Game over. Respawn?

[AresPandora]

Last week was awful, and I didn't even eat turkey.

 

I don't know if it was being away from my family again during the holidays, but I just felt really down. I felt down, so I ate away those feelings with bad, fatty foods to give myself comfort. I also broke my six-week challenge and drank some beers. Bah. It was bad.

 

I understood and recognized this on Friday, and decided to just let the weekend go as well, to give myself a break from guilt and beating myself up over it. I went out of town and saw some friends, and came back on Sunday with renewed confidence and a mission to last.

 

So, here's my respawn. I'm starting again on my six-week challenge with strength and determination. While I know the holidays can be tough, I also know that I have to find another outlet other than food to comfort myself. 

 

From here, I'm going to try to start funneling my energy into doing something productive, rather than destructive. Instead of reaching for fatty, greasy food for comfort, I'm going to take a walk, call a friend, or do some sort of creative activity. If I can channel my energy into something else, I think I could get through emotional times without breaking down and eating french fries. 

 

So, what do you do instead of eating?

[Randa Rooskie]

Well... I tend to eat.  But I'm working on changing that here!  And there are tons of other people working on that same goal.  I've had a good bit of success channeling negativity into a good long run.  For me, running is like therapy.  

 

Living life on purpose starts with changing those emotional reactions into trained actions.  Instead of letting our bad habits get the best of us we choose to do something that will actually move us forward toward our goal.

 

Glad to see you're coming back for more!  Happy respawning!

[phoenixmelody]

As the post above says, I tend to eat too... Emotional eating is a really easy trap to fall into and you're right - it's a really dangerous one. My first step was not to completely stop the emotional eating, but to make it less harmful - here's what worked for me:

 

My first thing would be to go into your kitchen/pantry and get rid of ALL of the unhealthy snacks or comfort foods that you don't make yourself (you have potatoes to boil and mash? that's probably okay... Microwave mac & cheese? Not so much). 

I always keep healthy snacks on hand, closer than the non healthy ones. For example I know In'N'Out is right around the corner from my apartment, but I have oranges in the fridge - I don't even have to put pants on! I also keep an "eat my feelings" drawer in my desk at work that has things I enjoy but aren't necessarily terrible for me (banana chips, pretzels, etc as opposed to starburst and gummy worms). 

 

Another thing that might help is to reach for a cup of tea or a large glass of water instead of a snack. Hot tea seems to help me relax the same way a candy bar would but without the calories. 

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As for extra activities, whenever I feel that I need to eat and the above tricks aren't cutting it, I usually start working on one of my long term projects. I have signed up for free courses under websites like Coursera that will allow me to learn something new without leaving the comfort of my home. You can usually work at your own pace and do something completely different than what you have in your everyday life (I am a scientist but I am currently learning about how to teach in college classrooms because I want to be a professor eventually). The fact that I'm gaining a lot of personal development keeps the "what am i doing with my life" guilt trip from kicking in... and I'm not consuming any calories