Day 3- Food Cravings & Emotional eating

Today was another great day- a very successful day in my opinion. Here are my stats for today:

Weight Watcher Points: 
Allotted: 45
Consumed: 46
Live Strong Calories:
Allotted: 1861
Consumed: 1644 (219 Burned!)
Water:
5/8 glasses consumed. Not so hot on that front today!

Exercise:
Hit the gym for 10 minutes- I barely made it to the gym in time to work out today. I got a great, sweaty workout in anyways. I walked 1 minute, ran 1:30, walked 1, ran 1, walked 1, ran :30, walked 1, ran 1! So 4 minutes of running and 4 minutes of walking! I am bummed that the livestrong calculator calls 4.5 MPH walking though- not so much for someone my height/stature! It's a good paced jog for me. Also, we walked to a local store to pick up a few things today & that took about 20 minutes of leisurely walking, so I counted that as well.

Overall Feeling: Good, for day 3. I'm not as sore or as hungry as I thought I'd be. I really need to kick it up a notch on my fiber & fruit intake, and my water intake. It's been really hot here lately and my body is thirsty!

I wanted to take a minute to talk about emotional eating.. I am guilty of emotional eating & when I do eat out of boredom or stress, I overeat in a huge way. M and I were talking about this tonight, and about how it affects us both. With his job, he doesn't feel like he has time for 3 square meals & 2 snacks a day. (He is also trying to get in better shape with me for similar reasons- mainly because we want to cut our health risks for things we're both genetically predisposed to, so we can be around longer for our family & each other!) Anyhow, M's food problems are not the same as mine, but similar. He's better with eating only at organized meal times, while I prefer to graze throughout the day. I have been eating snacks daily- cheese, yogurt, fruit, jello pudding, and tonight a skinny cow ice cream sandwich. By the way, those things ROCK!!

Back to the point- I am an emotional eater & I tend to have cravings that seem like they're the most important thing in the WORLD at that time. One way I've tried to conquer this is by eliminating unhealthy snacks from our house. We have replaced chips, cookies, sodas & candy with apples, oranges, yogurt & sugar-free, fat-free versions of our favorites. I'm hoping I can work on my emotional eating through therapy & hard work at breaking bad habits. I'm fairly sure if I don't conquer that obstacle in my life, any weight I lose I will gain back if I stop leading a healthy lifestyle.

M and I also talked about some goals & timelines for things in our lives. We've talked many times about having a second child, and I decided tonight that I'd like to be at or under 180 before we conceive again. I also don't particularly want to be pregnant again in the south in the summer time, so we're hoping we can time it right. S will be 1 in August, and I hope to meet my goal by next spring to try to conceive then. It's kind of exciting to have a "plan" for that.

As I've mentioned before, my quit smoking date is May 10th. I am super-excited about this, and I kind of wish I was allowed in my program to quit today. Or yesterday. However, I know that the more time I have, the more I can prepare myself to really quit. I am really nervous that the first week of quitting will be VERY hard for me with eating right. I'm fairly certain it will be a better week for exercise, so I hope it balances out well.I have quit previously using peppermints & gum when I have a craving (yes, I actually WALK outside & have one. I'm thinking a goat trail while chewing gum sounds hazardous but I may give it a try, or maybe I'll turn on some music & dance with S until the craving subsides.

I want to post eventually about the risk factors I keep mentioning & the health problems we're likely to face, and that will likely be a long post. Maybe this weekend?

Until tomorrow, be well!