Monday, 11 April 2011

11th April 2011

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

Every Monday morning rather than thinking “O no the weekends over”, I thank the universe that I’ve lived to see the start of another week. How do you start your Mondays?

I ate really well yesterday, had 2 poached eggs and spinach on a toasted muffin for breakfast, scampi and chips for lunch although that wasn’t so clever as apparently it’s not just prawns I’m allergic to now! For tea we had smoked salmon and salad leaves with phili light on a wrap and it was delicious, followed by % Greek yogurt, honey and a banana. Total for the day was 32pp and it was all delicious. The scampi was on half price in Tesco and 6pp for half the packet (120g), I can’t eat it again but you may be able to ;D

I also spent some time reading yesterday, an interesting book on the psychology of eating, how and why we emotionally eat and how to control it, the books called Shrink Yourself: Break Free from Emotional Eating Forever by Roger Gould, he reinforces my beliefs that if you don’t sort out your head and address your emotional eating then dieting alone will never work long term. He’s a doctor so he obviously makes it more complicated and gives you exercises to help deal but the two paragraphs that I feel would help anyone the most are;

“Focus on finding a pause right before you’re about to overeat. Ask yourself what you’re feeling. Did something bother you? Where are you when it happens? What time of day is it, and who are you with at the time? The more information you can gather about what happens for you right before you overeat, the better you’ll be able to change.”

Later in the book he says;

“You have to demonstrate to yourself that you can quiet your own mind, that you can rise above the moment to get a perspective on yourself and see that you have other options besides eating. You have within yourself a mature response to handling the stressors in life with wisdom. If you can prove to yourself that intense feelings aren’t going to destroy you, then you won’t panic every time you begin to feel something.”

This is so true, don’t be afraid to feel, boredom, stress, anger, feel it and move on or deal with it but don’t deter it by eating.
I’m much better regarding my emotional eating these days, it’s taken me a long time to get here and I’m still on the journey, but my weight has regulated over the last 12 months regardless of what’s happening in my life, the one thing that I still struggle with or rather the one thing I’m still working on is appetite v greed or emotional eating? I still find it very difficult to identify if I’m hungry or just being greedy or if it’s an emotional reason I want more. For example last night after we ate our smoked salmon wrap, mom said she was stuffed and I’m sat thinking I could eat another, mom then asked me to get her a yogurt so I thought instead of having another wrap for 9pp, I’ll have a banana, yogurt and honey for 2pp and after eating that I was stuffed! I’m still not sure if I wanted another wrap because it was nice or because I was still hungry, but at least I found a solution that cost my 7pp less.

I think the one thing I’ve learnt that’s done me more good than anything regarding my weight is that it’s a continual journey, if you recall last week I had my first “fat day”, in a very long time, it didn’t even last the day because I realised I hadn’t changed from the day before when I felt ok, so it had to be the clothes I was wearing or the mood I was in. Yesterday still in that exact same body when I walked the dog on the afternoon in my jeans and tshirt I felt great, so that just proves your mind has more to do with how fat you think you are than your actual size.

It’s Monday morning, so decide to make this week count and have a positive one. xx

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