When the extra comes back

It will come back. Holidays do it, with hotel breakfasts and meals out twice a day. Christmas runs for a fortnight. A stressful month, an illness or a family visit can all bring it back. Then one evening you're on the sofa, overfull, thinking that you've undone everything.

You haven't undone anything. One overfull evening is one overfull evening. It doesn't show that you misunderstood the book or didn't want it enough. An old habit sits under a new one for a long time, and disrupted weeks bring it up.

The risk doesn't lie in the meal. It lies in what you do next, and chapter 8 described it. "I've blown it, so I might as well carry on." "I'll be good from Monday." Both thoughts turn one meal into a week. The better response is small and plain, and it's the third plan from the last chapter. The next meal is an ordinary meal, at the ordinary time, in an ordinary amount. You don't skip it to make up, and you don't make it extra small. You serve a little less, taste the first mouthfuls, pause at halfway, and make a full stop. I'd advise against counting good days, because a streak makes one bad meal feel like a collapse.

It's worth a minute's thought about what brought it back. Often the arrangements slipped. The serving dish went back on the table, or dinner moved to the sofa, or the packets came out without a bowl. Those are easy to put right. Sometimes a diet crept back in, and with it the feeling that good food is about to be taken away. Sometimes it's been a hard stretch and food has been doing the comforting. In that case look again at the list you made in chapter 10.

There are times when the right response is professional help, and I want to be clear about them. See a GP in any of these cases.

• You regularly eat a large amount in a short time and feel unable to stop. That's especially so if you eat very fast, eat when you aren't hungry, eat alone or in secret, and feel ashamed, guilty or disgusted afterwards. That pattern may be binge eating disorder. The NHS advice is to see a GP as soon as you can. Treatment usually begins with a guided self-help programme, and a talking therapy may follow. Eating disorder charities also run confidential helplines.
• You make yourself sick, take laxatives, or exercise hard to make up for eating.
• You go long periods eating very little, or you're frightened of gaining weight to a degree that rules your day.
• Your appetite has changed sharply for no clear reason, or you're very thirsty, or losing or gaining weight without trying. Those need checking for medical causes.
• You think a medicine is driving your appetite. Raise it with the prescriber and keep taking it meanwhile.
• Your mood has been low for weeks and food is the main thing holding you up. Or you've had thoughts of harming yourself, which needs urgent help the same day from your GP, an emergency service or a crisis line.

None of those is a failure of willpower, and none is rare. They're conditions with treatments, and the treatments are better than anything a short book can offer.