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Are You an Emotional Eater?

Heather Morneau
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Are You an Emotional Eater?

So as I am heading to bed last night, I do the thing I do most nights and the thing that sleep experts tell you not to do, I go onto my phone and have one last look at my social media.  You know, just in case somebody said something that they hadn’t in the last 15 or so minutes, or somebody actually liked or commented on something I posted. Nothing by the way, just in case you were curious.  As I am scrolling through Instagram, I see a post from a cool group that I follow, Christcenteredfitness. And from that moment on, I knew I was in trouble.

The post I saw said: “Weightloss is about 20% knowledge and 80% execution.  This means that your weight problem is more likely to be a heart problem than a head problem.”  

WOAH

As I have stated before, but maybe you don’t know, I have struggled with my weight most of my adult life.  This quote, then, has way more impact considering this. And as a result, I had trouble falling asleep. Not because of the ‘blue light electronic thing’ that happens in your mind when you are on a device late at night, but now my brain had engaged and I had some serious thinking to do.

I have always known that food is way more about emotions than nutrition.  If you don’t believe me, you have never had food at a birthday, picnic, funeral, baby shower, bridal shower, holiday, movie, ball game, board meeting, charity event, or… you get my drift.  Food and our emotions are tied so close that most of us can’t do anything too emotional without attaching some food to it.

The fact that there are some very serious health issues attached to eating or not eating is clear evidence of that.  Most of us don’t need to seek professional help in the attachment issues we may have with food, but on the other hand, have you paid any attention to it in your world?

Since I have been writing for you, I have done a whole lot of research on foods, their nutrition, how their nutrition impacts our bodies and how we process that food.  But I have to admit that I have not done a lot of research on emotions and food. Part of that is that it is not as widely published as it should be and part may be my own apprehension of what I may learn about myself and my eating habits.  Emotional eating is totally real. I know because I know that I am an emotional eater.

As a matter of fact, I am an emotional baker.  When we chose to have kids, we chose to have one of us stay at home with them.  That was me. I always wanted to be a stay at home mom, so that part was easy. What wasn’t easy was being a stay at home mom, so one of the ways that I loved to ‘destress’ was to bake.  I baked something nearly every day. Because there was baking in the house, I ate it. As the years move on, so did the size of my butt.

Here I am my kids are grown and I am still battling the emotions that apparently tend to make me reach for the foods that are not helping me reach my goal but are not making me feel better either.

So at the end of the day, there are a couple of things that you need to spend some serious amount of time thinking about and coming to grips with.

 

  • How attached are you to eat certain foods?
  • Do you actually feel something good/bad when you eat?
  • Do you eat without thinking about what and how much you eat?
  • Do you feel the need to eat everything on your plate?
  • Could you feel satisfied without while watching other eat something you are not?
  • Have you ever thought about how certain foods make you feel?
  • Do you pay attention to how your body feels after you eat?

 

If we as a society are to continue with having food at the center of our social lives, then we need to come to grips with dealing with food, how much we eat, what we eat, how it makes us feel.  The food we eat is changing. We are becoming more and more obese and emotional issues are becoming more apparent. There is definitely a connection and we need to deal with it one person at a time. One meal at a time.  One workout at a time.

This week,

  • think about each thing you choose to eat.  
  • Listen to your body and how much it responds to what you eat.  
  • Learn to love how you feel when you eat well and
  • your body will thank you for it.

 

Food is not just eating energy. It's an experience. – Guy Fieri

 

Take A Break and Start Again, Same Goal New Plan

Heather Morneau
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Take A Break and Start Again, Same Goal New Plan

When Doug and I started out on our journey to get healthier, we did two things.  We made the decision to change our eating habits and we committed to personal trainers.  That was six years ago.

We found a gym that seemed to fit us, at the time.  We were very fat, out of shape and embarrassed to be seen in the gyms where people are judged just by walking in the door.  It was totally the wrong attitude, but it was and still is very real. We trained hard, ate right and we lost weight and took on a whole new world of healthy eating, healthy habits, and our bodies responded well.  But, times change. We have lived this way for so long that I suppose we started to do what most of us do.

We slid into old habits.

  • Even though we knew what to eat and what not to eat.
  • Even though we felt so much better eating healthy.  
  • Even though we felt better when we did some form of activity on most days,
  • we fell into our old habits.

