Since my meltdown yesterday I’ve gotten a little better.  I guess that whole “writing stuff down” does help because I felt like reaching out for help after writing it which was a huge improvement over the “it’s too hard and I give up” attitude I had before I wrote it.

I called my oldest son because he’s almost always has good advice even if he doesn’t always understand why I have the food issues I do; especially when it comes to dealing with stress.  His way of dealing with stress is to not eat at all.  I only wish.  My solution is the complete opposite because stress makes me want to eat every high calorie/high fat food in sight – to the point of literally wanting to throw up (Yes, I’m a mess and horrible with dealing with my emotions).

So after talking we decided that instead of me constantly thinking, “I have to exercise, I have to eat healthy, I have to keep dieting, have to, have to, have to;” instead the new phrase I’m going to use is “I decide if I want to.”

That means instead of feeling all this pressure of “I have to,” I hopefully will feel that I’m back in control of things and that I get to decide what I will and won’t do.  Obviously I’m hoping that I’ll want to make good choices for myself when it comes to food and exercise.  I guess we’ll see.

Yesterday I was feeling overwhelmed in every aspect of my life.  I felt like I wasn’t getting enough work done, enough cleaning done at home, enough of my errands done, eating healthy enough, getting enough sleep, relaxing enough or exercising enough.  Bottom line: I felt inadequate and inept in every part of my life.

But while I’d like to say that letting go of the “I have to” has magically changed things (it hasn’t), it has helped me calm down so that instead of feeling like I’ll never be able to get it all done (and therefore accomplishing nothing), that starting with accomplishing one thing will help.

So today I got up and exercised.  I didn’t do it because I felt I had to.  I did it because I wanted to.

I also weighed myself and the good news there is that I stopped the “free for all weight gain” I’ve been experiencing.  The bad news is that I haven’t started to lose any of the excess weight.  But, I’m trying to remember, “one thing at a time.”

This evening I’m taking a break from the stress and am enjoying an evening with a friend for a healthy meal and a little shopping.  My hubby is on his own for dinner.

I know it’s baby steps.  But if I don’t find a way to keep taking those baby steps back to feeling calm and in control I won’t be able to get back on track with weight loss because I know myself and I know that “myself” will use food to calm my emotions, and not just any food but food like chocolate, cookies, cake, ice cream, chips, pizza, and entire loaves of bread.

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