Overcoming an Emotional Binge

I'm not only a leader at Weight Watchers, first and foremost I'm a member.

I have struggled with my weight for several years, and have found the tools and the inspiration I needed at Weight Watchers.

Since I'm well known in my area, I find it difficult to attend meetings without feeling like a "leader". People look up to me as someone who's got it all figured out. If only it was always true!

Weight Watchers.com has free message boards where the members can exchange tips and ideas and support each others. I have found there a place where I can be a member. The fact that I am a leader is known, but irrelevant. I'm a member like everybody else.

I've found many things on the boards and a lot of inspiration. I wanted to share with you something I've found a while ago, but was re-posted this morning. I don't know who originally wrote it, for that I apologize, if you know, please let me know so I can note it in here!!



3 Minutes to Fight Off an Emotional Eating Binge Right Before it Happens
(Posted by EditorCarol)

Minute 1: Stay Grounded

Emotional eating happens when you lose your connection to your
grounded self. Stress itself is not what makes you reach for something
to eat. In fact, stress is often a good thing and your grounded self
knows this! We need the physical stress of exercise to keep our bodies
in good shape just as we need the stress of intellectual and emotional
challenges to keep our minds healthy.

Nine times out of ten, what really leads to emotional eating is
getting caught in a "mind storm" of worst-case scenarios, projections,
misinterpretations, and all the emotional overreactions that come with
these thoughts. This "storm" turns a manageable challenge into
something that makes you feel helpless, overwhelmed, ashamed or
afraid—and sends you to the kitchen to find something to stuff those
extreme feelings. When you can stay grounded in the moment of stress,
you have many more options.

Here are some simple ideas to keep you grounded when something (or
someone) pushes your buttons and your feelings start to spiral out of
control:

1. Take a few deep breaths. (You can also count to 10, if that helps.)
If the stressful situation involves someone else, take a timeout and
agree to continue the discussion in a few minutes.

2. Remind yourself where you are. Take a look around, noticing and
naming the colors and shapes in the space around you.
Notice the physical sensations you are experiencing. Whether it's a
sinking feeling, turmoil in your stomach, tension in your hands or
jaw, restricted breathing, or heat on the back of your neck, try to
name the feelings that go with the sensation. Is that sinking feeling
fear, or dread? Is the heat a symptom of anger?
The idea here is to stay in your body and in the moment—with what's
real—instead of going inside your mind where all those unreal
scenarios are just waiting to get spun out-of-control.

Minute 2: Reality Check
Once you're calm enough to start thinking productively, put all those
thoughts that are clamoring for attention inside your head through a
quick reality check. Here are several very common thought patterns
that have no place in reality. Do any of these apply to you?
1. All or nothing thinking
Example: You go over your calorie limit or eat something on your
"forbidden" list, and then decide to keep eating because you've
already "blown it" for today. Reality: Weight loss is not a one-day
event. If you stop overeating now, you'll gain less and have less to
re-lose later. That's something to feel good about!


2. Reading your own thoughts into someone else's words
Example: Someone made a mildly critical or unsupportive remark to you,
and you feel completely devastated. Reality: The more bothered you are
by such remarks, the more likely it is that you are being overly
critical of yourself. When you treat yourself with respect, what
others say won't matter nearly so much.


3. Either-Or thinking
Example: You make a mistake or have a bad day and feel like a complete
and hopeless failure. Reality: No one does well all the time. Mistakes
are a necessary and valuable opportunity to learn—if you don't waste
them by getting down on yourself.


4. Taking care of other people's business
Example: Something is going badly for someone you care about, and you
feel responsible, or pressured to fix it. Reality: People need to
learn from their own problems. You aren't doing anyone a favor by
trying to fix things just to make yourself feel better.

Minute 3: Putting Things in Perspective
Most common problems that you face in everyday life are much easier to
handle when you keep them in perspective and avoid making mountains
out of molehills. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to make
sure you aren't in the mountain-making business:

1. How big a deal is this, anyway? If I knew I was going to die in a
week, would this be something I would want to spend this minute of my
remaining time on?
Will any bad things happen if I postpone thinking about this until I
have more time to figure things out?

2. Do I have all the information I need to decide how to respond to
this? Do I really know what's going on here, or am I making
assumptions? Am I worrying about things that might not even happen?
What do I need to check out before taking action?