We left our previous gym in the late fall.  We told ourselves that we knew what we were doing.  We had all the knowledge and we had each other. Now while all that is true, we still were not able to be the super-humans that we thought we could be and poof, we put some weight back on and became what we never wanted to become our old selves, well, kind of.

Having said all that, that is not where we are now.  Remember, we had six years of doing it right to fall back on.  We have a whole new world of knowledge to use. We are bound and determined to get back on track.  And, we are doing just that.

There is something to be said for taking a break from something you have done for a very long time.  For some people, going from 12 years of school right into university is too much, so they take some time off.  For others, there are large breaks in time between relationships. I know people that when they leave one job, the take their time before jumping into the next.  That is all good as long as the rest period is not so long that getting back at it is too hard and you actually do get back at it.

The human condition is that there will be a constant state of change in one form or another.  Once you wrap your head around that, you can give yourself permission to start again. You can stop beating yourself up for taking a break.  Then you can get right back in the mode to do what it is that you are supposed to be doing.

Getting back at whatever you have taken a break from doesn’t mean you do exactly what you just left.  You left for a reason, don’t just sign up for the same pain again. For example, we were in a personal training gym that focussed on training for bodybuilding competitions for those 6 years.  Although we never wanted to compete, we knew that, by looking at them, they knew what it took to get into shape. When we chose to get back at it, we wanted to look at all options out there. There are a whole lot of gyms and activities to choose from.

After all the research, I have got quite good at research because of this blog, I found a gym that seemed to fit us and our new goals better than returning to the other gym.  We are now proud members of our local Crossfit gym.

  • We went for intro interviews.
  • Did free trials.
  • Checked out pricing.
  • Class sizes.
  • Personal training options.
  • Prices for all potential packages.  
  • We made sure we could commit to the process.
  • And in the end, signed on the dotted line and began our new routine.

It was just as scary as the first time in the gym.  I felt unsure, insecure, old, fat, inadequate, and everything else you can imagine, but did it anyway.  We have had a look at the food that has crept back into our pantry and fridge, and once again, chose to make a change for the better in our eating habits.

We are only a few weeks into the renewed system and we both are feeling like this is definitely the right place for us.  We are back on track and feeling so much better.

We will keep you up to date with our progress and you can hold us accountable as we push into the renewed push for our healthy lifestyle.

 

What's so fascinating and frustrating and great about life is that you're constantly starting over, all the time, and I love that. – Billy Crystal

 

Is Your Online Program Real or a Scam, Simple Ways to Check it Out

Heather Morneau
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Is Your Online Program Real or a Scam, Simple Ways to Check it Out

So with all the research that I do in order to make sure that what I write about is true, I have learned that I actually know nothing at all.  There are so many conflicting articles on absolutely everything that it is no wonder we are so confused about everything especially our own bodies.

If you want to find information to support your “new diet” you will find it.  Even if your diet was totally wacky, there will be supporting reports online. So, that is the tricky part about trying to figure out what you are doing, what you are doing well and what you need improvement in, what things that you are doing that are actually harmful to yourself and what things that it’s amazing you are still alive from doing ‘that’ all this time.  

Just because it is online doesn’t make it true.  -inject time for thoughtful pause-

Want me to repeat that? Just because it is online doesn’t make it true.

There really are no governing bodies checking out the things that are published online.  Each website is responsible for their own site and if they want to publish misleading information, they can, if they want to flat out lie, they can.  We need to understand that unlike publications that we can choose to purchase or not, we need to be just as discerning with the websites we choose to visit and believe.

The very old saying, buyer beware, should be updated to, reader beware.  

For some strange reason, common sense isn’t quite as common as it should be.  We have become a generation that believes everything they read. We are certainly not the first to do this.  Snake oil salesmen have been around for a very long time. So, take the time to do a little research before you jump into the latest craze.  

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really take a lot of research sometimes to find out that the name on that article you were just reading is fake.  That the doctor quoted on that site, doesn’t really exist. That the picture of that person isn’t really that person at all. That the whole site is set up to get you to believe something that isn’t true and you will send them money or worse, your personal info.

We need to keep in mind that it is easier to hide behind a computer and put fake info out there than it is to talk to people face to face.  

I truly believe being your best advocate for your own health is you!  Having said that, you still need to do your homework when it comes to trying something new you have read online.

Here are some tips to help you be just a little more discerning:

 

Click on all links they share

  • Make sure that all the links they provide actually go where they are supposed to.

