~Confessions of an Emotional [Over] Eater~

Today is a case in point how easy it is to undo corrected and correcting 
mind-sets, unlearn changed good habits, mess up Utopic feelings, and feed past eating ways.  It's an un-planned split second that can bring one down to earth with a resounding slap of reality, that the psyche is indeed a fragile space...and the wise words of Socrates which stare at me from the pages of my 2014 journal, bring this reality to the fore:
 "My friend...care for your psyche...know thyself, for once we know ourselves, we may learn how to care for ourselves" - Socrates

The odd thing about wise-man Socrates statement is that I do care about and for my psyche all the time but it's still lets me down!

Over 340 days of getting my head space to work for my body space, days and weeks of mind training to be firm in my resolve to get on the right path for the sake of my health and well-being, both emotionally and physically, is at the risk of being totally obliterated in a nano-second!

I guess I have always been an emotional (over) eater.  When I'm emotional I eat, when I am reviewing an argument with anyone close to me I eat, when I experience anxiety, emotional and physical loss I eat, In sadness I eat, when I am mildly stressed I eat, highly stressed, I overeat.  And yet there are those who experience all the same issues, and it's the opposite for them, they don't eat at all!  

To paint todays' scene, I have been experiencing quite an emotional past 36 hours, after being on home leave for 10 days and 4 of those 10 days were spent with a weekend get-away to sunny Durban for the exciting Top Gear Festival that my boys were very hyped about, giving it my all in exercising with the ocean a stones' throw away, preparing for every eventuality of being tempted to over-indulge out of my current comfort zone and being pretty good with staying the course of this lifestyle change.  Then come Sunday morning and we pack for the beginning of my work week and sending my boys off back to Johannesburg without me - this was the beginning of the emotional drama.  It doesn't end there though as today my late dear Dad would have turned 81, so it was a combination of talking so much about him, reminiscing and sensing my moms' loneliness without him, which is hardly new but it adds up over the years - getting worse I think as time goes by

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Returning home from work today I entered my moms' home to a scene that I am pretty much used to and one that hardly bothered me before...a loaf of stone ground fresh baked bread,  jam turn overs, hot cross buns, Turkish delight and bar one chocolate all with my name written on them for some odd reason... all this never bothered me much before and while putting them far from my reach, I started to panic, thinking that this was the one time that I could feel a binge coming on...I reached for my binge breaker and in some ways, this is how my psyche worked for me in preparing me for this eventuality - my trusted alternative bread solution in an Almond and Flax bread loaf that I baked yesterday in preparing food for my week ahead. This was my saviour from all the unhealthy sugar-laden temptations that called out to me to try.

So I didn't partake in the processed, unhealthy food and instead am grateful that I had the alternatives to sustain me.  I may have over-eaten some of that to get my over the emotional roller-coaster of possibly indulging in all that was in front of me, but it was a non-guilty indulgence.  In my dilemma, I phoned a friend who offered some wise words after I said I felt such a failure - something to the effect, about me being human, and only being a failure if I had indulged and continued indulging without taking the past 340-odd days of clean, new, health, life-changing habits into thought...

I think every day is a learning curve in unlearning the bad  habits of the past, today being a typical example of how things would have turned out had I not been prepared for an eventuality...but then I am now thinking that everyone makes "mistakes", it's how we learn and move forward and beyond, in our quests to break former habits of over-indulging.  But I have also learned from this experience that it's okay to indulge in the temptation - just for that moment and to leave it in the past and move on with giving this lifestyle change the chance it deserves.... and yes, I am indeed human! What is MY hard?

"Grant me the strength to stick to a healthy lifestyle. Give me the will 
to persevere and change the things I can and accept the things that I can't. And the wisdom to tell the difference."

Aluta Continua....