Weigh-in Week 40: I am Not an Emotional Eater

Another week has come and gone and I’m happy to report I am down 2.0lbs! Yay! This makes my current weight 192.8 for a total of 58.8lbs lost so far 🙂 Here is a photo of the weight I’ve lost so far as usual. Boy, let me say that I can’t wait until I can post something else instead of those pounds of butter! That 60lbs lost is just around the corner…eeek!

This was an okay week, pretty standard on the eating front. I didn’t have a big meal or splurge over the week, but rather ate pretty well all week. In addition to my daily points I ate about half my weekly points. Exercise-wise I got in 4 days: two at the gym and two at-home video workouts.

If something particularly out of the ordinary happens in a week I like to try to use it as learning experience about my relationship to food. I used to always think I was an emotional eater – mostly because it seems everyone else is! To be honest I didn’t really know what that meant – I just always ate a lot so I assumed that meant I ate based on my emotions. I learned this weekend that that is in fact not the case. I had suspected this before – for example after a particularly horrible break-up years ago I didn’t know what to do with myself and actually thought “hey, most people eat ice cream after a break-up, that’s what I’ll do”. Seriously.

This weekend was a particularly emotional roller coaster – I have a friend who is a recovering drug addict who relapsed over the weekend. I was woken up at 6am Sunday morning with a desperate text message. I rushed to help and what followed was a tumultuous Sunday and Monday. (side note: the dust has settled; lots to deal with, but everyone is safe) I did not overeat either of these days, in fact I ate less then I normally would.

So what type of an eater am I if not an emotional eater? I am a bored eater. I eat when I’m bored – at night especially, when I’m working at the computer (let’s be honest – reading/replying to emails, reading/writing reports, budgets etc. is not the most thrilling work out there), when I’m alone, and when I think I can get away with it (usually when I’m alone). This is the reason I work out at night during the week – my two gym dates are both at night. The reasons for this are: 1. it’s cheaper (I do pay-as-you-go, no membership – it keeps me more accountable surprisingly enough) and 2. it occupies my time at night.

At this time I find that physically removing myself from the temptation seems to work. So that’s where I’m at this week.