Google the names of the people who wrote the article

  • If they are who they say they are, you should be able to verify that easily.

Look for validating information

  • If what you are reading is true, it should not be the only piece of info out there on that subject.

Dig a little deeper

  • Is there a physical address attached to the site you are on?  When you google map it, is it real?

Is anybody else talking about this?

  • If the new ‘thing’ is real, there should be some press out there somewhere.

Does your common sense tell you this is real, or are you suspicious?

  • If it feels wrong, it generally is.

Don’t fall for time-limited actions

  • Although missing out on a good deal sucks, don’t get pressured into buying something that you either can’t return or can’t cancel when you receive it.

Ask around

  • Don’t limit your research to online, ask your friends, colleagues, people.  

In the end, be your own best advocate.  The only one who will benefit from what you have learned is you.  You will also be the one who is responsible if you get taken for a ride.  Be smart, you can do it. Remember; if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

 

We live in such a gullible world. Anything that's written, anything that's posted, anything picture that is interpreted one way is taken as truth. Keri Hilson

 

Is It Good to Change?

Heather Morneau
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Is It Good to Change?

Change for change sake is bad.  But if you embrace the opportunity that change brings, it can be the start of something truly amazing.

One of the strangest things to talk about is change.  I don’t know why people seem to fall into one of two camps; either no way am I going to change or no change means no change.  

So, in the no change camp are the people that stay, at all costs, in the same job.  They gripe and complain.  They really hate going to work.  They complain at every opportunity.  They are, in actual fact, very poor employees.  This unhappiness doesn’t seem to stay at work, it always seems to float like a cloud around that person and everywhere they go, the cloud goes too.  Then there are the people that refuse to change habits.  They eat the same food, do their hair the same way, they dress the same, and keep, as best they can, to the same routine.  They make their ‘sameness’ seem like a badge of honor.  The change from their routines would seem like the end of the world. Another group in this camp are the people who refuse to change where they live or what they drive.  They would never consider moving where they live.  They don’t renovate or get many new things at home.  Their car isn’t the cool car that they are restoring and keeping it fabulous, it is the BEST deal they ever got and still maintain there is nothing wrong with it, so why change it.  They don’t hear any arguments that would lean them toward efficiency in gas mileage or changing with the times.  Nobody in this camp listens to the good reasons to change these items in their world and it is like talking to a statue to ask them to consider a change.

The other camp is the one that refuses to be consistent and jumps at the chance to change.  These people rarely stay in the same job for long, they may even go so far as to never have a career, but a job.  They are always on the move and hard to stay connected with because they are physically hard to find.  Some of these people are constant travelers.  They may have a home base but are out traveling as soon as budget permits.  They lack connections and long-term friends because that would mean more of a commitment than they are willing to commit to.  They have very few memberships and are rarely part of a team.  Sometimes owning a large ticket item like a house or a car is just too far out of reach for them.  Generally, these change loving people are hard to nail down to any kind of commitment.

Do either of these camps sound like you?  Most of us fall squarely in the middle.  We like a commitment for some things because it gives us comfort.  But for other things, bring on the new.  The point to all of this is that we need to find what works for us.  I have said that a lot because it is true when I looked it up “what works for you” appears in 40 of my blog posts.  When we find ourselves settling into a routine, it can be good.  It may give us the consistency that we need and haven’t been able to commit to.  It may be what we have needed for a long time and yet on the other hand, maybe we need to shake up our routine.  Sometimes we become stagnant in our routine and we need to fight to get out from underneath the boredom and complacency.  

Our bodies will plateau too if we are trying to make a change because it is easier to stay the same than to change, but if we want to change we will have to push a little harder, want it just a little bit more and work at it to make that change stick.  We may even have to realize that we may slide back, but if the change is that worth it, we will work hard to get back at it and push back and get back into the effort of change.

So, ask yourself; 

  • Do you really want change?  
  • Why do you want to change?  
  • Are you willing to do what it takes to change?  
  • Do you know what you need to change?  
  • Do you know what you need to NOT change?

Before you start on another new thing, make sure you ask yourself a few of these questions.  Make sure your reasons are clear and the choice you are making is the right one.  Shaking things up can be the greatest, yet scariest thing we can do.  

So, now go out there and either stay the course, keep moving forward, or shake things up with a change.  After all, what is the worst that will happen?  Really!!!

 

I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. – Jimmy Dean

 

 

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