Lately, I seem to be in a season of hard times.
Many of you know about the stress I’ve had with some recent family illnesses and surgeries. In addition to all of that, one of my family members is probably in his last weeks of life because of cancer.
It all just makes me so SAD.
I’ve been making extra efforts to care about family members, doing a long drive every couple weeks, having lots of coffee visits, giving hugs and kind words.
But the sadness has left an empty place in my heart, and I’m having a hard time dealing with all of this. And unfortunately, when life gets hard, I want to eat. So I’ve been slipping back into some old patterns of emotional eating.
Things that should work aren’t working now. In my routine life, I try to take daily walks or do some kind of exercise. But lately I haven’t been very consistent with that.
Sometimes it helps to have visits with friends. But right now, that seems to take a lot of effort so I don’t set up meetings with them.
One thing that works—eating!
So I do that.
I’ve been eating larger portions, more sweets and lots of cookies and ice cream. I know it’s got to stop, but it’s hard when it brings me comfort (at least for a while.) But I also know I can’t live this way because my weight will creep back up to levels I don’t want.
Today, I thought about what helps me when I do this kind of emotional eating. Here are some things that I know make a difference, and I plan to start using them today.
Just do something, then you’re started!
Doing something moves me past the barrier of inertia. Then once I’ve started, my mind recognizes that I’ve been successful and it helps me keep going.
For me, that means I take one walk or eat one healthy meal, then mentally acknowledge that I’m over the hump.
Getting started is critical to reviving motivation. That first step can be a killer, yet without it, we tend to stay stuck. So the next time you feel immobilized, repeat the phrase “just do something; then you’re started” and put yourself back into action.
Half-off Special
Here’s a great tool that I’ve let slide lately. It’s from Day 20 in the book 100 Days of Weight Loss.
To help manage the amounts of food I eat, I use the half-off special. That simply means eating half as much as I normally would or half of what I actually think I want.
I plan to start using this immediately. If I want a cookie, I’ll eat just half of it and I will have lowered the damage. Over time, that will change my intake amounts a lot.
Remember what you know
Even though I wrote the book Life is Hard, Food is Easy, I go back to it a lot because I need to remind myself of what helps me stop emotional eating.
Today, I pulled out the Workbook and Journal that goes with that book. I’ve gone through this workbook in the past, so I’ve written answers to all of the questions. But of course, I’ve forgotten a lot of what I’ve written.
So I started working through it again, reading all of the notes I wrote in the past and updating some of them.
The workbook contains a place to write answers to the “Seven Keys to a Successful Weight-Loss Program.”
It was fun to read all of my answers, mostly because I seem to have the same exact issues now as when I wrote all of this a few years ago. My answers still fit and I’m reminded to use all of them again.
Here’s a link to the 7 Keys tool. I encourage you to print it and write your own answers in the blanks. Or you can read it online and record your answers in a notebook or journal.
My heart is still sad and that won’t change for a long time. But I don’t want to let that destroy my health and well-being. So I’m taking actions that will change my recent patterns.
A friend recently told me:
You can feel sad for what someone else is going through, but you don’t have to live in their sadness. Instead, show love and caring to others, but step back and show love and caring to yourself as well.
That’s what I’m doing today!
P.S. the “comments” section of this blog is not set up. But if you’d like to comment on this post, please send me an email at wtlossjoy@gmail.com or click here for my contact page.