If love is ice cream, you’ll never be thin!
July 5th, 2008 by Carol WoodliffI’m in the midst of making some big decisions in my life and it has me nervous. I find myself craving my old friend ice cream! This wouldn’t be so bad if I had any control and could have just one scoop of ice cream but once I start eating it–it as though there is no off mechanism. I could eat a whole container of ice cream in a couple sittings. I allowed myself a trip to Rite Aid to get some ice cream. A couple hours later I felt disgusting, and I started to analyze just what the ice cream was all about. (Again!) Ice cream in our family growing up was the “feel better” treat. If you had a bad day or a boo boo, or if you were a “good girl” while the adults were taking you on a shopping trip–the reward was often a trip to our local Baskin Robbins.
So I had fallen back into the “you need a reward” mindset. It became pretty clear that this sort of reward doesn’t work for me. Once again, I’m reminding myself that food can’t be a reward or comfort. But as I tell my clients, if you aren’t giving yourself love or a reward outside of food, it is going to be awfully hard to give up that food comfort/reward system long term. Every time I find myself slipping into old habits, I also find that I have been tough on myself and not given myself enough love. In the last few weeks I’ve been “all work” and very little play. Fortunately because I’ve been exercising, the scale hasn’t gone up but it hasn’t gone down either. So today, I’m focusing on loving myself by only doing things that support me today. And I’m looking at my calendar and making some play dates for myself.
July 9th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Holy aluminum Batman, I’ve been foiled once again! Man can I relate to this. Strange as it may seem, as soon as I heard my blood sugar numbers weren’t coming down I wanted to run out and just throw caution to the wind. Not an adult way to handle the situation, just a replay of past habits. So, I’ve had a couple of breakdowns in that area and amazingly, I’ve gotten it out of my system and am back on track. Dang, being an adult just sometimes sucks! Speaking of play, I’m going to visit my sisters this weekend and that always means days of laughter and love, something I’m sorely in need of right now.