Sometimes, I Eat the Cake

Operation Six-Pack Update: I’m just about at a four-pack.

And the astounding thing about the difference between where I started and where I am today is how little weight I’ve actually lost.

So far, it’s only about 3.5 pounds.

When you get down to the point where your goal is visible abs, you don’t have much left to lose. And you won’t lose it quickly, either. I started Operation Six-Pack in August, so I’m closing in on 12 weeks of fat loss dieting thus far.

I figure I have about 2 pounds and 3-4 weeks left—if I can keep my shit together.

Because, yeah, there were some days in this fat loss diet where I kinda lost it.

There was the week my dog, who has leukemia, started chemo treatments, when I consciously chose not to cut my calories any further out of fear that I’d just end up eating them all back in a stress-induced binge fest. Then last month, I did cut them, had a terrible week of hormonal shifts (eff you, ovulation), and spent an afternoon eating peanut butter out of the jar.

And there were other roadblocks, too—like a memorial service for my husband’s stepfather in mid August, just as I was trying to get on a roll with my fat loss diet, where we were responsible for hosting and attending far too many social events. I kept on track for all but one event, where I made the purposeful decision to order Thai food with my family. I ordered a dish that I knew wouldn’t screw me up too badly (yellow curry with extra vegetables and no rice), but the whole week put my normal routine off kilter, and I had very little fat loss progress.

These roadblocks fall into two categories: occasions where I didn’t intend to get off track, and occasions where I consciously chose to veer from my plan.
In any fat loss diet, you are bound to be faced with both occasions, though the number of times you face either should be few. How do you handle them in a way that still maximizes your fat loss goals?

Here are my thoughts:

OCCASIONS WHERE YOU DIDN’T INTEND TO GET OFF TRACK

Okay, so you ate half a jar of peanut butter. Now what?

First, don’t beat yourself up. No, really, I promise, you are not going to learn anything about how to handle food problems if you berate yourself or feel guilty about eating.

It’s just food.

So don’t spend the day telling yourself what a terrible person you are. Don’t spend the day feeling like you let yourself down. And most definitely, don’t spend ANY time doing extra workouts to “make up for” whatever you ate.
Instead, get back to normal.

So that day when I spent the afternoon eating peanut butter out of the jar?
I spent the rest of the day doing everything I had already planned. I did some work. I walked my dogs. I got ready for work the next day. And I ate all my meals as they were already planned.

Then the next day, I *didn’t* eat peanut butter out of the jar, ate all my planned meals, and was right back into my routine as if it had never happened.

Sure, I lost a little progress that week. But that whole “fuck it” attitude we sometimes get when we eat more than we intended and then figure the rest of the day is already blown and start shoveling everything we can find into our faces?

That’s a cop out. That’s an excuse to self-sabotage and revel in your own misery for a while.

Just get back to the plan, man.

OCCASIONS WHEN YOU CONSCIOUSLY CHOOSE TO VEER FROM THE PLAN

Let’s say it’s your husband’s birthday, and let’s say his favorite cake is carrot cake.

And let’s say that YOUR favorite cake is carrot cake, too.

And let’s say that said carrot cake is sitting on your dining room table, taunting you, begging you to have a piece, despite the fact that you’re 7 weeks deep into a fat loss phase.

• 

Do you eat it?

I did.

My husband’s birthday was at the end of September, and I was cruising on fat loss by then. I was down about 1.5 pounds without having cut too many calories, and I felt really good.

It would have been perfectly logical to skip the cake.

But it was also perfectly fine to eat it.

And both options are the right answer—if they’re the right answer for you in that moment.

There are many, many social events where I skip the cake. In fact, I skip the birthday cake at 95% of the birthday events I attend, and I skip dessert in general at over 95% of the other events I attend. I skip the cake even when I’m not in a fat loss phase.

Sometimes cake just isn’t appropriate to my goals.

But sometimes, despite my goals, I *do* want to participate. And that’s when I make an exception to my plan, and I eat the cake.

So how do I do this without sabotaging my goals?

First, I plan my meals to make sure I’m not going too far over what I’d normally eat. If I’m having cake, I don’t have extra carbs in other areas, too. I don’t let one piece of cake turn into half the cake. I don’t add drinks, snacks, or little bites of other things.

Second, I don’t add anything to my workouts to account for the cake. I’ve got a history of binge eating and feeling guilty as a result, and those guilty feelings never cured my binge eating. What did cure it was developing a neutral relationship with food. Likewise, treating workouts as punishment for eating a piece of cake is just as unhealthy as feeling guilty for eating the cake in the first place. Keeping my sanity about food while still trying to get a six-pack is my true goal, and attaching any kind of punitive value to food would negate that effort.

Third, I don’t eat cake—or any other treats—often. There were cookies at that memorial service in August, and there were homemade cannoli floating around the entire week. I had none. There was pizza one night, and the night we had Thai food, there were some outstanding Vermont beers passed around—beers I love and rarely get to drink. I had none. If I am in a fat loss phase, one piece of cake throughout the ENTIRE 12 to 16 week diet is the most I will do.

And that’s IF I have cake; most of my fat loss phases are entirely devoid of things like cake.

Lastly, I remembered the most important thing about eating cake while trying to lose fat:

It would negatively impact my results.

Make no bones about that. I knew it would before I had a single bite of cream cheese frosting.

And guess what?

It did negatively impact my results. I woke up the day after my husband’s birthday about 1.5 pounds heavier. My workout the next day felt a little harder. Chin ups get tougher when you’re a little heavier than normal. It took me a few days to get rid of the extra bloat and water from the cake, and I didn’t make any fat loss progress that week.

So yeah, there have been a few imperfect patches in this fat loss phase for me. Some of them were unplanned, and some of them I willingly chose. Both types slowed my results down.

Now imagine that you haven’t been training as long as I have. Imagine you have far more body fat than muscle mass. Imagine that you haven’t conquered your emotional eating demons yet. Imagine that you’re still stuck in the cycle of binge eating and guilt. Imagine that you have issues with controlling blood sugar, or heart disease, or hormonal issues like PCOS. Imagine that you don’t train four times a week, and imagine that you don’t do 3 boot camp classes a week. Imagine that you haven’t been able to stick to a nutrition plan for longer than 10 days at a time in your life.
How much is cake going to slow YOUR results? Far more than it did mine.

If the things above are you (and at least one of those things is probably most of you), then fat loss for you is going to come down to one bit of advice, something Chris Rombola already said earlier this week:

Follow instructions.

Stick to the plan, man.

I’d be closer to a six-pack today if I had.