3. Is there anything I can do right now that will change or help this
situation?
Am I trying to control something I can't, like what other people
think, say, or do?
Have I really thought through this problem, and broken it down into
manageable pieces I can handle one-at-a-time?


Use this approach whenever your thoughts or situations begin to feel
overwhelming, and you'll quickly find that the mountains that seem
impossible at first can quickly morph into what they really
are—manageable hills that you DO have the ability to climb. All it
takes is three little minutes of your time.

So there you have it, in 3 minutes you can turn around a situation and make it work for you. Only 3 minutes!

Be good n stuff!

I'm an Auntie!

Would you look at this!!! Isn't it the cutest thing you've ever seen?

This little thing there is Baby H, the latest addition to the Clan. My little brother is a Daddy!

Look at him, Baby H also got something from his Auntie, he's working out already!

Here's another picture of him:

I'm in love!

Apparently so's the proud Daddy! Look at him!


Aaaaaaaaaaaaaw I'm all melting all of a sudden. My little brother is all grown up!



Welcome to the world Baby H! You're one lucky little fellow. You're Mom and Dad are going to be such great parents.

One day, when you're a teenager, and get angry and frustrated, I'll be able to tell you about the joy and pride I heard in your Daddy's voice when he talked about you today.

Welcome to the world, welcome to our family. We love you to pieces already!

Auntie Will~

Finding our way

Woaaah it’s been a while hasn’t it?

September has been a long, stressful month. I pretty much had to put everything aside to go in “survival mode”. I cleaned up my finances, figured out where I stand, made new goals for myself and now I’m ready to get going.

I’ve found that I really need those “wait a minute” moments where I can just step back and rethink where I’m going and how I’m going to get there.

Now that I’ve got my brain in gear, I’m back to the daily grind. You know what though? All of a sudden, we’re having fun again!


Sunday is the first day of my work week, so everything starts on Sunday! That night we had tilapia fish thawed out and I decided to make a stew out of it.I made it up on the spot and it was delicious!

Here’s what it looked like:


I looked around in my fridge to see what I had to work with. I had all sorts of leftover cut veggies so I used those.

I sautéed 1/2 cup chopped onion, for 2-3 minutes. Then I added 2 garlic cloves (minced) and one red hot pepper, seeded and minced, cooked for about 1 minute.

I then added about 1 cup diced zucchini, cooked 2 minutes, threw in 3/4 cup of small red bell pepper sticks cooked 2 more minutes.

When the veggies were tender crisp, I added salt, pepper and 8 oz of raw tilapia cut in chunks. I cooked that 2 minutes covered, then I turned the fish pieces, added 1 cup diced fresh tomatoes (I quartered small ones that were on the vine), 2 TBSP (more or less) fresh basil in strips and 1 tsp capers. I cooked that about 2-3 minutes, or until the fish was done.

Et voila, fish soup/stew. The fish was still slightly frozen when I started so be careful not to overcook!


Yesterday I made bentos in the morning and was planning on cooking chicken for dinner but a stomach ache kept me out of the kitchen so we had canned soup. I had the healthy Choice chicken and noodle soup.


It was okay… not very tasty at all though. If you like very tasty/spicy food you will need to doctor it up. Next time I will add spices to it.

It's a good base to start with though if you want quick and easy "save me from the drive through" solution and are out of frozen meals.


I'm also enjoying my trusty smoothie every morning. I ran out for a while, and really missed it.


This has been my coffee every morning, 1 packet of the Weight Watchers Creamy Chocolate Smoothie in 2 cups (more or less) of hot coffee. It starts my day the right way.


So we are still eating right, and enjoying it. I’m also working out regularly again which makes a world of difference!

I actually slept all the way through the night last night. Finally! Our kitten has been waking us up on regular basis.

We finally found him a name: Leopold, Leo for short. He is still climbing everywhere, but we’re getting used to him and fortunately he seems to have learned to get lost at night.

Look at him, so cute!


So that’s what’s going on with us. We’re moving ahead, slowly but surely. My husband was looking very good this morning for some reason, very slim. This girl ain’t complaining one bit! ;o)

Be good n stuff!

Tuesday's picnic

Last Tuesday we went for a day at the beach. We went to Doran Beach in Bodega Bay. It's a beautiful beach at which, for a few dollars, you can park, use the restroom, even take a shower if you need to.

