Day 26: Off Topic

I'm up half a pound, but I'm about 2 days out from my period right now, so I'm blaming that. I'm also blaming The Hormones for the outrageous outbreak on my chin. BOTH SIDES. Pretty.

This is only slightly related to dieting, but really, there's not an awful lot to say about that. Nobody cares what I had for lunch. However, I am a stress/emotional eater, which is certainly a contributing factor to how I got fat to begin with. So today I'm going to talk about the feelings.

I have pretty serious anxiety, and my biggest trigger is knowing that I have to be somewhere at a specific time. If I have an alarm clock set, I will absolutely not sleep, and hover around the edges of a panic attack all night. So, as you can imagine, since I have actual, in-class, classes this semester, which are obviously scheduled for certain times, my anxiety for the past couple of months has been through the roof. Next semester I have in-class classes in addition to starting my funeral home clinicals. Just thinking about it makes my heart race. The whole thing has made it that much harder to keep under my calories every day. Because something in my brain says "it will all be better if you eat half a dozen donuts." Luckily, I have a great doctor, and she's very much on top of it, and has prescribed something that in addition to keeping the panic at bay, has curbed my appetite somewhat. Better living through pharmaceuticals.

I'm pretty sure that's candy in those capsules.

I've tried to replace eating as my stress behavior with other stuff, but I can't really find something that I can always use. I used to think that going to the gym would be a perfect replacement behavior, because I feel better after I've been to the gym, and it's obviously better to burn calories than shove them in my face, but when I'm in the midst of it, thinking about getting dressed and driving to the gym just adds to the panic. So, most of the time I distract myself with doing random stuff around the house. Dusting, or dishes, or straightening up are my usual go-to's. I've also started playing around with makeup. I've never been a huge makeup girl, but I've been watching a ridiculous number of YouTube tutorials lately, and so I've been experimenting a bit. Which means I've gone from having like 2 lipsticks, to maybe 15. Insane, but calorie free. And J likes the fancy face looks, so bonus.

How do you distract yourself from anxiety, or boredom eating? Gimme some tips!

xo