Emotional Eating

[qos]

Last night I went to another arts event at Wolfling's school. She had directed a little play, and so I attended to see it -- but of course, even though her work was on stage, she herself was not.

As always, it was important for me to be there to show my care and support, but I didn't enjoy much of the evening. I left after her performance, with the plan of returning to pick her up in an hour or so when she called me, so she could enjoy the rest.

As soon as I got in the front door, I wanted to eat.
I was pleased to discover that the new habit of reflecting on the source of my desire -- physical hunger or emotion -- is getting well enough established to make me stop and think before I did anything.

It was all emotional. My stomach wasn't empty. My body didn't need food. But my emotions, which had been gnashing in frustration for the past 45 minutes, wanted satisfaction.

Hopefully in the future I'll have better ways of dealing with such feelings. Last night I felt at a loss. Hard as it is to believe, in retrospect, I couldn't think of anything that could possibly make me feel better but eating.

My compromise choice was to have a few ounces of moist smoked salmon, which satisfied the craving without going overboard. It wasn't the worst food choice in the world, but it was still emotion-fueled eating.

I need to get some strategies in place for times like this.
I feel okay about what happened, since I'm just starting on this process, but the point is to learn from such incidents and make changes, not excuse myself indefinitely.

Comments

[blessed-harlot.livejournal.com]

Congrats on all the mindfulness around it. That's good stuff.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[silverhawkdruid.livejournal.com]

OK, so you ate a little, but the point here is that you recognised the trigger. Now you can journal it and have a think about options. I am sure that recognising triggers and then finding coping strategies is half the battle. Well done you!
Hugz

[qos.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[jillwheezul.livejournal.com]

You may also want to think about triggers happening because of rapid blood sugar drop. Did you eat something carbohydrate rich a couple of hours earlier?

[qos.livejournal.com]

Actually I did. . . but thanks for the suggestion.

[savantium.livejournal.com]

I think the two most important things here is that firstly you recognized it for what it was and secondly you chose some healthy to eat. You did a really good job with the situation. Learning how to not eat at all is much harder and I haven't figured it out myself, but I know that making healthy choices is a really good alternative. And sometimes all it takes is a bit or two to satisfy that craving, which in the grand scheme is not too bad.