Saying NO to Emotional Eating

Day 36

Things have been going well. In the 36 days since I "re-started" I have logged in to myfitnesspal for the last 28 days in a row. For the past few weekends I have been allowing myself not to track on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Last weekend on Saturday I realized that I really didn't go crazy on Friday and that I wanted to see where I was at with my calorie intake. I completely estimated for dinner since we went out to Burgers 2 Beer. I think I was fair in my estimating, but who really knows. I ended the day at 2202 calories and that was counting the wine I had :) I call this a success because according to my Garmin Vivosmart I burned 2335 that day. That means that I still had a deficit and frankly that's all that matters. On Saturday I ended up tracking again even though I was allowing myself not to track. With estimates I ended the day at 2049 eaten and 2371 burned. On Sunday I did not track at all. But, I still think that if I had it wouldn't have been too terrible.

The good news here? I am getting to a point where even when I'm allowing myself "not to track", I'm eating less calories than I am burning. That's what I call progress. And progress will help me reach my goal.

But, on to the topic at hand. Emotional Eating. This is something I have struggled with for as long as I can remember. I eat when I'm happy. I eat when I'm sad. I eat (and drink) when I'm stressed. I just eat. I talk myself in to it most of the time because I allow myself to believe that if I'm strong now I'm just going to give in later; so I give in now and promise myself I'll just get back on track ASAP. Sometimes I think that can actually be OK. If I'm craving something specific I think it's better to just eat that, track it and move on.

Anyway, I am also making progress in this department as well. I think part of why I am making progress is because I am allowing myself a few days of "freedom". Yesterday was a REALLY bad day. I mean, things could have be worse, but I was stressed. When I start to get stressed like that I start to become really overwhelmed at everything I have to do. One thing causing stress somehow magnifies everything else. Last night I was dealing with a computer issue and the fact that my house is a wreck was really noticeable. And although I didn't do anything to fix that (like clean); I did NOT eat my emotions yesterday.

Then today happened.

I was still stressing because I was still dealing with my computer issue. The longer I have the computer issue the more behind I get on my work. The more behind I get, the more I stress about everything I have to do. That usually ends to a complete shut down and I do nothing! It's wonderful really.

Today I had a big breakfast so I was only going to have a light lunch if I had one at all. It was about noon and I was actually hungry. That annoyed me because when I have a big breakfast I usually don't get hungry until later in the day. The mental battle started. I was going to go get McDonald's. Take a break from annoying technology. You'll get back on track tomorrow. It just means you have one extra day on a weekend you have to stay on track. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Then it was a little after 1 and I didn't frankly even feel like going, but I was hungry and didn't want to have to think about what I was eating (and for some reason that always mean McDonald's). Then I decided that I made something the other day that was really good and I thought it would calm my "need" for McDonald's. I diced a potato and cooked it in some olive oil on the stove. I counted the olive oil and the potato and it was about a 220 calorie "meal". And you know what? It did the trick! I no longer felt the need to get McDonald's. I was no longer hungry and I was SUPER proud of myself for not succumbing to emotional eating.

The day isn't over and I still have challenges ahead of me. I didn't plan a dinner tonight because we had plenty of leftovers to go through. I'm quite hungry right now so making a decision on dinner may not be an easy one. But I am determined to get through this day without eating my emotions.

And now my week is going to look up! Of course I do still have that nagging issue of a really messy house.....sigh.....