Golden Rule#29 – Only eat cake on your Birthday

Once every month like many other companies my office passes out birthday cards for everyone to sign followed by the whole office gathered in a large area of the office to sing happy birthday. Everyone hesitates to start singing and once started everyone does their best to just blend in to the song as they sing or lip sync the words. Then finally you get to the part of the song where you’re supposed to say the person’s name whose birthday it is, “Happy birthday dear…”, except it’s like 10 peoples birthdays so no one knows really what to do at that point. This is the point in the song where it really gets murdered and you hear people try to raddle off everyone’s name as fast as possible. It’s excruciatingly painful. Yesterday was such a day here at my company and as always there was a massive sized cake joining the party. A two layer vanilla cake, white frosting and pure sugar red and blue flowers on top with happy Birthday written in blue letters. In the center between the two layers is cheese cake. I love cheesecake. I love cheese cake plain, with fruit on top, chocolate drizzle on top, and a hundred other ways, but to sandwich it between a birthday cake, now that’s genius. So I had to ask since I was already there watching everyone dig in “How’s the cake?” I hated the answer “Oh my god, so good. One of the better ones so far we’ve gotten”. It was time to head back to my office. I had enough.

Yesterday was another solid day. I hit the gym at 5am for 40mins of cardio. Eggs for breakfast, 4 shakes throughout the day, fish and veggies for dinner. During the week in the afternoon I still feel my energy drop a bit so I went out to Burger King at noon to fill the tank. I steered clear from the burgers and fries and spent $2 + tax and got myself a salad and 4pc chicken. This comes out to a lean 185 calories plus the calories from the dressing. I used about 1/8 of the Caesar dressing that came in the pack so I will guesstimate it was about a solid 200 calorie lunch.

This falls in line with one of the key steps in my plan. Eat more. Research has shown that eating 6 times a day will promote weight lose. This keeps your metabolism from slowing down and causing your body to conserve and save energy. Since I am at the very beginning I am filling in the gaps with a diet shake because it helps keep things simplistic. As time goes on and things become habitual, I will replace shakes with healthy alternates like fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grains. However at this point eating a healthy dinner, going to the gym and avoiding unhealthy snacks and cakes is challenging enough.

Thanks to yesterday’s birthday fiasco I’m making a new rule. No eating office birthday cake unless it’s my birthday that month. They better have chocolate cake or there will be hell to pay. I'm putting in my request now.