Around the middle of December at Weight Watchers, they hand out the new materials for the coming calendar year to those who are already members, beating out the January hordes. Why they don’t time in to coincide with them, I do not know. I guess, because you’ll never line up with all of them, so why bother. Each week though, starting in December we get a new booklet, this goes on for something like six to eight weeks. The first week was Getting Started, the second week was Get Moving (aka Exercise) and last week was Think First, The Helpful Habits and The Tools for Living. For the past few months, I’ve been more of a think last kind of gal, so this one, I needed.
Inside the little booklet is the usual stuff. The stuff everyone, or most everyone knows somewhere in the deep recesses of their minds but needs to be reminded about. There was also one of those quizzes, the Habit Profile which pigeon holes or tries to anyway, you into one or more categories as far as your eating, exercise, well basically, life goes. Are you one of those people who always puts others first, never thinks you’ll succeed, lets your emotions control you, doesn’t understand why not setting up your environment (aka kitchen) right could lead to failure (e.g., twinkies on the counter may not be such a good idea.)?
Well, I fell into two main areas or pitfalls, or in positive speak, there are two areas in which I can improve, managing my feelings, and managing my environment (okay, so they weren’t twinkies but Christmas cookies and the only reason this got pegged was because I didn’t “manage my feelings” over Christmas so had no compunction about leaving said cookies out). Anyway, this led me back to Manage my Feelings.
I meant to blog about this last week. After all it was fresh and I wanted to work through why I had been so successful in the past and I was faltering now. There are two places I’m usually able to work through problems pretty well, on the pages (or in this case the entry form) of my journal or in the shower. Well, since I didn’t write about it before, it hit me during my shower this morning.
The very first page in the section on helping me to “Manage My Feelings” says, “Make yourself aware of the feelings that trigger comfort eating for you and you’ll be better able to find healthier ways to handle them.” In the shower today it occurred to me, I know what those feelings are, same as they’ve always been. On the negative side, loneliness, fear (I think procrastination comes from fear but that’s another dissertation), sadness, self-recrimination (well, I guess really self-crimination if there is such a thing), yada yada. On the positive side, celebration, happiness. I got it coming and going.
But in the shower it hit me why I had been more successful before than I am at this moment. It has nothing to do with will power (will power by the way has nothing to do with weight loss), nor did it have anything to do with motivation (motivation is like gas to a car, forget to fill the tank and your stuck). It has everything to do with redirection.
When I get to feeling those things, I need to remember to turn to other things, take up the piano again, practice Italian, go for a walk, call a friend, buy some clothes, buy a book, read a book, etc. You get the idea, indulge in something I enjoy, don’t wallow, don’t celebrate with food, and god knows, when opening the fridge or the cabinets, stop and think first.
