Hi Emma. I was wondering where you have been.
I totally understand that the work situation is stressful but stress eating- for a week?! Why on earth did you do that? What did it really solve? What did it fix? Did it make you feel better? I'd bet good money that the answer to all of that is 'NO'.
You shouldn't have avoided us, you should have come here much, much earlier so that we could get you back on the straight and narrow sooner. I bet your attitude was 'Oh, I've screwed up now, may as well carry on'. Not cool. We all have wobbles and stresses in our lives but it's how you deal with it that matters. You should have been on here after the first wobble, because much as the tough love is TOUGH, we do it because we care and we want you to succeed. We want to help you deal with the stresses in your life in a way that doesn't involve food.
Firstly, you need to come up with a contingency plan for when you are stressed. A new way of dealing with it. You know what's a great stress reliever? Exercise. After a bad day at work, I love coming home and doing a run or heading out for a swim because the endorphins perk me up and it gives me something else to focus on. When you are stressed, I think you should make it your mission to do some exercise instead. This will help you lose weight and feel better. No more stress eating. More stress exercising!! The fact is, if you don't work out new ways to respond to situations that make you eat unnecessarily, you are going to continue to sabotage yourself!
Secondly, have you put on weight? If so, how much and what is your plan of attack for moving onwards and downwards (on the scale!)?
Thirdly, you've come so far Emma and done so well. You need to look at it from that perspective. If you continue to stress eat, you'll end up putting all the weight back on and feeling worse about yourself than you did at the beginning. The fact is that we are doing this to feel positive about ourselves. I get work is stressful but why does that mean you can't eat healthily? Your weight is a seperate issue in your life. Surely having something positive in one area of your life i.e. improving your health and fitness would make you feel better about things overall?
Take a good hard look at how you want to progress from here and how you want to tackle it. You can do it Emma, you just need to find that determination and keep focused. Did you write that letter Smiley suggested from Now You to Future You? I did and it's helped me this week when I've had a couple of wobbly days! I read it whenever I feel my resolve weakening. Maybe that'd help you too.
