A year from now, you’ll
wish you had started today!
It’s 4am and I’m sitting
at a very tidy desk, I feel like I’m in someone else’s office and it’s slightly
uncomfortable. Why am I awake at 4am, I
have no idea, something outside made a huge bang noise twice woke me and the
dog up and now I can’t go back to sleep, so rather than lie there I’m going to
be productive and I’ll have a snooze or a long soak in the bath this afternoon
to make up for it.
So why is my office
tidy? Because instead of going for a
walk on the chase yesterday, my mate Katie came round for a coffee and offered
to help me tidy my office. Oh my word,
it was scary and she was brutal, she said things like, “I can’t believe you run
a business from this office, a successful one at that!” I remember saying at one point, wished I was
tidier, and bless her I just loved her reply, it was something like, “no you
don't cos then u wouldn't be you. You're the least messed up person I know, but
your office is messed up, you collect stuff, it’s who you are!”
I love that she accepts
me for who I am, dusty, cluttered office and all ;-)
I’ve had a crazy month,
this is the first weekend I’ve been home for four weekend, its been a month
where I’ve realised how much I’ve changed as a person, fourteen different
people I’ve spent time with on those weekends away – 14! I can’t believe I have that many friends in
my life and there are more besides, I've always been a loner so this is new territory
for me and I like it.
This week however has been difficult for me because I've realised how
many people I now have in my life that I truly care about. Some of them have been hurting this week and I’ve
felt their pain and not been able to do anything, that’s not easy.
We all have stressful times in our lives and we all deal with them
differently, but a common thing is comfort eating, which lets be honest doesn’t
actually solve anything and probably makes it worse. I’m glad I don’t really do that anymore, but
it’s got me to thinking ‘why don’t I?’
I think it’s because I’ve realised comfort eating makes me overweight
which makes me self-conscious and miserable which would make me eat more, so I’ve
broke the cycle, I now remind myself of those feeling whenever I’m stressed out
and find myself in the kitchen.
For me it’s also been important to realise emotional eating doesn’t just
happen when I’m stressed or grumpy, it can sneak in on happy occasions to,
celebrations etc, any excuse to overeat!
My weight still fluctuates, but it doesn’t keep going up and up, I may
have a week when I gain a pound or two but that normally comes off the week
after, I’ve been maintaining for over two years. I still should be half a stone lighter
according to the charts, but if you notice the word ‘SHOULD’ in this sentence,
that I believe is my stumbling block for that last half stone, I’m comfortable
at the weight I am, I’m happy in my skin, I have my eating under control and I’m
more active than I’ve been in years, so what I SHOULD be isn’t motivating me at
all because the word brings guilt with it.
So if I say I could be half stone lighter, I may get there, I may not, I’m
still trying to decide if I want to or if I want to continue with my maintenance
programme. Decisions, decisions!
So do you comfort eat, of course you do, we all are emotional eaters to
some extent, emotional eating is normal, normal eating is giving yourself permission
to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad, bored or just because it feels
good. What’s nicer than eating a few
chocolates because it’s mothers day!
Nothing as long as it doesn’t make you feel guilty or stop you losing weight
this week, and if it does stop you losing this week but you’ve decided it was
worth the trade off then it’s not a problem.
But if it’s interfering with your weight loss or getting you down then
you need to find ways to cope. That’ may
be meditation or exercise or something I’ve taught myself to do – FEEL!
Yeah I feel the strong emotions and yes sometimes they’re
painful but when did we get so afraid of feelings? After all, emotions,
including the negative ones, are a natural part of being human. Everyone
experiences them on a daily basis. Yet so many cope with difficult emotions by
repressing them, its become an automatic habit to sweep unpleasant feelings
under the rug and to stop consciously noticing what the body is feeling.
Yes those feelings can be unpleasant but so can being
overweight! This week my emotions have actually
felt physical, from a knot in my stomach, to a gripping feeling in my chest and
tension in my head, but eating a doughnut wouldn’t have taken them away for
more than seconds.
A natural response is to seek some way to make ourselves
feel better and for most it’s eating, it’s serves as a temporary solution to
those feelings of sadness, depression, hurt, anger, self-hate, guilt, stress,
boredom, and so on. You’re trying to protect
yourself from feeling pain. It is a coping strategy designed to keep you safe, however
that suppression comes with a price.
Remind yourself that FEELING isn't fatal. Realise those emotions once released can be
processed and you can move on - you will not cry forever. The anger will not
keep on exploding forever. The pain will not go on forever. And once they’ve passed you can heal.
Eating a doughnut won’t solve any of your problems,
and they always taste better when not eaten under stressful conditions or to
make yourself feel better.
Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers out there, if you
do eat chocolate today, enjoy it, don’t do guilt – either track it, or accept
that the scales might not shift in the direction you want them to this week. x
(it could be worse, not sure how, but it could be. Eeyore)
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