Sunday Solution?

As I've mentioned here before, Sundays, well weekends in general, but Sundays are particularly difficult for me food-wise. It's because the meal times are off my usual schedule and my body wants to eat at times I know I shouldn't.

My husband and I go to an early morning church service on Sundays. Because I don't want to sit there with my stomach growling, I have coffee and a nutrition bar while getting ready to go. Once the service is over, it's mid-morning and a weekly ritual for us is to go out to breakfast. We go to a special little diner that we enjoy as much for the people who run the place, as the fare they offer. I do usually eat sensibly: 1 egg scrambled, 2 slices of bacon, an English muffin, and coffee. And yes, of course, I would rather fall face down in a short stack of buttermilk pancakes smothered in Maple syrup! Who wouldn't?? But I know it's best to save that kind of meal for a very special occassion. [I think part of our problem these days is that in our self-indulgent I-want-it-now society, we've saved nothing for special occassions. But that's a topic for another day.]

Even though I eat that fairly sensible breakfast, it still means that by noon, I've had as many calories as I've usually had by 4 o'clock in the afternoon on any other day of the week. I was already thinking I would need to do something to keep myself out of the pantry mid-afternoon looking for a snack, when my husband suggested we go to a movie. Great idea. And since I'm never really tempted to eat theater food, (I find it overdone in size and price), I knew I'd be OK. The feature we wanted to see started at 1:30p. By the time we got home it was after 4p and I had a cup of tea to tide me over until I started working on dinner. We eat no later than 6p most evenings because we don't want to eat too late. All in all, the day went well and I got through it under my daily caloric total.

Now I'm not advocating you go to a movie every time you want to keep out of the pantry or refrigerator, but the idea of spending your time elsewhere to take your mind off food is a good one. The thing is, I wasn't starving when we got home from the movie. My body had forgot about eating because my mind was otherwise engaged. Often eating isn't about hunger, it's about boredom or mindless eating out of habit. Break the habit, break the boredom and you'll have a better chance of winning the battle and in the end, winning the war.

Boredom Binging

It's the weekend, we're bored and there's nothing else to do, or there's something else we should be doing but don't want to. So. Let's see what's in the pantry to munch on?

Before you know it, we've downed a half box of Triscuits. Now we want something to off-set that salty taste so now we'll just have a little bite of something sweet. By the end of this food search and destroy mission, it's 4:30 in the afternoon and dinner is just around the corner and we're already well on our way to blowing our day's calorie allotment. We just meant to have a little bite of something, but things got carried away. So now what about dinner? Well, we have to eat something, don't we? And we don't want to deny ourselves a hot meal so let's go ahead and have that, too. Write all that down. Add it all up. Wow. Before you know it, we've had about a thousand calories more than we planned , just because we got a little bored and instead of finding something else to do, we ate.

Here's one way I battle this down-hill slip and slide when it starts: I try to remove myself from the situation and/or get my mind on something else. Changing behavior goes a long way to correcting a bad habit like boredom eating. Experts say boredom is one of the 5 top reasons for emotional eating. Instead of hanging out at the pantry door when you're between projects, do something else. If you're at home, leave the room. Seriously, remove yourself from the area so that you're not staring at food. Go rearrange your sock drawer.

Go clean out that drawer of old make-up in your dressing table. Fess up, we all have them. That alone should be good for several hours if it's anything like mine. If you're at the office, take a break and walk outside for a few minutes instead of going to the vending machine. OK, if you're in Texas and it's 103 degrees, maybe you don't want to walk outside. So go explore another part of the building. Boredom eating is often done in an almost hypnotic half-awake state. We're not all that aware we're doing it until it's over and we end up kicking ourselves for losing control. But the truth is, we didn't so much lose control as we just did what we've always done. The idea here is to break that habit. Several years ago the driver-side window on my car quit working. It wouldn't roll down. I lost 5 pounds! All because I couldn't pull into a drive-thru on my way home!

Turn left instead of right. Go up instead of down. Anything to change that routine and interrupt the same old same old. You're trying to do things differently, trying to change your life and make it better. Don't forget this is a 24/7 battle. It can't be stressed enough that if you don't want to hang onto these same 25-30 pounds for the next 10-years, and possibly add on even more, a lifestyle change has to occur and that includes breaking old habits. Do a crossword puzzle, take up cross stitch, painting, ceramics, anything. Remember you're trying to make yourself better, not bigger.