comfortably full’.
In my defence I did manage to avoid the cheese and biscuits, which looked amazing but never tempt me as much as cake and chocolate, and I’d taken in more than enough calories from those to warrant stuffing any more in.
This would have been enough, but on sunday we had a post wedding barbecue where pudding selections were macaroons and very nice-looking cheese and biscuits.
Again I made the most of the opportunity and over-indulged. Not good. Didn’t want or need to eat for the rest of the day (barbecue was mid afternoon and I’d just had porridge for breakfast) so clawed a few calories back there.
So at the end of the weekend I could certainly feel the effects of too much fat, sugar and calories.
Bloated, lethargic and seemingly a bit podgier than before already!
Common response here, and a trap a lot of people fall into, would be to beat myself up and feel miserable, and maybe try to eat super low calorie for a few days to make up for it.
This would not be fun and would not help one bit in the long term.
I enjoyed the food at the time, and I know I need to work on eating a bit less in situations like that.
But nobody’s perfect.
My knowledge and experience in nutrition tells me that if I’m careful with food this week (i.e eat nutritious meals, and avoid unecessary snacks for a few days) while keeping my exercise up at a good level, I’ll be feeling pretty much back to normal by the end of the week.
I’ve done this for the first few days and have noticed a change already.
No massive restriction of calories, just consciously eating slightly less than I normally would have.
(For example – on Monday I just ate the four small meals I had planned and didn’t snack, and yesterday I snacked on berries rather than dark chocolate, and had a homecooked burger in a bun with extra stir fried veg instead of the chips I normally have).
Over indulgence happens at times. In the long run, it won’t have a huge effect if you’re straight back on track after. No need to beat yourself up, just learn any lessons for next time and get back to all the good habits that will get you long lasting results!