AAaaaargh. Not a great food day. I'm visiting the soon-to-be inlaws this weekend. I had forgotten how generous their servings are, and that often dinner is served up before you sit down, so you have no control over how much you start with on your plate. If something is on my plate, I struggle not to eat it, and it feels very difficult to refuse what you've been given without feeling like you're being ungrateful to someone is just trying to be nice and would feel genuinely hurt.
So, chicken burgers (with extra mayo and butter, that I wouldn't normally have, oh dear), chicken drumsticks (basted in fat) and crisps were the order of the day. I poured myself a pint of water, and decided to just chill out and enjoy the meal. One meal is not the end of the world. The water helped to fill me up, and stopped me accepting seconds, and while I ate more calories than I was planning today, it was only actually 300 more than the max I had set for myself. Also, with my increased activity, my FitBit seems to think that I burned more calories than I ate today, so I didn't actually gain any real weight (although I know that FitBit isn't overly accurate with this stuff).
All things considered, I prefer to reframe it not as screwing up, but more as not winning quite as hard as I wanted to.
Anyway, during dinner I started telling the family that I am making some healthy changes. I never described it as a diet because I personally don't like how transient and temporary that sounds, like I'm planning on going back to the habits that got me this fat to begin with when the diet is 'over'. Instead, I describe it as 'generally living better' and 'doing lots of little things that will stack up over time'. I also explained my current goal of getting 10,000 steps a day and went out for a walk after dinner, because if I wasn't going to meet my nutrition goals, I was definitely going to keep up my 10,000 steps a day streak (currently on Day 15 - 179,900 steps/90 miles total).
Some days I will eat more than others, and that is ok. A bad food day may set me back a bit, but I can't let it stop me. I am making changes for life, and that won't last if they are so fragile that one meal or one weekend could break me. Being flexible is the only way I can expect to make changes last the rest of my life, and when I'm struggling with my nutrition, I can balance it with exercise, all is not lost. I can educate the people around me about the changes I am making, and hope that will help them to help me or at least understand and respect my decisions.
So, I'll probably join in with the much-anticipated Chinese meal with the family tomorrow, but only in reasonable portions and after I bump up my steps for the day to 20,000. No guilt, no fuss, just an acceptance that I am human, and my life changes are not about striving for unattainable perfection (and giving up at the first inevitable failure), but achieving a healthy balance to gently and comfortably steer me in the right direction.