Honesty

I never thought I was an emotional eater. I was asked once how I deal with stress and if I eat when I’m stressed. I responded, in what I sincerely believed was an honest answer, that no I don’t eat when I’m stressed; I usually cry. When I heard people say they would sit down and eat a whole box of cookies or a whole bag of chips when they were upset or sad, I thought, “That’s not me!” And it’s not. I have never in my life sat down and eaten a whole anything – cookies, cake, chips, etc. I equated this behavior with emotional eating. If I don’t eat a whole ---(fill in the blank) then I’m not an emotional eater.

I was wrong.

Emotional eating does not always mean binging and that’s what I assumed it was. I would hear people (usually women) talk about emotional eating and it always resulted in excess. Since that wasn’t me I figured I didn’t fit in that category.

Again, I was wrong.

In the last 2 weeks I have discovered that I am, in fact an emotional eater, I just am not an emotional binge eater. What’s the difference? I am not sitting down at dinner and overeating. What I’m doing is eating what I shouldn’t be. Due to financial issues, I feel like my life has sort of spiraled out of control. So what has my response been?

I’ve quit tracking food with Weight Watchers.

I’ve quit thinking about points.

I’ve quit making healthy food choices.

I’ve started drinking soda again.

I’ve started eating dessert again.

I’ve quit exercising.

I even skipped the Weight Watchers meeting last night (my first ever intentional skip).

Basically, I’m making poor decisions. As I sat down last night to dinner (frozen pizza), I knew what I was doing was not healthy. I just didn’t care. The food tasted good and it was making me feel less stressed and upset. Again, I wasn’t binge eating (I only had 2 of the 8 slices) but I was still eating a food I hadn’t eaten in months. I got home last night with the intention of going to the gym. Instead, I sat down and read a book and watched Harry Potter.

I’ve lost my motivation.

I was so pumped a few weeks ago. I was setting goals and being positive. I need to reclaim that. I can’t let worries about money affect other aspects of my life. I have even caught myself “bargaining” – I’ll eat all this bad food this week but next week I’ll be better.

It’s all bullshit and I know it.

So what am I going to do about it? I don’t know. I could say I’ll go to the gym tonight, but I won’t. I need to start looking at food and exercising and something I can control during a time when other things seem out of control.