Ask Those Difficult Questions

Well, we are half way through the month of January now and those resolutions are beginning to fade and the frustration has set in and you may be feeling like a failure. Why can’t I stick to the latest, greatest diet? Could it be that diets really do not work as you have been told? They don’t. Let’s work together and develop some new habits this year and work on learning to feel again rather than eating when life gets difficult. This is where the hard work begins.

For those of you who have been Journaling or trying to keep track of your eating patterns, you should begin to see some of your problem areas developing by now. Even if you are not journaling, they may be obvious. Some questions to ask yourself as you begin to evaluate your eating are:
1. Are you eating smaller meals from a plate or are you still reaching for the bag and eating a random amount that might be the entire bag?
2. Are you looking for munching food when you are angry, bored, lonely, frustrated, depressed or really any emotion?
3. Is there a time of day when you are more tempted by snacking? How about night time nibbling?
4. Do you have a place where you can go to have a secret snack? Or is the break room at work deadly? Is your car your secret eating sanctuary?
5. Is there a person or situation like your job that triggers you to eat?
6. Is the junk food that you buy for your kids really your stash?
7. Are you practicing the half plate rule and trying to cut down on the processed foods, eating way too much sugar or no veggies?
8. Are you eating out for many meals, skipping meals or grabbing a large coffee drink daily that has the calories of a Whopper?

There are many questions that we could ask ourselves. Ask those difficult questions. HONESTY with yourself is what will drive your motivation. Eating to ease your emotions works only temporarily and usually leads to guilt and feeling even worse about yourself. It truly does feel great to fix these underlying problems and learn to eat for enjoyment and be free from the fear of food. We will talk about some of these areas this next week.

*Just a note. Journaling is the single, greatest predictor of whether you will lose weight or not!