I work at an accounting firm, and during our busy season (January to April 15) my company is constantly feeding us. Breakfast on Tuesdays, pizza on Wednesdays, and bagels on the weekend, with foot-long heroes, cupcakes, ice cream sundaes, ice cream cupcakes, and pretzels with cheese dip (yum) scattered throughout. Oh, I almost forgot the happy hours with platters upon platters of fried food. It’s ridiculous.

Not that I’m complaining. On the contrary, snack time during busy season is the best! But for someone like me, who has a really difficult time controlling herself when it comes to sweets, it makes eating healthy almost impossible. And since I generally have the mindset of “I’ve already cheated on my diet, so I might as well continue eating a bunch a crap today and start my diet fresh tomorrow,” starting the day with a bagel leads to a full day of indulgence.

Some of my favorite snacks from this past busy season:

Yummy!

Obviously all of this eating had consequences, which I finally faced up to last Monday when I stepped on the scale for the first time in months.

Drumroll…..

I’m up seven pounds since December. SEVEN!

You know what that means, right? I’m back on a diet. What else is new?

At first I was going to cut out all carbs and sugar, because I lose weight super fast that way. But when I gave it some thought I decided against it. My New Year’s Resolution for this year was to figure out how to maintain a healthy weight so that I’m not yo-yo dieting for the rest of my life. I think the only way for me to do that is to stop all the drastic diets and instead focus on controlling my binging episodes.

Last week was my first full week of trying to eat “in moderation.” I did pretty good…until the weekend rolled around. Friday night drinking led to late night McDonald’s for dinner, which wasn’t really that bad, even though it was McDonald’s. I had a double cheeseburger and some chicken nuggets. But the rest of the weekend? Forget it. Carbo-loading on Saturday (to stave of a hangover) led to a day of overeating. There was a lot of cake involved.

But it’s fine (or so I keep telling myself). “What happened before doesn’t matter. Today is the first day of the rest of my life.” I just hope that’s not a mantra I find myself repeating every Monday.