I miss you, Chumbawumba

Emotions motivate me to do things.  I guess it shouldn't be a surprise.  I'm an emotive eater, thinker, doer.  I am often motivated by feelings.  This last year (and this current year will be) has been a monumental leap towards making more logic based decisions as opposed to emotion based decisions.  I like emotions.  I think they enrich our lives.  The problem, as we all know, is when our emotions take over as a primary way to decide how to live.  Balance balance balance.  Emotions should inform our decisions, certainly.  BUT, if we KNOW that an emotion is transient, and that soon it will pass and what we KNOW contradicts what we FEEL, then bam.  You should go with what you KNOW rather than what you FEEL.  Elementary, my dear watson.  Yeah, sure.  It is.  But if you're like me, an emotion can be a powerful force to reckon with.  I've gotten into heaps of trouble this way.

Part of growing up has involved figuring out my strengths and my weaknesses and getting all sneaky and stealthy and using my weaknesses to my advantage.  I get discouraged easily.  I sometimes rely on my feelings to direct my paths.  I often don't follow through.  I feel, therefore I do.

Luckily, I have turned into a bit of an optimist, and I'm pretty determined that even these things that knock me down can give me energy and just enough "I'm so frigging tired and pissed off about climbing these same damn mountains" to attack with venom.

Yesterday was a day.  The husband was gone for most of it.  The baby was lovely as usual, but she was also rather impatient with mama doing things like, oh say, ANYTHING OTHER THAN PAYING ATTENTION TO HER!  I ate.  I ate to make me feel good.  And again, like feelings, food should be used to enrich our lives and be done so with a balance.  I KNOW that I didn't fail anything yesterday.  I know, because I have been writing down whatever I eat for the last three weeks. (YAY ME!!!)  I'm looking at yesterday's food log, and overall, I made some pretty good choices.  Kashi whole grain cereal.  Skim milk.  Turkey on whole wheat.  Tortilla chips with mashed avocado.  Banana.  Fiber plus bar.  Small bag of popcorn. And then I know I ate some more stuff later at night that I forgot about. I'm not necessarily disappointed with what I ate, but how I ate it.  I ate all that food rather purposelessly.  I grazed, snacked, chewed, masticated-all because I was rather bored and distracted.

All this jabber leads up to this:  I felt discouraged today.  I felt bored so I ate.  I felt emotionally adrift a bit, so I crunched.  HEREIN LAY THE RUB!!  It's not that I got discouraged.  I expect that.  It's life, man, and if you can't deal with the discouragement, clock out.  It's my penchant to quit after the first few hurdles.  I know this about myself.  I'm prepared to deal with it much better these days, and now instead of fuel for the enemy, it's kindling for my fire.  I KNOW I will meet my goals.  It's just a matter of how long I want to take to get there.  I KNOW  I will make health a lifelong priority.  It's only an issue of how much I want to believe in my ability to choose it.  I KNOW success comes with a price.  It's time to choose the best.  I KNOW that I'll get knocked down.  Time to make it a habit to "get up again."

Excuse me while I go tubthumpin...