Emotional Eating
When things get rough for me I tend to turn to food. Since having VSG (vertical sleeve gastrectomy) surgery I can’t turn to food. Not only can I not turn to food I do not want to turn to food anymore. The reason for having weight loss surgery was to lose weight. I want to find healthier ways to cope with my feelings. To assist me in this I turned to my therapist. I see my therapist every other week and I spoke to her about my desire to find another way to deal with my emotions besides food. She told me to try a 10 minute daily meditation to start out. I have to say it really has helped me to take 10 minutes a day and do meditation. Another thing that has helped me a lot is journaling every night before bed. Even if nothing has happened that day I still make sure to write something before I go to bed.
The old me would turn to food to feel better when I was sad. A lot of that eating was done in private. I would go to the store and get snack cakes, cookies, chips, soda and a sandwich of some kind. I would eat all the food and feel better for the moment until something made me feel sad again. Sometimes I would just make sure to have snacks hidden at home to be able to eat when I needed to. Eating junk food was a good way to avoid the feelings that I had.
When I was not being healthy about my weight loss I would spend more time in the gym than normal to work out my emotions. That was something that was not good for me physically or emotionally. I was not working through my emotions I was just suppressing them. That lead to me harming myself to let the emotions out and to feel something. I was in the thought process that I could not talk to anyone about my problems or how I was feeling. I did not want to be a burden to anyone with issues that I felt were insignificant or minor compared to problems other people are going through. This meant that I would keep all my emotions and problems to myself which was not helping me in the end. When I got away from working out and losing weight the unhealthy way I turned to food to comfort me and soothe my emotions.
