Every year, foodies throughout the country unite in bliss on Thanksgiving. It’s the holiday when we food lovers can guiltlessly binge-eat all the mashed potatoes and stuffing that we want. The whole day is centered around food as you wake up to breakfast, eat hotdogs while watching football, and dive into the big dinner with your family. Whether you eat turkey or honey baked ham, we both know where the night’s going to end: with your jeans un-buttoned, sprawled out on the couch, wishing you hadn’t eaten that last bite of green bean casserole.

That feeling of regret you are bound to experience was brought upon by the six delicate stages of fullness, as listed below.

Stage 1: Utter Indulgence

Coming home for Thanksgiving break as a college student is like finding the Holy Grail. You get to put away your ramen flavoring packets for a week to indulge in the sweet home cooking of your mom or dad. The overload of flavors and smells is the beginning of a fullness that you can hardly resist. As you take one taste of the cranberry sauce, a bite of stuffing, and then 10 more, you know you have begun your quest to eat everything before going back to the soggy pasta at your university’s dinning hall.

Stage 2: Social Eating

When people start trickling in the door, they come bearing gifts of fancy cheese platters and delicious red wine. You gleefully great each arrival and happily take the food off their hands once you say your informal hellos. Not wanting to offend anyone, you sample all of the dishes that come through the door, even the weird jello-meat mesh your twice-removed aunt likes to make. As you are walking around to catch up with everybody, you can’t help but lead yourself right back to the food table.

Stage 3: The Main Course

When the time has come to sit down for the long-awaited dinner, you load your plate up so much that you can literally see the 10 pounds you are about to gain. Your plate is organized like a work of art before you dig your fork in, take a bite, and lose yourself in the bliss that is HoneyBaked ham. Eating on autopilot, you don’t notice how ravenous you are until you go for a second plate and everyone looks at you like you’re the star of "Man vs. Food."

Stage 4: Dessert

As another meal within itself, dessert could be the time you quit eating, but that’s not your style. You tackle this course spoonful of pumpkin pie by spoonful of peach cobbler, taking short breaks in between to give some attention to that melting vanilla ice cream. After your third slice, you begin to feel like you are about to hit the imaginary food wall, but you rally to finish what you intended.

Stage 5: Food Coma

After licking the last of that cool whip off your plate, you go to sit down in your living room mostly because it’s too uncomfortable to stand. As you sink into the couch and listen to the white noise of your relatives chatting, you catch your eyelids starting to droop shut. You know you are about to fall asleep, but that doesn’t particularly bother you since all the food festivities have come to a close. Before you know it, you're riding a turkey leg into a horizon of mashed potatoes and gravy mountains.

Stage 6: Regret

Waking up two hours later with the TV buzzing in the background, you feel as if you are about eight months pregnant. You want to move, but you can’t even get up off the couch because if you do you might head straight back to the kitchen. The pain of the last four dinner rolls and that slice of pumpkin pie is looming in the air, but the tastiness still lingers in your mind. As you struggle with the decision to get food or not, you ultimately decide to throw in your foodie towel and wait till next year to challenge your cousin to another food eating competition.