Busy?

Every day in the week since I last wrote, I have said I should write. As you may have noticed from my dark tone over the last month or so (as well as my "blog-neglect"), I was in a funk -- a Grand Funk, even. Yesterday, for whatever reason, I turned a corner, and I'm finally feeling more like the chipper self I aspire to be. The hurricane didn't do much to improve my mood, other than in keeping me stuck in the house for five days, which forced me to find things to do not to lose my mind. This was a good thing. And, for the record, I could have left after the first two days, but officials were asking people to stay off the road as long as they could. And two of the five days were the day before and the day of. My neighborhood was very lucky, but I can't explain how nerve-wracking it is to have that kind of storm bear down on you and not know what can happen. What did happen -- despite apparent photographic evidence that portrays all of Jacksonville as being under water -- was that some big limbs came down in my yard, and large trees came down in my neighbors'. A few mailboxes and shingles tore loose. A lot of debris was in the road. I'm not saying that parts of Jacksonville were not under water, but that was the exception rather than the rule.

So in my downtime -- classes were canceled from September 8 through tomorrow, September 18, and I missed two days before that with a virus or something -- I read. A few months ago, I bought two books about emotional eating. One wasn't very effective; I ate emotionally as I read it. So I lost interest in trying to get the bottom of my eating behavior, at least for a while. Last week I picked up the other book, and it really struck a chord with me. To be honest, it wasn't just my eating that was out of control. I felt like virtually everything in my life was out of control, and I was seriously worried about the schedule I will have to keep up starting this week. (I have one new class starting on Wednesday and another in early October, in addition to the four I started a few weeks ago.) Rarely in my life have I doubted my ability to do anything I set my mind to, but I was so thoroughly exhausted all the time that I wasn't sure I'd be able to do it. So I don't know if reading the book helped or if getting to the point where I wanted to read the book was itself the help. I haven't overthought it.

The book is called The Food and Feelings Workbook, which I know sounds a little hokey. I didn't do the exercises as I read but I may go back and do them later. It did give me some good insights into why I was feeling out of control and that is a good first step to regaining control. One of the big things I learned is to give myself a break. Part of emotional eating (and, I would imagine, other unhealthy or at least counterproductive behaviors) is the self-shame that follows it; that in turn leads to more comfort-seeking, often through food, and the cycle goes on and on. Now I tell myself I can eat anything I want and not feel guilty about it. And an odd thing happened: I have less desire to overeat. I have heard before that not worrying about food/weight can lead to better health/weight loss, but I think I was always afraid I'd totally lose control and end up gaining hundreds of pounds. Nope! So that has been a good discovery.

Much else had happened over the past few weeks, but I'll save that for another time.