Back From The Edge

Last week was a little bit of a challenge.  I attended a week long work conference in St. Louis.  There was a lot of food over the week and it came frequently.  I don't think I over ate and I focused mostly on eating lots of veggies but I did eat desserts and other things I would not have eaten otherwise. 

The stress level was kind of high.  It was a long week . . . meetings, training attended and trainings led, performances (I was Oprah), awards, top executive visitor . . . you get the picture.  By Thursday, I was so ready to go home.

Our flight out of St. Louis was delayed by an hour.  We knew we were going to cut our connection very, very close so we decided to eat at the airport before we flew out.  I shared a pizza with another friend.  Finally, we took off and headed for Atlanta.

Our flights in Atlanta were the last flights of the day.  My flight was at 10:50pm and the other girls' was at 10:52pm.  We knew that if we missed our connection, we would be stuck for the night.  Our plane arrived in Atlanta and we were not able to pull into the gate for about 10 minutes.  As we exited the plane, we found we were on concourse A and had to go to concourse D.  We ran, took the train, and ran some more.  We arrived at our gates at 10:45 and the doors were closed.  They would NOT let us on.  Seriously???? But they did put our luggage on the plane.  Ummmm, how thoughtful of them.  We would be staying in Atlanta for the night but our luggage would make it home.

I rented the other girls a car to drive home to Alabama and called my daughter, who now lives in Atlanta, to come pick me up.  She had been wishing all night that I would miss the connection so I could stay with her.  I'm not sure she considered what I would smell like the next day since I had no clothes or toothbrush or clean underwear but at least she could take care of me.  We arrived at her apartment at 1:30am.

A friend drove to Atlanta on Friday to bring me home.  Of course, we all had dinner before leaving at a wonderful restaurant in Old Roswell.  It was amazing and we took off for Knoxville around 10pm.  We were stuck in traffic outside Chattanooga for one hour and finally arrived at the Knoxville airport to pick up my car around 2am on Saturday. 

However, I couldn't get out of the parking lot.  There was only one booth open and it had a sign on the window that said "back in 20 minutes".  Ummmmm, really?  I waited.  I moved the cones from the automated lanes and tried to pay but the machines were broken.  I wondered when I had pissed off Karma?

Finally, after 25 minutes, I called information on my cell phone and got the number for airport security.  They went and found the booth worker.  He came barrelling across a median on a golf cart, obviously angry.  He unlocked the door, went into the booth and slammed the door.  He couldn't get the window open which made him MORE angry.  Finally, he got it open.  Lucky for me! The officer was trying to carry on a conversation with him and "dude" was so rude.  He never apologized or even spoke to me.  RUDE!  It was 3am when I got home, ready to just fall into bed.

I remembered as I walked in and the temperature was the same as outside that I needed to call the air conditioner repairman.  I went into my kitchen to set my purse down and there was about an inch of water on the floor and towels were floating on top of it.  My water/ice line for the refridgerator had sprung a very small leak and my son had put towels down to soak it up.  Of course that was about 12 hours before when he left for work and my kitchen was now flooded.  As I held back tears, I picked up the towels and put them in the sink.  I went to get more towels and soaked up some more water.  I went to the sink with an armload of towels again, slipped on the wet floor and went down.

I cannot repeat here the words that came out of my mouth.  Lots of inappropriate words.  I got the mess cleaned up and turned the water off under the sink.  I found 3 fans and pointed them all at my bed.  I turned them on "high" and fell into the bed.  Ahhhhhhh, sleep.

It would be a lie if I said I didn't eat like crazy that weekend.  I spend most of Saturday picking up my luggage from the airport, calling repairmen and setting up appointments and just laying on my behind.  And eating.  And eating.  And eating.

Monday was another day.  Back to work and back to healthy eating.  I jumped right back into my routine and ended the day having consumed 1541 calories and burned 2100 calories.  I felt in control again and it felt good.  Today has been good too.

I think I can do this.

This Too Will Pass

It’s been a tough week.   I never really thought I was an emotional eater until now.  In the past, I did not react to stress by going to food.  At least not that I was aware.  I tended to not really think about food when stress came around.  I don’t really have a lot of stress in my life on a regular basis so maybe I just didn’t know.

This week was stressful.  And I wanted to eat all kinds of things that were bad for me.  I wanted a McDonald’s hamburger and fries.  I don’t really even like McDonald’s except for their french fries.  I wanted pizza.  I wanted a foot long hot dog from a local drive-in in a combo with krinkle cut fries with lots of salt and ketchup.  And a milk shake.  And I ate it all over the course of the week.

I don’t really even like fast food.  I have not really missed it at all during the last 8 months.  But in a reaction to the stress, I wanted all that stuff.  I wrote it all down too in my on-line tracker, every day and all of it.  It was a lot of calories every day and I didn’t burn much more than what I took in each day but I did burn more.  The tracking and the lack of calories burned gave me a wake up call.  It had to stop.  And hi, my name is Tere and I am an Emotional Eater.

It made me look at what I was doing and made me realize it has to stop.  I have lost a lot of weight and gained so much more over the last 8 months.  It really has not been hard until this week.  I ate more than one serving of everything.  I ate things I didn’t really love.  All because I was stressed. 

The stress will go away but the weight gained (or not lost) will be here to remind me that I cannot do that.  The trips I have made to the bathroom have also reminded me!  Ugh!

Like I said, this was a tough week but I will not self-destruct.  I have done some self-reflection and learned something.  The stress will pass on by eventually and it is not in my control.  But what I put in my mouth is in my control.