It started with a biscuit......

...and ended with a Chinese takeaway - with a milk chocolate bar and KitKat for dessert. More truthfully, it started with an Ambrosia low fat creamed rice - but I didn't think that would make such a punchy title! To what am I referring? I am referring to my latest in a small string of binges. OK, I have only had about five since I started out with this band but the fact that they are still with me is demonstrable proof, if I needed it, that although my body has changed, my brain is still the same ol' fatty.

Yesterday I managed to wolf down an impressive 2800 calories. It all went wrong from the moment I arrived at work. I had a long meeting to attend between 9.30am and 1pm so made sure I was at work well before 9am, giving me time to cook my Oatso Simple porridge and eat it before the meeting started. The room containing the microwave also doubles as a meeting room and isn't supposed to be booked for meetings before 11am. But someone had broken the rules and was in there with men in suits at 9am - meaning I had nowhere to cook my breakfast. As a back-up I keep a couple of pots of the low fat creamed rice to which I referred earlier. I ate one of those instead, and although it contains a similar number of calories as my porridge would have done, it makes up a much smaller volume. The result is, an hour into my meeting I was starving again.

Everyone else in the meeting was munching their way through the luxury chocolate chip cookies provided with the refreshments - so I joined them. The trouble was, I couldn't stop at a couple - I ended up eating six. Now, they're about 75 calories each so by snacking my way through the morning (450 calories) I had wolfed down nearly half my daily calorie allowance! That made me depressed. So when it came to lunch I was not feeling at my most 'robust'. I had a choice for lunch. Alternative one was to return to my office and fish out my own lunch rom my mini-fridge. It consisted of leftovers from an evening meal a couple of days before. It was a mixture of tuna, chick peas and chopped up tinned mushrooms, together with some chopped cucumber and red onion that I'd added the night before. Now, try to imagine what chick peas, tuna and tinned mushroom actually looks like - they're all the same 'beige' colour! The meal did not look at all appetising, and of course, I'd have to eat it cold - because the microwave was still out of bounds with the men-in-suits meeting. Alternative two was to stay and join the others in the sumptuous lunch that had been provided for us - gorgeous prawn mayonnaise sandwiches, cheese salad wraps, veggie things on sticks and a platter of fresh fruit. It looked good, smelt good - and by god, it tasted good too!!

Around mid-afternoon I was feeling ever so slightly cheesed off with myself because at this early stage in the day I had consumned more than my usual daily intake. Ironically, when a fat-head like me gets 'down' for eating too much - they turn to more food for comfort. So I promptly went out and bought a cheese sandwich, a KitKat and a bar of Dairy Milk - and ate the lot.

I got home from work to find my husband chatting with a couple of relatives who had popped over for the evening. To save me from having to cook for them all just after I'd got home from work, they had very kindly decided to get us all a Chinese takeaway. I ate a very healthy (not!) vegetable chow mein. Well, actually, I ate about half of it - but that half still had more calories in it than I usually eat in more than half a day's food! Later in the evening, still miserable for my over-eating, I sneaked two lots of chocolate from my husband's not-so-secret stash!

Putting all of yesterday behind me, I started out this morning keen to analyse what went wrong? How did I go from being Miss Goody-Goody over the past few weeks, to suddenly having a complete blow-out? Having done the analysis, and discussed it with my better half (including confessing to knowing about his 'secret' chocolate stash), here's what I've decided:

1. At work, keep an alternative breakfast available in the event that the microwave is not available for porridge. On Monday I'm going to take a couple of pre-weighed bags of All-Bran that I can keep in my desk drawer and use in 'emergencies'.

2. When anticipating long meetings, avoid biscuits and other attractions by taking something with me to nibble on - like a cereal bar (Alpen Light cereal bars are only 59 calories).

3. Don't use meal leftovers for lunch (especially not from two days before!) and make sure the lunch I take with me to work is at least as attractive as any lunch that might be offered to me at a meeting. Remember the Healthier Weight doctrine "I am not a waste bin".

4. [This one is already done]. Ask my husband to completely remove his 'secret' chocolate stash from the house. Don't hide it somewhere else - I'll find it. Give it away or throw it away.

The main lesson I have learnt from this experience, though, is that in my head I was a 'fatty', I am still a 'fatty', and I will probably always be a 'fatty'. It's lovely to hear people say nice things about how great I look and how well I have done, but at the end of the day, in my head, I am still exactly where I was six months ago. This doesn't mean the band is doomed to fail - far from it. It does mean, however, that (a) I must not become complacement, and (b) I must keep developing strategies for how to deal with different situations. Strategies that mean I do not have to rely on willpower or strength of character - just on good habits.

I hope this message helps you to think more about developing your own good habits and strategies and also makes you realise that you're not alone in having 'bad' days. Good luck out there!