Just Do It
Full Member
This morning I saw comfort eating for what it really is. I had a moment of clarity and I just want to put it into words in case it helps anyone else.
Last week has been the most difficult for me on LL (week 7 of Route to Management). The difficulties did not come from the food plan but from personal circumstances. This sort of week in the past would have seen me spiralling out of control.
I recognised yesterday that I was starting with the old habits again. Alwasys thinking about food, whatever I ate it didn't satisfy me, I was always thinking about the next item I was going to throw down my throat. Because I certainly wasn't eating and enjoying anything.
I was sticking to my week 7 food lists, tinned peaches, sultanas, raw turnip ets, but I was eating constantly. I knew I was comfort eating and wrote in my food and mood journal, but it still didn't stop me. I knew I should analyse it but it was too uncomfortable to track down the emotions so I paid it lip service.
Then as I was driving back from the school run this morning I was having a mental argument, thinking about what I would have when I got in, and how disappointed I had been with myself yesterday for going to bed so uncomfortably full. I was wondering what I would have been scoffing if I hadn't been hampered by sticking to the LL week 7 rules.
Then I saw it. I saw me going and scoffing cheese on toast, I saw me as I had been in the past sitting in the house all day, working on the computer and having endless trips to the kitchen, looking for that perfect snack. I saw the connection between me thinking, what shall I have next and the fact that WHATEVER I chose to have next, it still wouldn't be the right thing.
I think it just became blindingly obvious that I was trying to eat comfort. I realised the futility of going back home and starting on the eating treadmill and I realised that I might as well just go back and have loads of coffee, tea and water because I wasn't even hungry.
And I have sat here all morning, with my drinks and managed. I feel I have broken the cycle of comfort eating, at least for today.
The food wasn't going to resolve anything. It is up to me to resolve it.
I know it says all this in one way or another in the LL books, but today it just became real.