Restraint
I’m beginning to figure out one reason I find dieting/weight control/healthy eating so difficult. It’s because it’s a negative process so often. It’s about not eating this or not choosing that. It’s about holding myself back and avoiding certain behavior.
I tend to do better with positive things — do this, do that, etc. If I could just eat this or eat that and see success, it might be easier. As it is, I can start the day with the really good stuff, but, somewhere along the way, I still have to restrain myself. I have to keep myself from making bad choices. Hmm… How can I work around my psychology and make this work??
Well.. about 2 weeks to my due date. Many changes ahead.
Fashion and the Frump
An interesting first person piece in the NY Times today about a fashion writer who went from 190 lbs to 137 and how it’s changed her perspective.
What a Difference
I keep telling myself that I shouldn’t focus on changing external circumstances — I should focus on changing my reaction to them. In other words: don’t eat for stress-related reasons. What kind of reasons? Let me count them for you.
My purse was stolen this week. (The bag itself, along with some important things, was recovered after two days, but the wallet is gone.) So, there went my credit cards, debit cards, my driver’s license, my health insurance cards, etc. Not to mention cash.
My DH fractured his leg late last week.
We have been counting down to our deadline to get and close a mortgage loan. If we didn’t — and things didn’t look great because lenders were looking askance at my immigrant husband — we stood to lose thousands and thousands of dollars in deposit money.
I am 8 months pregnant now, which means I’ll definitely be a first-time mother in less than 6 weeks. Last time I went to the hospital to be tested, my blood pressure was “borderline” high. I’m kind of scared of labor, and the idea of caring for an infant is a bit daunting.
Our washer and dryer is still broken at home, after nearly a month of it being out of commission.
Mortgage loan or no, we face the prospect of moving by August, because the house we’re in is going on the market. (So it’s either move when I’m 8.5 months pregnant, or when I have a 1 month old.)
Somehow when I enumerate them like that, it doesn’t sound so terrible to me. Freaky, eh? I guess I’ve been living with all this for a while. Anyway… I have been eating like crap the past few weeks — somehow using those moments of food-cramming to ignore all of my stresses. I’ve eaten so much ice cream it’s crazy, plus cereal and pretty much any other simple carbohydrate I could get my hands on. I’ve been working from home some days, which can be very lonely and isolating. It also makes it VERY easy to stroll over to the fridge and pop something in my mouth.
Today, somehow, the fog seems to have lifted. We found out Monday that we’d get the long-awaited loan. Today we signed the papers for the closing. All going according to plan — and I don’t know why it wouldn’t — we should get the keys to the new house on Tuesday. We even heard from our current landlord that he’d let us get out of our lease early, which will save us a whole month’s rent. I suddenly feel less compelled to stuff my face, and I’m able to take more joy in life. I even feel like maybe I’m accomplishing something in the world. This after a big crying jag and inability to sleep as recently as last night.
Anyway, as I said in the beginning, I know that I eat when I am stressed. Is it useful for me to just take that for what it is, and try to reduce the stress levels in my life so I can eat better? Or do I need to fight stress-eating with all my heart — and consider medication or professional help or whatever — and try to learn better ways to deal with stress? Is the amount of stress I’m dealing with as outrageous as it sometimes seems to me, or do I just over-react? Is it realistic to think that I could lose weight or even maintain with this level of stress in my life? What do I do to cut back on stressors? Will buying the house do it? Or is it just a never-ending roller coaster of worries?
Aargh. I’m obviously in a very self-questioning mood at the moment. I’ve been going through some of the biggest challenges in a while and I haven’t been coping well. I know that reducing the stress level will help but I’m not sure that things ahead won’t be worse, given the difficulties of parenting a newborn. (And the isolation of handling it since our families are so far away.) Plus, we will have a lot more financial stresses once we are making a jumbo house payment every month.
So, any feedback on this issue would be very welcome. I’d love some outside perspective on my stresses and my stress eating. Anything that might help me put it into focus and figure out a workable game plan.
Wow. DietGirl Goes for Gold
I can’t resist linking as DietGirls’s post on her first 5K run had me in tears this morning — tears of happiness for her and what she’s accomplished. Wow.