Good job. It's meals like this that make me backslide.
I'm going to cross post this in the other thread because it's around the time when we're all likely to backslide.
It takes a week or two to deplete your glycogen reserves (also known as burning off all of that water weight).
Once you are down to your steady state, you don't have that bloat anymore. Your belly is probably getting flatter, you probably feel better, you probably notice more when you eat ####ty food and it feels yucky, and you probably find yourself getting hungry and tempted to cheat, because you feel different.
This is a milestone you will reach each time you start to lose weight. It's where people start to fail and yoyo diet. "I lost ten pounds", they think, even though it was 8 lbs of water weight and 2 lbs of fat. Then they stop dieting for a while, put 10 lbs back on, and start over.
Really all that's happening is they're losing a couple pounds and putting it back on, getting discouraged that they always do this, and learning the wrong lesson that they are just bad at weight loss.
This is not you.
If you're posting in these threads with us, you've got this. You're talking it out with people going through the same thing and you can see you're not alone in this. It's normal. Try to stay on track.
Poker players may recognize this advice, but for people who haven't heard this, this is good life advice in general:
Some days in life you are on your A game and whatever you do will work. Most days you are on your B game and you're going to be pretty good but not great at whatever you're doing. Some days, like it or not, you're on your C game or worse
Most of us imagine ourselves doing something new and imagine our A game. And when we work on it we try to improve our A game. But that's not the part that needs improvement.
You'll improve a lot more if you work on your B game, because that's where you spend so much time.
But our B game is usually pretty good too. The problem is almost always our C game. If you want to make your life better, put processes in place that help you when you're on your C game, and help keep you from being there too long, or doing too much damage while you're there.
If you can learn to recognize your C game, and get back to your A game and B game quickly, you'll see way more improvement than fine tuning the stuff you already do pretty well.
Let's say I have a blow up and eat 2500 calories over my TDEE. Just a huge cheat day where I go over, get disappointed with myself and say oh screw it and house the pizza and wine and cookies.
I've been working on a thousand calorie per day deficit to lose 2 lbs per week, and every other day I stayed on target, that means that this week I would have had -1000, -1000, -1000, -1000, -1000, -1000, +2500. For a total of -3500.
Instead of losing 2 lbs this week, I lose 1.
If I do that once a month, then instead of losing about 30 lbs in 3 months, I lose about 30 lbs in 4 months. An extra month is a long time to think about a few mistakes.
You're human. You're going to screw up. Look for ways to limit those screw ups.
The way I use myfitnesspal self regulates a lot of that. Sometimes I wake up thinking about those meatballs in the fridge and I know I'm in trouble. I know that if I overdo it at lunch, I don't get much for dinner. Sometimes I eat the meatballs and accept the consequences. If i want a real dinner I need to exercise to earn it.
Sometimes I'm lazy today and I just want to exercise. That's not a problem. I just don't get as many calories for the day.
I can "screw up" without blowing my day. That's how I'm able to do this for an extended time, but it doesn't have to be your way. Just think about your C game, and how you can control it.