To be livid at my mother for bringing over a chocolate cake when she knows I've just started a diet?

[MeantToStopAtTwo]

I am now on day 3 of a diet, having had a big clear-out of anything naughty and tempting from the kitchen.

Once I start a diet, I need to get properly into it and follow it 100% for a while before I can allow myself to bend the rules a little. Otherwise I just end up going on a binge and letting the whole thing go. (If that makes any sense?).

She knows this full well and yet somehow she felt it OK to show up this afternoon with a ginormous chocolate cake. I could have killed her! As if this wasn't already hard enough.

Go for a run, then have a large slice when you get back. Cake makes people happy!

TimeWasting Just because you are counting calories doesn't mean you are starving yourself or going hungry though. They are too different things! When you count calories you make sure that you fill up on things with have low calories such as fruit and veg.

The thing the makes the weight fall off is the differnce between how many calories you are taking in compared to how many you are burning off. So if someone were to do loads of exercise as you suggest but eat a normal amount of calories they would be using up some of those calories doing the exercise creating a calorie deficit which causes weight lose. The same if someone were doing no exercise but eating slightly less calories then they still have a calorie deficit.

For what it's worth I have been trying to lose weight and have found that my usual very healthy diet combined with gym 3 times a week had no effect at all on my weight. It just isn't enough for me so I have to reduce my calories as well. Perhaps because I don't have much too lose as I am aware it comes off much slower in that case.

Out of interest . . . have you actually ever set out to lose weight and done it even though you were not monitoring your food intake in any way?

Nope. I'm a life-long dieter and consequently very fat. Dieting fucks you up both physically and psychologically.
I lose weight when I'm not trying to, ie. when pregnant I've lost weight to start with and then maintained through the pregnancy as I simply listen to my body and eat what I actually want/need to.
If I wasn't pregnant I could start exercising and it would drop off.

But if I wasn't pregnant I would probably feel bad and start dieting again, thereby ruining any chance I ever have of being slim and healthy.