Stress Eating

Are you a recovering stress eater?  When I started on Take Shape for Life/Medifast, I was a long-established stress eater.  My eating went way beyond stress eating, however.  I was also a bored eater, a celebration eater, a "stuff my anger" eater and even a tired eater (I would eat when I was tired to try and stay awake, joking that I couldn't chew and fall asleep at the same time).  In short, I ate a lot of food for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with hunger.  In fact, there was a point in my life when I couldn't remember the last time I was hungry.  That was obviously NOT a good thing!

When I made the decision to go on 5:1, I couldn't justify spending the money unless I was actually following the program as written.  When I made the commitment to stay on plan for four weeks, I didn't realize that my commitment to stay on plan would essentially eliminate my ability to do emotional eating.  The first time a situation came up that would have normally had me rushing to the refrigerator, it was sobering to realize that I couldn't do that and still stay on plan (and I certainly wasn't interested in eating a Medifast meal to relieve the stress!).  For a moment, I felt stuck, as I hadn't looked for other ways to deal with stress in a very long time.

Emotional eating is the undoing of many (or most) attempts at losing weight.  Good intentions quickly evaporate when those old, familiar emotional triggers rear their ugly heads.  Anticipating those triggers and strategizing ahead of time how we're going to deal with them can make the difference between success and failure.

We each have our own set of emotional eating triggers and we each need to figure out a different - and healthier - way to deal with those triggers.  One thing I know for sure is that emotional eating doesn't work.  The comfort we seek evaporates the second we swallow our last bite of our "comfort food," and that elusive comfort is immediately replaced by frustration, disgust, and self-recrimination as we say things to ourselves like, "How can I be so stupid . . . I'm so weak . . . etc." - all that negative self-talk comes rushing back.  Before starting on this program, that negative self-talk would sometimes result in another round of emotional eating . . . talk about a toxic cycle!

For me, making the decision to not turn to food to meet my emotional needs forced me to really "walk the talk" in terms of my faith.  I "knew" that God was able to provide comfort, strength and peace, but turning to Him for those things was an afterthought at best - it sadly was not my first response.  When I hit the stuff of life and couldn't reach for comfort food, it forced me to turn to the Lord in an entirely new way, and I daily asked Him for the strength I needed, and He was faithful to provide what I needed for that moment.  The more I turned to Him, the less I was tempted to turn to food.  I learned that food was truly incapable of comforting me and once I really, truly realized that, that cycle of emotional eating was broken forever.  I can't tell you how freeing that is!

I tell people that when I started on this program, I just hoped I'd lose a little bit of weight.  I certainly didn't dream that I'd actually reach my goal!  I also didn't realize that there would be so much emotional and spiritual growth.  It's been, and continues to be, an amazing and life-changing journey.

As you face your own "stuff of life" today, I hope you'll realize that off-plan eating won't help.  Once you realize that, you'll make a huge step forward in moving towards your goal, as well as beginning the process of establishing new, healthier habits.  The choice is yours, so choose wisely :-)