Just Workin' On My Issues

It's been pretty peaceful in my life lately (well, if you don't count soccer, cheerleading, piano, religious ed, work, etc). I've been just trying to eat when hungry, stop when satisfied, without worrying about "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts". Dropping the rope, so to speak, is so much less stressful in most ways, though there is a little voice somewhere in my head that keeps telling me I'm going to gain even more weight and suggesting that perhaps I should weigh myself just to check the number. I tell it to get stuffed. My clothes are fitting fine.

There have been some times when I've realized that I've just had enough of something and -- gasp -- thrown food away(!). There have also been some times that I kept eating even though I realized I'd had enough. I figure if I can get the stopping times to outweight the not stopping times, I'm on the right track.

I've been attempting to stop and analyze my feelings whenever I realize that I'm having an urge to eat but I'm not hungry or I'm already full. Somehow since my accident I've become a person who wants to eat when bored or restless. I never used to -- it was almost always anxiety, sadness, stress...not boredom. This past Saturday I went to a scrapbooking crop from 10am to 8pm and I ate about 5 pounds of sugary carbs. I couldn't figure out what on earth was wrong until it finally dawned on me, rather too late, that I am so not used to sitting for such a long period, and what I really needed was to go outside and take a walk. I needed a break, not more sugar. Too bad this didn't occur to me until about 7pm.

I think perhaps boredom is why my binge eating started up again after so many years of not being an issue. It began just before I was given the okay to get out of bed and walk again, and worsened horribly over the months that I had to use crutches and a cane. I think part of it was anxiety, but looking back, boredom and restlessness were a large part of the drive to eat and overeat. After 10 weeks in bed I was sooooo bored, but even after I was given the okay to start putting weight on my leg, there was so much I couldn't do. We had moved into our house only two weeks before my accident, so there was A LOT that wasn't unpacked or put where I wanted it. Yet I couldn't carry anything up and down the two sets of stairs to work on it. All of my scrapbooking stuff was still packed and I couldn't carry any of it to put it away. I couldn't exercise the way I wanted to. Shopping or going anywhere was a pain, literally and figurtively. I was really tired of reading, doing cross-stitch, and watching DVDs. I felt trapped, frustrated, and BORED. By the time I could walk again more easily without a lot of pain, eating when not hungry was a habit.

So over the past few days I've noticed when I have an urge to eat out of boredom and make an attempt to walk around a bit or do a different activity. I was really busy with the girls on Sunday (we spent the day cooking and scrapbooking) and I kind of forgot to eat. It's been a long time since that happened.