Emotions are a strange thing. I've talked about this before on the blog. For instance, I'm an emotional eater, when I get upset I turn to food, when I'm happy and want to celebrate, more food. Basically if there's an emotion happening, I want to eat. This doesn't make getting healthy easy. And when your emotions are messing up your mental health, emotional eating adds to the problems.
If it was easy enough to just exercise in place of food it wouldn't be a problem. Upset? Go run a mile. Happy? Jump on a trampoline for fifteen minutes. Bored? Do an hour of yoga. The problem is that when we feel some of these emotions it's hard to actually do something about them.
Right now I have a lot of emotions. I'm unemployed, which makes me angry, stressed, concerned, and sad. I'm sad for a friend going through a GREAT loss right now. I'm still really excited and happy to be in Colorado where I feel like I'm supposed to be. I'm sad because I miss friends and family. I'm energized to be back on track with healthy eating. And I'm upset over a personal relationship right now. The fact is I'm experiencing a lot of different emotions right now and when they all get jumbled up it's hard to manage them.
I've been criticized before for keeping my emotions bottled up inside me. I tend to keep them all internal until they "explode" on one singular person. Normally I'm not really mad at that person, they just happen to be the victim of my emotional outburst. It's not that I don't want to share my emotions, but to be honest I don't know how, and when I do share how I feel I feel like I am burdening that person. The ironic thing about this is that I am most often the person that others come to when they need to share. I honestly wonder if this is a psychologist thing. If we all just keep our emotions to ourselves because we have so many other peoples burdens? Not the point of all of this though, sorry!
Anywho, by keeping everything bottled inside I tend to turn to food to comfort me. Since I love to cook and bake this is a double whammy. Recently I've made way too much food that wasn't healthy to help me deal with my emotions. It's not dealing with emotions though, it's subduing them. I can sit on my couch, and eat a slice of caramel cake when I want to cry. Sure eating it means I don't want to cry anymore, but it also means I don't want to do anything anymore. I feel so guilty afterward that I think, well I'm already in this deep, and add a bowl of ice cream on top! What good did running do that morning if I totally cancel out all that hard work by eating that poorly?!?!
Note that this isn't an everyday thing, and to be honest it's isn't always sweets. Recently garlic cheese bread is my weakness. We all have days though that our emotions get so overwhelming we turn to something. This is addiction...just saying. So here's a new thought/concept for me. I'm going to try and not keep my emotions bottled up so much anymore. I have friends who I know would listen if I just opened up more to them. I journal already, but need to become more consistent with writing out my feelings. I need to stop filling myself up on feelings. I need to emotionally purge every once and a while and realize that it's a lot healthier for me to do that.
So there's no new news on the weight loss front, but becoming more conscience that I need to deal with my emotions is a step in the general healthy direction. =)
No comments:
Post a Comment