Notsogreat Weekend

I was down this weekend -- house is a mess, hubby worked all weekend, parents (aka relief childcare) out of town, friends cancelled plans. So I was down. And I ate. I didn't go on an all out binge, but I gave up caring enough to count (fortunately, I toted up Saturday's dinner of frozen shu mai and homemade Thai Sticky Rice with coconut and mango and didn't do too much damage), and I did get myself a treat (fortunately, instead eating all of a bag of cookies, I ate most of a container of dates, which did much less damage to my waistline. I didn't totally lose control.) Also, I ordered a shamrock shake on Sunday -- I had never tried one, and despite not knowing the points ahead of time (a big no no in my book) I wanted it anyway. I did throw it away after drinking maybe half. Is that all?

No wait, I broke into the baked Jalapeno cheese doodles I bought my husband on Sunday night. Didn't eat them all, but also didn't measure them.

Is this the end of my diet? No. I barely went over points, if at all, thanks to my gazillions of nursing points, but it did feel disturbing. I knew I was eating because I was down, I KNOW that's bad, but you know what? Food, at least temporarily did make me feel better. I have a hard time on weekends anyway, because I don't eat regularly, and then I get hungry and eat what's available. Add to that the feeling sorry for myself, and I'm in bad shape.

The thing about emotional eating is that all the diet magazines and Oprah seem to think that if you identify emotional eating, then you have fixed it. In reality, it's far more complex than that. I know I eat to make myself feel better. I know there are other things I could do, but I don't have the time/money for a lot of those things. Eating is fast, and it works. And yes, it defeats my long term objectives, but gah - it's hard to justify that in the short term.

It's a struggle. The best I can do right now is to make good choices.