Stress and Anxiety

I'm definitely an emotional eater, and I've heard that a major issue that some lap-band patients have to deal with is finding an alternative way to deal with stress.

One of the major challenges of this liquid diet has been dealing with the crankies (poor Alex!) It's one thing if I'm legitimately hungry because then I can just have a shake and be fine. And since I'm doing the Glucerna shakes and they are low sugar, I'm not having mood swings from my sugar/carb highs and lows. In the past, I could often blame my moods on that.

However, some days since I've been on the liquid diet, or more often some evenings, I'm just a big 'ol crankpot. That of course colors my perception about everything.

The sales mtg at work this week has been stressful, but adding in running around today for doctor's appointments that were literally squeezed in between breaks in the sales mtg didn't help my cause at all. Getting up super early and dragging my butt in the sticky humidity, transfering 3x and then having a LONG walk to the radiology dept at NYU in shoes that gave me blisters, and wearing a suit, didn't help either.

So at the end of the day, I ended up just backing out of the sales mtg dinner entirely. There wasn't anything I could eat anyway given the restaurant, and I wasn't easily able to hide my mood from my coworkers, so I decided to avoid the situation entirely. Of course that won't always be an option!

I went for a group dinner yesterday and decided that it was just too tricky for me to try and eat just plain lettuce while everyone around me was eating bread and butter and lavish meals, and drinking, and then awesome desserts. Other meals haven't bothered me in my mtgs last week and this week, but yesterday and today I just didn't want to watch people eat foods I want to be eating!

The difference between just being in a mood though and this is that I have a short fuse in general now and I find that I'm anxious. Not always, but more than usual. I may be cranky and moody often enough, but anxiety isn't always the norm for me. And I'm not anxious about anything in particular. I can't say I'm even stressed about the sales mtg. This year's was waaay easier than usual. It's just my general state of being right now given that I don't have that food outlet.

The Cookie Monster Strikes Again!!

Ummm...yeah...that would be me!

I haven't been sleeping well (which i can't figure out) and have been super tired. Unfortunately, when I'm tired and cranky, I turn to food. So this morning, I had a bigger breakfast than usual to try and combat that a bit. I totally inhaled it! Which was fine, all within my Weight Watchers points. Except that I still wasn't satisfied. But i wasn't technically hungry either.

Tired, having trouble concentrating on the notes for my morning meeting, I went to the kitchen for an extra cup of coffee. Again, okay. But then it happened...*someone* left two big bins of cookies on the kitchen table! Chocolate cookies!

Totally snarfed one down!

So that's the bad part. The good part is that a) it was quite little, b) i resisted a second one by asking myself what good it would really do, and c) this was the third day someone had left out different kinds of awesome cookies. And this was the first time I indulged.

So a little bit at a time I guess.

It's more about why I was eating this morning, than what, at the end of the day, i did eat. My biggest challenge too is that I totally felt better after my snarfed breakfast, cookie and coffee.

I should start calling that gnawing part of me the cranky monster.