The past two weeks have been a struggle for me. Although I have been counting my points and staying on track, I have been struggling with emotional eating. I have felt myself slip into my old habits and I kept thinking to myself, “I have got to stop this. I am forming really bad habits.” And I just couldn’t take control. I knew what I needed to do and I failed to take any action.
With hubby being gone, I have lost my emotional support. I can talk to him on the phone, but it’s just not the same as face to face conversation and a hug. I didn’t have my partner here to tell me that everything was going to be alright and that whatever aspect of my life that was stressing me out, from school, to work, to my family members’ problems- which are much bigger than my own. I didn’t have that support and in my moment of truth- I failed.
Let me explain what happened. For the past two weeks, I have started mindless snacking. I don’t even know if I could call it mindless snacking because I know that I’m doing it and I try not to care or think about the consequences of my actions. You cannot feel pleasure and pain at the same time and while my “pain” is NOTHING in comparison to what some people go through, sometimes I feel weak and out of control, and I don’t want to deal with my “pain,” and so I started to eat to replace the “pain” with “pleasure” even if only for that short moment while I ate that handful of chocolate chips. And the irony of it all is that as I was eating, I thought- “So this is what they mean when they say you can’t experience pain and pleasure at the same time.” It was like my stress melted away for the seconds that I ate those chocolate chips. But it came back. It always does. Food is not a hug.
I do want you to know that what I post of my food throughout the day is honest. The mindless snacking happened AFTER I published my posts- in the last couple of hours before I go to bed. I like to wind down and relax and watch an episode of Ugly Betty, or some other show that makes me laugh. And I started a bad habit of snacking while doing so. I’d tell myself- ok, one snack. The next thing I knew, that snack would be gone and I’d want more. So I’d get more. And I’d go online and track those points and think, “I have go to stop this.” But I’d feel better because I tracked it and it made me feel like I had a grip on my reality, even if it was a loose grip.
But it all hit home last night. Hubby came home and he was sick and went to bed at 6:30. I missed him all week and while I understood that he was sick and he needed to get some sleep, I missed him even more when he was right there but we couldn’t spend quality time together. And I ate Girl Scout Cookies, which last year I handled with ease and in moderation. And in one night, I ate eight cookies. All I can do now is hang my head in shame. But I was mortified when hubby came downstairs this morning to see eight cookies eaten. What a failure I was. How could I get so out of control? How could I let a cookie control me? I know better than this. I know that a cookie (or eight) cannot meet my emotional needs. And yet I still ate them.
That moment when hubby noticed the results of my emotional eating and was so disappointed in me was the moment that brought me to my senses. I don’t want to feel ashamed of myself. I’ve spent my entire life feeling ashamed of myself. That is not who I want to be. I don’t want to be here telling you all that I ate eight Girl Scout Cookies. I want to be here telling you all that I ran a marathon, that I completed a triathlon, that I hit my goal weight. I want to be here to tell you about my successes, not my failures. But here I am.
I am so scared of slipping back into my old habits and it is times like these that I realize how easy that’s going to be for me. Like a recovering alcoholic with a sip of wine. It’s that easy. And I think it always will be.
And more than ever, I realize that I can only depend on myself. I may not always going to have a cheerleader there to push me on, and I have to learn to do that for myself. I have to learn to be my own cheerleader. I have to be able to reach within and find the strength that I need to make it through any circumstance or trial. Sometimes I’m all that I’ve got and I have got to be strong.
I feel like this is a turning point in my road. I took a little detour and now I am back on track. I know that while I may be staying within my points, it’s not healthy or normal to eat eight Girl Scout Cookies. No one eats eight Girl Scout Cookies because they need them. I ate them to try to feed my emotions and I cannot do that because I will never meet that need with food. And while one or two Girl Scout Cookies is ok, eight is not. No one can do this for me. It is up to me. I must find the strength, the resolve, the motivation, the willpower and the desire to finish this race and become a healthier, stronger and better person.
This post was very emotional for me to write. It’s hard to tell your biggest supporters that you failed, or admit that you do things like eating uncontrollably. But please understand that I do know where I went wrong and I have already begun to fix it. I worked out today. I have eaten very healthfully. I have a plan in place to combat my evening snacking. I am back in control- but I just wanted to let you all in on this experience where I failed. But it isn’t stopping me.
