I was reading another gal's blog and she mentioned stress eating.
OK.. this is what I do. I stress eat. If you think about it... it's so silly. I am under stress, and my solution to ease the stress is to eat. How are those two things related again? Oh yeah.. when I was a baby I cried and someone stuck a bottle in my mouth... and if I wasn't hungry someone put a plug in my mouth.
So you see.. it's not really that shameful or uncommon for people to eat when they are stressed. It's been going on a loooooong time.
The funny thing is that during contest prep instead of stress eating... we do cardio. Yeah.. we just AVOID all stressful situations by simply NOT BEING THERE and by doing cardio or working out.
Certainly we feel like we have this thing licked. You know... we're feeling great, nothing is bothering us, we are eating healthy.. but one thing is missing:
An appropriate way to DEAL with life. During contest prep.. most of us consume all of our thoughts on the big day. That one big day. That's what we think about. The ACTION we take is a relentless prescription of lifting and cardio. Life is easy.
Then after the big day. After the big shebang... there life is WAITING for you. It's just sitting there waiting and ready to come at you from all different directions at once. Life is tricky. Life can be stressful if you aren't equipped to DEAL. If you don't have the appropriate tools to DEAL.
So that is what I am doing. I am learning the tools to deal with my thoughts, my feelings about life without using food. I am not doing it on my own this time. I am TRUSTING a psychologist to help me sort this out.
This week my assignment when I feel an urge to eat when I am not hungry is to stop and say, "What is the problem?" or "What am I feeling?" I am not so good at the feelings yet, but asking what the problem is helps me to slow down the thoughts and really think about and identify what the problem actually is.
It seems like when I start thinking about stuff, I can open the floodgates and bombard myself with ALL of life's problems all at once.. then I search for some food to temporarily rescue me. This is going to change.
Not tomorrow or next week... but with time, persistence, and patience. It will change. I am THAT confident.
~C.
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Never really thought about stress eating and the relation to crying as an infant. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteWell it's a theory of mine. I have no studies to back it up. :)
ReplyDeleteThe older my kids get, the more stress eating I'm doing. When they were babies I might have been stressed because they were crying or whatever and that was fairly easy to fix, but now things are happening that can affect their future and it's scary sometimes. Like the other night everything was going great until I took Naomi to soccer and overheard some mom's gossiping about some stuff that made my blood pressure soar and for some reason made me want to give up on my goals and want to eat. I know it sounds dumb, but that's the cycle I'm in right now. I need to take my own advice and give it all to God!
ReplyDeleteSo your assignment this week is a good one! I should ask myself what the problem is too, and if there is anything I can actually do about it, or is it out of my control anyway.
Love the baby analogy - so true C - I don't think you need studies to back up, it's obvious to me. I do the same thing when it comes to stress eating, sometimes I'm so intent on just the act of 'eating' that I don't even stop to think. There's 'fat Jessica' and 'fit Jessica' and when the fat one comes out to play, its total chaos!
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