Bad Day of Eating? How to Get Back on Track at the Next Meal
The machine at the rental car kiosk was dead. It was Sunday afternoon in Tromsø, my flat sat in boxes, and the car I thought I had reserved was booked for Monday. My mistake.
They promised someone within 30 minutes. I bought a coffee and waited 60, then learned nobody was coming. That hour became the reason I recorded episode 226 of the Talking Nutrition podcast that evening.
A bad day of eating runs on the same logic. It is information. Ask what happened, why it happened and what you will do next time, then make your next meal the restart. Monday can stay where it is. Everything here is education and does not replace your doctor.
Why Are Bad Days Good Data?
When a client sends me her first bad day or bad week, I get excited. The excitement comes from what she is about to learn, which is more than the easy weeks before it taught her. I said it on the show: "Bad days are good data. Bad weeks are good data."
I get excited for bad days. I get excited for bad weeks. I know that is where my client learns the most.
The learning depends on how she responds. She zooms out, slows down and takes a breath before she reacts. If you have ever eaten the cake and decided the whole week was ruined, you know the other version of this. One meal becomes a verdict, and Monday starts to look like the fix.
I took my own advice at the kiosk, though not instantly. Around the 50-minute mark I was impatient and bummed, and I will own that. The man on the phone had made every call he could, so I pivoted. I recorded the episode, worked through my client check-ins that Sunday evening, and moved the move to Monday. As I put it on the show, "It might not always be our fault, but it's always going to be our problem to deal with."
I also dislike the term "off plan". Everything is part of the plan, including the dinner that went sideways.
What Three Questions Do You Ask After a Bad Day of Eating?
Same three every time, and no judgement allowed in the answers:
- What happened?
- Why did it happen?
- What am I going to do about it next time?
The second answer can be messy. Stress eating counts, and so does giving up at lunch. You are collecting facts, so write them down without grading them.
Feelings get their place too. I told listeners to put themselves in the third person and look at the day the way they would look at a friend's:
Feel the feelings, feel the emotions, but understand that the emotions and the feelings can be there without having to become this massive thing.
Then hunt for the first little domino. Maybe you arrived hungry at the party because you tried to save calories earlier. The domino is rarely the cake. It sits a few steps earlier, and that is the place to adjust.
After that, look at the next meal. It is the restart, and a normal meal with protein in it does the job. My post on how to stay consistent with your diet covers the weekly checklist. This one covers the days the checklist slips.
In week one I tell clients to expect mistakes. I heard a definition recently that I love: FAIL stands for first attempt in learning.
If you want to hear how this sounded out loud, watch the full episode on YouTube.
What if the Scale Is Up in the Middle of Fat Loss?
I see this every single week. Someone sits mid fat loss with a scale weight higher than I would like, sometimes more than a kilo higher. I ask three things. Did you stick to the plan? Did you hit your macros, at least on average? Did you get your steps and workouts in?
If the answers are yes, you did your part. Salt, stress, hydration, what and when you last ate, digestion and long flights all push the number around, and my post on weight fluctuations goes through the full list.
Respond to it the way you respond to a bad day. Pause, then check the measurements. If your waist is shrinking, the plan continues.
What Does Close Enough Look Like for Macro Ranges?
My clients do not aim for whole foods at every meal. We run 80/20, which means 80 percent of your calories come from whole foods and 20 percent come from anywhere else. During a fat loss phase I like 90/10.
Tracking works the same way. Track macro ranges rather than a single exact number. For protein and carbs, landing within 10 grams either way counts as hit. For fat, the range is 5 grams either way. If your protein target is 140 g and you end on 133 g, that is a hit.
Even the range is an approximation, and I tell clients so. Food databases hold averages, and one chicken breast can differ from the next. Tracking is imperfect by nature, so we stay close and stay consistent. As I said, "If you have consistent data, we can tweak whether something is 150 calories or 100." If you are new to this, tracking macros for beginners walks you through the setup.
How Do You Plan for the Week You Already Know About?
Planning means looking at the week on Sunday and knowing what you are walking into. Your partner's birthday is on Friday and the wedding is on Saturday, both of which you knew about for months.
Once you see them, the week rearranges. Shop on Thursday instead of Saturday. Skip the big meal prep and cook extra dinner on Sunday evening, so Monday's lunch is leftovers. Add the job, school pickups, practice and visitors to the same page. For the food side, my guide to making your own macro meal plan helps.
One client of mine was on a roll and mentioned she might skip a Halloween party to protect it. We talked it through. I want her comfortable in rooms neither of us planned, because social settings are part of what she is learning to manage.
This time of year hands you plenty of practice, and my post on holiday eating builds on last week's idea of holidays rather than holiday months. Zoom out as well. If your last nine months of eating were solid, I said on the show, "that one meal is not going to offset nine months of hard work."
What Is If-Then Planning?
If-then planning comes from behaviour change research, and I use it as a tool with clients. You decide in advance what you will do when a known obstacle shows up. It runs in three steps:
- Write down what you want out of life in detail. How you feel, who you are, how you show up each day and who you spend your time with all belong on the page, along with the number on the scale.
- List every obstacle you already know will come up. Emotional eating and a packed schedule both qualify. I have weaknesses too.
- Write one if-then plan per obstacle.
My routine is a Saturday shop and a Sunday meal prep. If a road trip or camping takes Saturday, the shop moves to Monday. The food ones read like this:
If I overeat again, I will do my best to pick it right back up from the very next meal.
And for protein: "If I miss my protein target again, then I will make sure to review my food log, look at what meal was low on protein and fix that specifically." You might fix that meal with something from my list of high-protein foods.
How Do You Get Back on Track After Overeating or an Injury?
For overeating, the answer is the plan above. You ask the three questions, find the first domino and eat the next meal as planned.
Most of my clients are moms, so here is a common one. Your kid gets sick, sleep disappears and your own appetite goes with it. Of course you look after your kid. You still eat, and a small course correction may be all the week needs.
Injury is a bigger test. One client lost about 15 kg (around 33 lb), got into lifting, and then decided she wanted to start running. I encouraged it and warned her to go slowly, because I had hurt myself running years ago. She got injured anyway and could not run for several months, working with a physio.
The injury took over her mindset. She stopped tracking and stopped weighing. We got on a call the next day, and she deserves credit for saying yes. We adapted. She kept her physio exercises for her legs and trained the upper-body days from her programme, and the legs go back in once she is rehabbed. My own knee kept me from squatting for a long time, so I trained bench, shoulders and back. As I said on the show, "The action taker will beat the perfectionist every single time."
When the next off day arrives, here are the extra questions I add to the first three:
- What was within my control, and what was outside it?
- What is my next meal going to be?
- What will tomorrow look like?
- How do I get one percent better?
If you are going through a tough time, reach out to a friend or a family member. You do not have to figure it all out alone.
The episode covers more ground than I could fit here, so watch the full episode on YouTube for the rest.
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Written by Johan Vesters, functional health and nutrition coach (FNMS, HMCC L1, MMU L1, PN1, CFL1, NCI L1) and founder of Odyssey Coaching Systems.