Fit By ___

You ever have an out-of-body experience? Not the kind where you are hovering over your lifeless body watching medical personnel work to save you. The kind where you are fully aware of what you are doing, yet you don’t care. The kind of out-of-body experience where you know you are making destructive choices and yet feel sort of powerless against them.

The powerlessness feeling is a lie. You have the ability and power to work through it. Remember the last time you choose destructive powerlessness? What happened? Let me guess… failure… crash and burn. At least, that’s the way it goes with me.

So far, in my life, this experience has not stopped. Every now and then, it creeps back into my brain and my emotions.  Last weekend, this was my struggle.

I guess it’s the way my life is going right now. Things are piling up… I’m in the midst of a life transition from one job to another. With this job change, we need to move. This means we need to sell our current house and find a new house. By August we need to know where we are living and what schools our kids will be attending. I’m also trying to come to terms with me having to find a new CrossFit box. Yeah, those people who give me such strength and power in my life… those are the people I’m losing… soon. All of these things are causing me great anxiety and stress. Why? Because they are all things outside of my control. I can’t work harder to help. I can’t talk people into buying our house. I simply sit and try to make wise choices. Our house is no longer a sanctuary of family and love, but a place to keep show ready and be able to leave quickly so strangers can come nose around. Things are not happening very quickly and I find myself losing hope.

All of this has piled up within me and my “natural” or programmed response is the feeling that makes me want to eat away the stress. I want to dive into a tub or ice cream or pay $5 for a little Ceaser’s pizza (cheap!). I want to push myself into a world of bad carbs and sugar. But…

What I want to do is not what I should do…

I have to separate my emotions from hunger. I have learned better than to trust my feelings. But how do I know the difference?

Easy…

I am only a few questions away from finding out if I’m really hungry or emotionally hungry. 1. Did I eat all my meals today? 2. Did I eat them in a time appropriate manner? (did I follow my schedule?) If I can answer yes to both of these things, then I’m emotionally hungry and not really hungry.

I have a meal plan and I know that I get plenty of food on my meal plan, so if I’m on task, then I can’t be hungry. It’s that simple. There’s only a few variable that could factor in, but those are rare for me. Things like work output and time between meals could be a factor in hunger. However, if my hunger lasts for a couple of days, then I need to talk with Jamie and get some words of wisdom.

Here’s the deal… stress eating only adds more stress to our lives. You and I are stronger than that! Giving up is NEVER the right thing to do. If you fail, get back on it! If you stumble,  stand back up! Failure and/or stumbles are not life-defining things, they are merely a bump in the road. As for me, I will NOT give into my emotions. I will not plunge deep into my emotional response to stress. I will Keep Going… and you should too.

Continue to love yourself enough to Keep Going. You are strong enough and you are worth it!