Stress Eating & The Beauty of Routine

My motto for dealing with stress usually is "focus on the things you can change."

There are weeks (months even) where my life is sort of thrown into chaos because of my day job. I'm really happy that my personal relationships are, for the most part, very stable or at least at a constant. My career has taken the dominate force of stress.

There was a time when I felt I had control over nothing. I wasn't happy about anything and my coping mechanisms were not healthy. But even now I really have to work not to fall back into horrible habits.

I am a stress eater.

I never thought I was and if you would of asked me a year ago I'd of told you I never had an eating disorder. When I think of an eating disorder I think of the extremes: people who never eat and people who never STOP eating.

There is this grey area though and I think a lot of, Americans especially, fall into the middle category. Eating when we are not hungry, bored, stressed, happy, to be social... believe it or not I consider that an unsafe relationship with food.

You should never be eating when you aren't hungry, when you stop and think about that for 2 seconds it sound completely rational. Yet I cannot tell you how many times I've wanted relief of stress through chocolate. It's my weakness.

At some point I trained my brain to want chocolate when I come under stress. I have spent almost a year trying to unlearn it and it's been a hell of a struggle for me. The past few months have been pretty good. I've had a system with myself and was able to overcoming cravings and not feel like I was going crazy.

Yesterday, however, was a different story. I know I'm almost completely done for when there is no constant in my daily routine. Some people think a daily routine means your awful boring human, but your body craves some sort of regularity. When you give this to yourself it means other stresses in your life are easier to overcome, Terri taught me this and it's been a huge part to my success.

I have to work very long hours sometimes and deal with time sensitive material. People (under stress) will bark orders at me or use condescending language. This is all overwhelming. But I can overcome my stress without resorting to bad food choices if I've done things like: worked out in the morning, ate my meals at the regular time, drank enough water, gone to bed at a normal time, spent time focusing on my goals at home. I don't have to do all of those things, just as long as I've done most of them I have enough will power to not go to the candy jar.

This week though everything was off for me. I wasn't sleeping enough or going to bed when I normally do. There were not enough groceries to last us through the week so Clint and I ate at odd times. I was resorting to working out in the evenings which threw me off and because everything seemed to be off I wasn't letting go of work crap once I got home.

So Friday I let myself cave. I was completely aware of what I was doing and WHY I was doing it and I kept it down to a non obscene level of chocolate consumption. Sometime letting yourself indulge in the little brain pleasures keeps you from going crazy when nothing seems right. It's the routine of caving every single time you can't cope that's the dangerous route.

With the week finally over I'm really looking forward to my Bootcamp circuit today with all my fitness mates. Saturdays are always the toughest workouts, with non-stop intense training. I always feel my pressures are squashed after doing that, which just goes to show the more stressed you are the harder you should exercise. It makes your brain and body so happy and you get endorphins from that accomplishment and not a bag of Hersey's kisses!