Wow, I didn't mean to get all drill sergeant on you there, guys. It was just something that I really responded to in Beckie's origninal post.

It's too draining to be reading blogs that contain all the things I complained about. This weight loss gig is bloody hard work and it's all I can do at the moment to be motivated for me. When someone else is positive, it's a piece of cake for me to support them. If they are going through a tough time, I have support to spare. But if someone is constantly complaining, entry after entry, and clearly not doing themselves any favours, then I just don't have the energy for them.

If you can't do it for yourself, then I can't do it for you. The key message was the last paragraph:

"Do us all a favour. Be kind to yourself. Get real about what you are doing and what you can achieve. Then go do it."

That I can get behind 100%.

But I have another agenda for this post. I wanted to share my day with you, because while people have described me as an inspiration to them, I just wanted to prove that I'm as human as the next person!

Let's just say that today was NOT a stellar day for good choices...

For the record, today was the day I went to the races.

It was pouring rain and cold, so my outfit wasn't ideal, but I was determined to wear it, even if it bloody snowed. I probably could have done with some fashionable gum boots (galoshes), especially since the marquee I was in had to be accessed by crossing the track (all churned up by hooves after three solid days of rain!), but I ponced around in my little floral sandals and somehow managed to NOT get muddy up to my knees.

The rain also didn't make my fake tan run, fortunately. I was one of the lucky ones, there were a lot of streaky ladies out there today!

For the record, I looked FABULOUS!

More importantly, I had made a deal with myself earlier in the week. I've been making really good food choices and keeping up my exercise each day, so I was going to let myself eat as I pleased today. It wasn't as much of a binge as it could have been (I managed to not go back for seconds of anything), but my stomach feels like a little distended bowling ball at the moment.

There was quiche and pasta salad, roast meat, ham, regular salad and all sorts of delicious things to eat for lunch. That was pretty good and it was easy to make smart choices with good portion sizes.

Then the desserts arrived. Individual lemon tarts with clotted cream. Chocolate truffles with fresh raspberries. A cheese platter. So I just had to have a one of everything.

Then, just in case we hadn't stuffed ourselves sufficiently, they wandered around the marquee with slices of pizza, party pies (little pies with lids filled with mince meat and gravy) and sausage rolls (sausage meat rolled up in puff pastry). Each and every one of them completely delicious.

Of course, accompanying all that was an open bar and they were serving a very nice champagne, so who was I to say no? Four or five times?

Then, once the excitement was all over, I tottered into the city (I'm really not good in heels, especially after four or five glasses of champagne) to meet my husband for dinner.

While I really didn't need to eat anything more, we split a bowl of fries, I had a beef and calamari stir fry (a pretty good choice if I hadn't eaten everything else beforehand) and topped it all off with a vodka, peach schnapps and champagne cocktail.

Then I had a Cherry Ripe ice cream for dessert when we got home.

Now, it could have been much worse. It would have been very easy to go back for seconds of everything, but I didn't. I only took small servings of everything.

I've come a long way, baby.

More importantly, I was OK with what I was doing. It was part of what I had planned. I wasn't doing anything 'naughty' so my behaviour was modified accordingly. For some reason, if I'm doing something naughty, I'm likely to eat much more than I did today. By giving myself permission to eat whatever I liked, it took the attraction of overeating away, so I made good portion size decisions.

If I'd gone to something like this before I had started this journey, I would have consumed twice as much as I did today and probably would have picked at food in the kitchen once I got home.

I've still eaten a ghastly quantity of food and feel quite ill. Not only that, but I need to swill an awful lot of water between now and bedtime or I'll be a very hung over little Tree in the morning.

I guess the moral of this little story is that we need to have days like this, we need to give ourselves permission to eat things we wouldn't ordinarily eat every so often. By giving ourselves permission, we are less likely to overdo it and we won't waste energy with recriminations and beating ourselves up for being 'bad'.

I didn't do anything 'bad' today. I ate more than I needed and I ate a lot of 'energy dense' food. I'll need to keep an eye on my eating for a while and I'll need to do a lot of exercise to make up for this. I gave myself permission for everything I did.

But I could have skipped the chips and ice cream!