Written by Tara Quint of Quintessential Health. You can find her on Facebook and Instagram.

Perhaps you’ve experienced this before: You take great pride and joy in your ability to eat well, exercise, and your weight loss journey is seemingly going well, but you are working hard all the time to make sure you never miss a workout and never eat something you would consider to be “bad for you.” Your friends invite you to a party, and you tell yourself you’ll have fun, but you still want to stick to your healthy eating. You arrive at the party and see the delicious spread of appetizers and desserts in front of you: jalapeno poppers, shrimp cocktail, chips and dip, brownie bites, cupcakes… salivating yet? Oh, and let’s not forget the cooler full of beers, wine spritzers, and soda. Your friends really know how to throw a party, but your stomach is sinking as you realize, “There’s nothing here that I can eat without feeling guilty about it later…”

Remember that pride you take in eating well? Well, now you’ve discovered you can’t just not eat anything at this party (you don’t want the hosts to feel unappreciated for their hard work!), and the food really does look unbelievably appetizing, but you also want to make sure people know this isn’t how you usually eat. So, what do you do?

You might decide to eat all these things, but not without mentioning to everyone around, “Oh, this is so bad for me!” Or maybe you’ll indulge and after the party is over, you’ll feel miserable. You might have an extra challenging work-out the next day, as a way of making up for your mistakes the night before. You call it “punishment for being bad.” All because you ate the dang cake.

Sound familiar?

I need you to read these words very carefully: you did nothing wrong. Read it again. Repeat it to yourself. Yes, you indulged. Yes, you ate sweets and appetizers. But you were not "bad" and you do not deserve any type of punishment for enjoying yourself.

If you spend any amount of time with me (or if you follow me on Facebook and Instagram), you'll come to realize that I am much more concerned with you developing a healthy relationship with food than I am with you getting a "picture perfect body." I've seen too many people sacrifice their emotional and mental health, just so the scale will say an "acceptable" number, and it breaks my heart. If you go to the party and genuinely don't care for the food or drink that's been provided, that's fine! You don't have to eat it. But if you want to eat the food and treat yourself, you need to know this: this one night of indulgence will not ruin the weeks and months of healthy eating, exercising, and overall effort you have put into your wellness. One night can not ruin your progress. (In fact, I'd say one night of indulging can actually push your progress forward, but that's another conversation for another time)

So, fight hard to eliminate the guilt you associate with certain foods. Find the balance between eating well and indulging. Don't let yourself feel badly when you eat something that you might consider to be junk food. And please...

Just eat the dang cake.