Friday 23 May 2008

Emotional Eating

Either Tante Oprah or Om Bob Greene said that emotional eating is really the root of the problem. You think you like food but that's just a cover, masking a deeper emotional problem. It took me awhile but yeah, I am too an emotional eater. I eat when I'm bored, stressed, and upset. Though obviously you do need to eat, I now notice that when I'm eating to actually sustain living don't eat all that much. The extras must've come from all those unhappy moment.

I think I've done pretty good these days. Sometimes I do eat more, usually when I ate out with my family, or when there's just that little piece of chocolate cake left, but in general I try to watch what I eat.

However, there are times when I lapse into old habits. Yesterday was one of them. There was miscommunication whcih resulted into cancelled meetings etc so suffice to say I wasted the entire morning and was feeling really low. The first thing that came to mind was that I want to eat good food. So I cab it to my local mall, go to Sushi Tei and ate at the bar. Being upset made me bold so I ogled at the food on parade on the conveyor belt and pick plates I wouldn't normally. I was actually hungry too, so the first two plate really felt nourishing washed down with warm ocha. But the third plate onwards was just feeding the pain and disappoinment I felt yesterday. In the end I ate six little plate of sushi. I stopped just before I feel really really full. Still, I ate about 2 plates more than I should. I then savour my ocha and taking in the atmosphere. I felt much better.

I walk around the mall a bit then my mother came up and we window shop for a bit before sitting down for coffee. This definitely improve my mood. So much so that I can restrain myself against the cheesecake that my mom ordered and fight down the urge to finish off the slice :D

I suppose now the job is to train myself to not indulge my pain and overeat. One meal at a time.

Monday 19 May 2008

How I Fell of the (exercise) Wagon

Back in January, thing were going along swimmingly. I exercise everyday for at least 30 minutes. Slowly but surely I increase my time on the treadmill until I manage to stay on for 45 minutes. Until a small accident set me back.

It is actually nothing major but I noticed that my sneakers were becoming a bit loose. It used to fit snugly, now something seems amiss. I didn't think much of it, in fact I thought it was a sign that I've lost some weight that my sneakers are looser. Well, I didn't and it wasn't. It was ripped. I was streching when I noticed something red on the shoe. I thought, that's funny, my shoes doesn't have any red accent on it. Still, because I was focused on training, I didn't really check it out. It wasn't until I sat down to do my sit-ups and was taking off my shoes that I realise the red bit? It wasn't part of my shoe, it was my bright red socks poking through the gap! Eek! On both sides as well.

Now, this annoys me because I just bought the shoes last September, didn't really wear regularly until about October thus I really only use it for about 4 months and it ripped already? I didn't think I was exercising that hard. How can 20 minutes on treadmill everyday called hard training? Not even close!

On normal minded people, they'd just fix the shoes or buy another. Being somewhat abnormal, I put off going to the shoe repair. And when I did go, they told me if they sew it back, it would just rip again so I better off buying new ones. Now, I don't know whether the shoe repair people were just lazy, uncreative, or they were actually telling the truth and I got ripped off by Nike's. Whatever. I was bummed. exercising with ripped shoes just don't feel good. So, what do I do?

I stop exercising.

I fell off the wagon. I jump ship. I sulked.

I want new sneakers. But the ones I wanted were pricey, and I didn't feel like spending that much money on something that would be broken 4 months later. Oy! I tried wearing my older sneaker. Boy, those even felt worse.

Until an angel saw my plight and shone the light on me.

Ok that was bombastic ;) What happened was, as we generally spend either Sunday or Saturday lunching at the local mall, my dearest husband finally noticed how I always look at sneakers, pick them up, turn them around, sigh, then put it back. This happened for a few weekends until he said,"Well, just pick one and I'll pay for it!" Oh my love, you came through for moi! ;)

I picked a pink Reebok pair that supposedly gives a percentage of the sale towards the pink ribbon campaign. Yes, my aunt is a breast cancer survivor so I felt it is only right that I buy this particular pair. It was not cheap but not the most expensive pair either. Then, he also got me some new training clothes so now I really have no reason not to resume training.

How did it go? Well, last week I only manage to exercise 2 days out of 7. But today I can proudly say that I begin the day by eating a chocolate doughnut and promptly goes to the gym to walk it off. Tomorrow, I promise myself that I will train again. Cross fingers this week will go better than last week ;)