Emotional Eating and Me. Part I

I don't actually have a follow up planned for this post.  Every blog I have ends up with an emotional eating post so this blog ( that I've had for almost a WHOLE year now, yay me!) May end up with multiple.  I mentioned in this post that I was feeling sad, anxious and lost.  That equated to a whole week of crappy, crappy eating.  I had spent the three weeks before last week counting calories and was down 3 lbs.  Now I am afraid to get on the scale.

I have been talking to myself about this all week.  Telling myself I was a 31 year old woman with a bachelors degree in Psychology and that I knew exactly what was going on.  Telling myself to get a new coping mechanism.  Telling myself I was going to hate myself at the end of this ice cream filled tunnel and that I should just go to the gym instead.

I thought I was having this battle on my own.  Then Sunday night my husband said to me " We've been emotionally eating all week."  All I could was make jokes and cry.  Not bawling and thrashing around on the ground or anything, just the same crying I've been doing the entire last week.  Silent tears and nose blowing.

The point is, every time I think I've made steps to get my relationship with food under control I prove myself wrong.  The binge eating I've had a fairly good handle on for at least 5 years now.  The scary 3 dinners and dessert kind.  However, the eating of my feelings always sneaks back up to get me.  My husband pointed out that we don't drink, we aren't on drugs and that this is temporary.  We know that eventually we can get over it.   That this isn't the worst thing that we could be doing to ourselves.

I've mentioned it out loud a few times and I think that it's true.  Before I can truly be successful at weight loss and maintenance I am going to have to really work on my relationship with food.  Not ignore it and hope that it will go away, not tell myself that I am cured because I haven't had an episode in three months, but really work on it. 

I am not sure where that path starts.  Maybe I should go to talk to a counselor?  I feel like a nutritionist should be somewhere on that list too.  There are two questions really.  Where do I start and when will I get sick enough of it that I am willing to do something about it.  Amanda Palmer wrote a blog with this story in it, that I try to use for motivation and perspective.

"A farmer is sitting on his porch in a chair, hanging out with his dog.

A friend walks up to the porch to say hello, and hears an awful yelping, squealing sound coming from the dog.

“What’s the matter with Ol’ Blue?” asks the friend.

“He’s layin’ on a nail that’s pokin’ up from the floorboards,” says the farmer.

“Why doesn’t he just sit up and get off it?” asks the friend.

The farmer deliberates on this and replies: “Don’t hurt enough yet.”

The problem is, sometimes it hurts to much to move.  I am hoping after some of the ache and screaming inside of me calms down a little bit, that I can get my ass off the nail and start dealing with one of the biggest struggles of my life.

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