I had a pretty good weekend. One of my friends from High School is leaving tomorrow for a year long bicycle tour of Europe, so we had a going away party for her at a local bar. It was a lot of fun.
On a less happy note, I found out this morning that I was not accepted to the University of Washington, as I had initially been told I was. To me, it is pretty devastating. I need a college degree to become a teacher, and had been going to University of Phoenix online, but that school is a joke! The teachers are not involved in their own classes, and the students suffer for it. I graduated High School with a 3.5 GPA, but just withdrew from University of Phoenix with a 1.78 GPA because of the lack of support from teachers, and the lack of communication. This prevented me from getting in to UW.
Now, my very first instinct when this happened, was that I wanted to eat. I wanted to eat pasta, and tons of it. How do you stop yourself from emotional eating? I know this is a huge problem for a lot of people, and it is incredibly difficult to not do once you have done it in the past.
One of the things that my nutritionist taught me about Emotional eating, is how to recognize the signs and how to act once you recognize them.
1. Think about it. One of the first things that my nutritionist taught me about recognizing emotional eating is to stop and think about what you want to eat. Usually, with emotional eating, you have to have a certain food right away, and no other food will satisfy that hunger. With regular hunger, you may have a preference, but you are willing to eat any type of food to satisfy that hunger. For example, when I found out about UW, I wanted PASTA, and only pasta, and it had to be that moment. That is how I knew that it was an emotional hunger.
2. Take a breather. Once you have asked yourself what kind of hunger you are feeling, you can treat that hunger accordingly. If it is in fact emotional hunger that you are feeling, drink a glass of water and wait for 30 minutes. Oftentimes thirst is miscommunicated by our brain as hunger, so taking a drink of water and waiting for a bit will let your body rehydrate, but it will also give your emotions a chance to cool down.
3. Rethink it. If after 30 minutes your body is still insatiably hungry for that one item, find the next best thing to satisfy it. For example, if you are craving chocolate, don't reach for the Snickers bar. The best way to satisfy a chocolate craving is with 1/4 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips for 80 calories. For me, my emotional hunger food is pasta. What I do for emergencies, is keep a pack of Easy-Mac in my cabinet. One cup of easy mac is around 200 calories, so it's still a lot, but it's a lot better than two entire boxes of Macaroni, which is what I used to eat when I wanted pasta.
Eventually, you can train your body to replace those unhealthy eating habits with healthy ones, but in the mean time, it's all about moderation.
Here's to a better day tomorrow!
Jenelle
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