Stress Eating

Do you believe “stress eating” is a thing?  You know, where people basically overeat to cope with stress.  It’s actually quite common.  I know people who would scoff at this notion, claim the people are just weak and/or making excuses, blah blah blah.  I am not one of those people.  I have always believed it was legit, I just didn’t think I suffered from it.  I eat excessively out of boredom and simply liking good food.  I think good food is one of the pleasures of life, so I indulge.

I have other ways of dealing with stress.  I sleep.  It’s easy. If I’m feeling stressed, or down, or whatever, I go take a nap, sometimes a long nap.  I can even stay in bed trying to go back to sleep for hours after I wake up.  Sleeping is my escape, literally.

And sleep works well when I’m at home, but I’m not always at home.  What do I do when I’m at work or just out and about?  Well, now that I’m thinking about it more closely in my weight loss program, and with current life events, I think maybe I do stress eat, albeit only as “Plan B” when there is no bed or bedroom to escape to.

I generally loathe airing my issues to others,  but I feel like I have to here so it makes sense to anyone reading.  In no particular order, I have going on right now…

• My mother’s health issues.  She fell and broke her hip a little over a month ago, and was admitted to hospice care just yesterday.  She’s 83 and very frail and, well, very ‘close’, if you know what I mean.
• School.  I’m still going back to school.  Two classes this semester, computer coding and calculus.  And calculus is kicking my rear end… again.
• Work.  Work isn’t going badly, not at all, it’s just busy.  I have two projects coming to an end and I have 2 or 3 lined up right after that, maybe overlapping.  As I always say, “Beats looking for work.”
• Toastmasters.  I have sporadic duties to keep up with for the District (State of Iowa, basically).  This is actually the least of my current obligations, but it’s still one of them.
• Routine mundane day-to-day life.  Tasks around the house, keeping up with daily life chores, trying to fit in some relaxation and fun, too.

Yeah, that’s it.  And as I’m thinking about this more and more, and comparing my binge/cheat eating with my weight loss program… because now it’s more pronounced than normal and easier to compare and measure… I’m starting to see a pattern.  I do indeed stress eat, though as ‘Plan B’, as mentioned before.

Virtually all of my stress eating since I started the program has centered around ‘events’ involving my mother.  I think that’s affecting me more and deeper than I was aware.  The others are somewhat normal for me, this adding a whole new amount of stuff is pushing my stress over the edge.  In short, overall I’m feeling very overwhelmed, with a new super-emotional aspect to make it all the more interesting.

I’m still at the plateau, though tomorrow’s weigh in will be interesting, and I’m roughly maintaining, so that’s good.  I’m not gaining everything back.  This is when I’m supposed to be introducing fruits and vegetables back into my diet, but I might go another week with the more bare bones plan to regain some of my momentum.