Maria had an interesting experience on Valentine’s Day: her young daughter woke her up by bringing her breakfast in bed. In the past she would have immediately eaten everything her daughter brought both because she was pleased by her daughter’s efforts and because she viewed it as a celebration. However, Maria is now so much more conscious of every bite that she takes (discussed on Day 3 of The Beck Diet Solution) that she didn’t immediately reach for the food. This situation presented an interesting problem for Maria: the breakfast of toast, bacon, and scrambled eggs her daughter brought her was certainly much more caloric than the light breakfast she had planned. On the other hand, her daughter had gone through a lot of trouble to prepare it for her, and Maria didn’t want to discourage her.
In general, we teach our dieters to learn to assertively say no to food pushers (Day 29), who usually come in the form of coworkers or family members urging treats. In most cases, the cost of not eating the food (potentially minor disappointment to the food pusher) is far outweighed by the cost of eating it (dieters feel weak and controlled; they go off their plan; they may gain weight).
Maria, who no longer has trouble resisting adults who urge food on her, realized that this truly was a special case. So she employed the best strategy that she could – she mentally replanned her food for the day to include more calories for breakfast and fewer for lunch. She then ate about half of what her daughter had prepared for her, which was enough to properly show her daughter her gratitude. Maria followed her new plan for the rest of the day and as a result her higher calorie breakfast in bed did not affect her weight at all.