A Different Type of New Year's Day

I've always loved New Year's Day. It represents a clean slate. It's a chance to start over, do things the right way, "get my act together" and stop killing myself slowly with bad habits.

I've spent previous January 1sts surrounded by a stack of  fitness magazines and notebooks, making endless lists of menu plans, workout itineraries and weekly schedules. Like many other "dieters",  I would attempt a way-too-intense workout and make a spartan meal to start the year off right. And by 9:08 a.m. on January 2nd all of the previous day's planning had been nullified by a craving and caving in to a sugary foe.

This January 1st is different. I am still planning out a weekly menu, but it's something I do all of the time now. I am still making a schedule of when I will work out this week, but that's because if I don't put it on the calendar other things can easily become "more important." What's different this year is that I understand that planning is not the Holy Grail of weight loss. Don't get me wrong, planning is important. "Failing to plan is planning to fail." We can't feed ourselves properly without having the right food in the house and making time to prepare it. But the number one thing that I need for a healthy lifestyle is my mental game plan.

This is the whole point to Brownie Rehab. Most of us are intelligent people who understand that we need to exercise and eat healthy food in order to be fit. But for compulsive or emotional eaters, this knowledge is not enough. We need to have the mental tools to help us make the right choices WHEN LIFE IS THROWING US CURVEBALLS. Menus and workout plans can't help when the kids are screaming, the checkbook is in the red, your Mother is gossiping about your cousins and the car is making a $1000 noise.

The first tool in my mental game plan is the emotional eating journal. If you don't have one, click here to read all about it. Once you've tracked your triggers for a few weeks, the next step is to pause and ask yourself "What do I REALLY need?" when you find yourself reaching for that brownie. This is the part that takes practice.

The first question to ask yourself is actually  "What am I really upset about?" The mental conversation might sound like this: "The kids are fighting and I can't take it anymore. My nerves are on edge. I don't have any patience left. I'm exhausted and raw."

The second question is "What do I really need?" The obvious answer is that you need the kids to stop fighting. But what else specifically can help the situation? Maybe the kids need some time to themselves - not necessarily a punishment, just time without their sibling to feel like they can do what they want instead of having to constantly negotiate.  It could be as simple as having one kid play in the kitchen and the other one play in the family room. 


If you keep pondering "What do I really need" you might find other answers too. Maybe you'll admit that you need some time to yourself to decompress. It's like the pre-flight instructions on a plane - put your own oxygen mask on first, before you try to take care of anyone else.  Try to get a babysitter, negotiate free time with your spouse or call another Mom that you can trade drop off playdates. You might realize that you're just physically tired and you need to force yourself to go to bed earlier instead of staying up sucking time on Facebook.

This example happened to be parenting related, but the idea is always the same. When you find yourself staring into the pantry, searching mindlessly for something you know you'll regret later... pause.  Ask yourself  "Am I actually hungry? Why am I looking for something that I know I'll feel guilty about later? Am I actually upset about something? What can I do to resolve whatever is bothering me?"

The deeper you delve into "What do I really need?", the closer you'll come to gaining control of emotional eating.

The core of emotional eating is that we eat to stifle our emotions, the same way an alcoholic drinks to escape their problems. Actually dealing with our emotions and trying to problem solve are equally, if not more, important than any menu plan or exercise routine.

Happy New Year. May this be the year that you find what you really need.

xoxo,
Kay

Lessons from the Fat Shrink - Step 1

There was a very specific reason why I named this blog Brownie Rehab. For most of my life, I've truly felt like an alcoholic who ate sugary confections instead of drinking. I frequently searched for an actual rehab, not for alcohol or drugs, but for food. I found treatment centers for anorexia or bulimia, but I never found a place just for compulsive eating. All of that changed when a good friend of mine underwent gastric bypass surgery recently. As part of her surgey, she had mandatory counseling with an eating disorder specialist. And luckily for me, she was more than willing to talk about what she learned.

The first step was to create an "Emotions and Eating journal". Now this is not your typical "track your food" advice that many dieters receive. The idea is NOT to log the day's descent from pious breakfast to afternoon binge. Instead, you are to track what you were feeling and what events were happening at the time you are eating. My friend and I were both shocked at how obvious our emotional eating was, once we started logging the correlation between events, feeling and food. Here is an example:

6:00 AM - tea, toast, peanut butter, fruit salad - house is quiet, kids are still asleep

7:00 AM - piece of cheese - making kid's lunch for school, starting to run a little late, mindlessly put it in my mouth

9:30 AM - yogurt and banana - running errands, getting alot accomplished

11:30 AM - grilled chicken sandwich - potato chips - at a restaurant and they came with the meal, so I ate them

2:30 pm - 3 cookies - boys home from school, cranky transition

2:45 pm - 3 more cookies - youngest son is having a temper tantrum and I'm trying hard to ignore it

3:30 pm - scoop of peanut butter straight out of jar - just got off phone with my Mom. She insisted on telling me all of the family gossip even though I'd rather just stay out of it.

You get the idea. I made it nice and obvious in the example above, but after a few days I really could see a blatant correlation between stress and snacking. My friend had a similar experience. A few years ago I would have told you "I'm not an emotional eater. I only eat because I'm bored, it tastes good, packaged food is easier and has a consistent taste, etc." But now I know better.  I've finally realized and admitted that I am a classic emotional eater.

Try it yourself for a few days. It might be an incredible eye opener for you. For years I felt like I had a good understanding of what I should be eating, I just didn't have the willpower to stop myself from sabotaging an otherwise healthy day. In fifteen minutes I could completely destroy ten hours of good food decisions. I was completely frustrated and angry with myself. But the emotional eating journal was truly my first step to finally finding my way to sanity.

After learning from my friend that counselors specializing in compulsive eating actually existed, I finally sought one out myself. And once I found one resource, many more resources appeared soon after. In the next few weeks I'll tell you everything that I've learned so far. If you've been spinning around the weight loss Merry-Go-Round, please follow my journey to get off the same Merry-Go-Round and reclaim my health, my body, my sanity and my life.