MISSION: SKINNY JEANS

Happy Birthday to Me!

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday dear me, Happy Birthday to me! 

So, it’s my birthday, and I am trying to cut fat.  What to do, what to do?  I find myself in this predicament every year, probably because my birthday is in February and I always tend to pig-out over the holidays, then decide to fix my diet at this time of year.  Do I eat cake, or do I pass on it? 

I have done it both ways in the past.  Some years, I have treated myself, because after all, it’s my day.  Other years I have told my loved ones, don’t even buy me a cake this year!   

So what is the best thing to do when it’s your birthday and you are trying to get fit.  My advice is to treat yourself, once.  The place where people go wrong is that they get a whole cake and then eat the whole thing.  One piece on your birthday won’t kill your progress, but a piece for breakfast the day after, and again for dessert, and again the following day will.  You have to get over that belief that you can’t “let it go to waste.”  I have had a piece of my cake before, then literally thrown the rest of it in the trash.  It’s not my fault that stores make cakes so big (although I have seen some stores have started selling “pieces of cake” that you can buy rather than getting the whole thing).  As far as being wasteful goes, you are only throwing away refined sugar, refined flour, butter, and other non-nutritions substances… it’s all waste anyway.  You can put that excess garbage in your body or the trash, your choice.  

One of the hardest parts of the birthday experience isn’t the actually birthday, it’s the collateral damage of the birthday, the birthday run-off.  The party at work, the party thrown 3 days later by a relative, the fact that cookies and cakes are cheap, easy gifts.   Again, your actual piece of birthday cake won’t kill you, but all the “bonus” cakes will.  

That gets me to another “dieting struggle,” the non-supportive, sabotaging relative.  It’s usually a grandparent or a parent.  They look at you in disgust because you won’t eat your birthday cake, or anybody’s birthday cake for that matter.  They tell you it’s rude that somebody made that, and you are refusing to eat it.  They don’t understand that being fit and healthy is more important to you than eating a cake just because your aunt Minnie made it.   

So, today I am going to have my cake and eat it too…but just one piece!  So enjoy those celebrations, just don’t go crazy with every one of them (trust me, my mom’s birthday is two weeks before mine, and my boyfriends is three weeks after, makes for a rough stretch).  Pick and choose your “splurges,” stay strict the rest of the time, and you will be fine!  Losing weight will be a “piece of cake!”  Sorry, I couldn’t resist! ;)  

Happy splurging,  

-Lisa  

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