We fell in love with the place, only problem being that I sunburned pretty badly. So we spent the rest of the week mostly indoors. Oh well.

For that day we had prepared a picnic: two deli meat sandwich on dutch crunch bread, and a tabbouleh. We also had yogurt, and bananas!


I had fun packing up the food, unfortunately the camera didn't cooperate that well. Here's what I salvaged:

Here's the two sandwich with the tabbouleh.

The Tabbouleh is the most simple I've ever made, and actually the most tasty!

I soaked Bulgar, then chopped a big bunch of parsley, chopped tomatoes, cucumber, put in chick peas, lemon juice salt and pepper.

That's it! It was delicious, and it was fresh. Yum! I put it in my glass Lock and lock. With lemon juice, I didn't want to use plastic.

I packed the sandwich in a layer of plastic wrap, but that was ugly, so I wrapped them in a bento cloth just to make them pretty!

So that was our picnic or what I could get out of the camera about it!

I packed the whole thing in my picnic basket, and off we went. We had a totally relaxing day. We brought the dog along, on leash, and though she wasn't used to being on leash at the beach, she did pretty darn good.

We're planning many Saturdays there I think. I'm also looking into a "season pass" for next summer!

Be good n stuff!

A newcomer in my house!

So, I wanted to introduce a newcomer in my family: Monsieur Sans-Nom. Which is a temporary name until I come up with something.

Monsieur Sans-Nom is from the Sonoma County Shelter, and is around 3 months old (that we know of). He's a male short haired tabby kitty with a white belly and white "tips". He's adorable and LOADED with energy.

He's already won over my husband:


Grace, our dog:

And myself of course! I'm just in love with the little guy.

Gaya, our older female cat is less than impressed with him, but for a first meeting it didn't go too bad. He kinda goofed by running straight in her face... TWICE!

He has also explored the whole downstairs.

The Shoe rack:


Under the furniture:


In the trash can:


And of course, the curtains (which he has tried to climb a few times already):


So, Monsieur Sans-Nom has been here about 3 hours, if that, and has already completely overtaken the house. I'm in loooooooooooove isn't he the cutest?


Be good n stuff!

Tried something new!

I got a new cookbook yesterday: World Vegetarian by Madhur Jaffrey. It's a wonderful book that I surely use a lot.

As always when I get a cool book, I trot out all my other cool cookbook and start looking around in them. I have well over 170 cookbooks so...

Today I used The complete Middle East Cookbook. I've had it for a while, used it some, but hadn't looked at it for some time.

In there I cam across a recipe for Nivik which is chickpeas cooked with spinach. I had never tasted it and had no idea what to expect, but it DID look good!

I cut the recipe in half and used canned chickpeas instead of cooking dry ones, here's what it looked like:




I served it along with roasted chicken but honestly it would have been fine on it's own with a salad, or a naan. The chicken was really overkill.

It was simply delicious, I'm planning on doing it again, starting with dry chickpeas this time, and having it as my main dish. My husband really liked it also, so that's a step in the "putting it on the regular list" direction.

The more I explore vegetarian far, the less appealing meat is. I'll never be a real vegetarian, even less a vegan, but I do understand how it is possible to be completely satisfied living as a vegetarian. There's so much to explore!

We're still on vacation, walked non-stop the last two days in Berkley and San Francisco, tomorrow we're heading to the farmer's market in Sebastopol. Other than that, we're taking a vacation from planning! AH!

Be good n stuff!

On Vacation!

We're on vacation (well, my husband is, I'm not quite on vacation at this point!) so there isn't much Internet time really.

I still had to stop and brag a little. We have a new cookbook out at Weight Watchers, and tonight my husband cooked dinner all out of Best Eats.

He made a Home-Style Meatloaf (p. 66) that he served with Tuscan Potato and Pepper Packets (p. 159). It was delicious!

It's very cool to see my husband have fun experimenting in the kitchen. Two mad scientist in the same kitchen. What's out!

Here's what dinner looked like:



The plate is HUGE, which makes the portions look tiny, but the portions were plenty since I had a substantial lunch. Both the meatloaf and the potatoes were tasty and very "comfort food" like.

Absolutely going to become regular fare in my kitchen, both recipes!

I'll be kind of busy for the next week or two due to vacation and an intense need to GET OUT!

So by the 8th of September my husband will be back to work, and I'll hook back up to my routine!

Be good n stuff!