Yesterday I watched myself get really excited about my joy eat. The issue here is that I ate the pizza and the cake and consciously knew you weren’t keeping your word to yourself. There were undertones of binging in there, I went for two pieces of pizza because I knew I wanted to go all out on the meal. Oh that pizza was so good. Then I went for the cake, all of the piece and slowly chewed every single piece, and went in and licked Libby’s frosting. Definitely undertones of food fixation and deprivation, thoughts of eat all of this right now because you won’t get it later in the week. At the time I enjoyed it all, felt terrible after, got an upset stomach and sugar headache. Woke up and the data on the scale stayed the same, but there are feelings of shame because of how excited I got about all the bread and cheesy pizza. And throw in that I am not working out at the gym and have cut back on the intensity, that I feel remorseful. At the end of the night I remember thinking, I am balancing this out, I don’t eat this way unless planned for and it’s OK to sit with our family and eat my daughter’s birthday cake. But the pull and tug, the guilt about eating sugar and flour when I said I wouldn’t do it for the month of April is what’s keeping me down. Those thoughts take me to feelings of deprivation or willpower, it has to be one or the other. So, I am sitting with just feeling it all. Thought I’d put a model together and try and look at this from multiple perspectives and I guide myself into watching how emotions play into food.

C: Food at daughter’s party
T: Eat all of this right now because you won’t get it later in the week.
F: Remorseful
A: 2 pieces instead of one, cake, choose both cake and pizza, went in with an unsure plan (I didn’t write down exactly what I was going to eat).
R: Overeat

C: Food at daughter’s party
T: You planned for this meal.
F: Fine
A: Eat the salad for dinner and cake for dessert, self talk with lots of compassion, understanding that when I overeat I get a headache, upset stomach
R: Conscious joy eat

Please provide feedback on the model.