Losing Balance

I lost my balance a little bit this weekend, stumbled over myself.  I allowed my stress at work to keep me angry much longer than I should have.  It was the most stress I've felt in a long time; so much so that it made my stomach feel ill, and answered my question as to what it feels like to be someone who turns away from food instead of toward it, when they are stressed out.  My stress made me feel ill.  And it was such a bad feeling that I couldn't even comfort eat, or eat at all, until I left work and got home.  

I don't like letting my stress get me so off balance, I had been in such a good place until Friday, doing good internal work, and feeling strong.  But it happens to all of us.  My reaction was out-of-character, I was so busy trying to catch up with stuff that needed to get done by the end of the day, and still fuming over the blow that made me aware of the entire stressful situation I've been unwilling placed in due to someone else's horrifically poor timing/planning, I didn't want the only comfort food I had left with me, Doritos, and my stomach was too flooded with emotions to eat them anyway.  As absurd as it was, the fact that I couldn't comfort-eat made me feel even more stress.  

Saturday was an odd day for me.  I became really self-conscious about myself.  I had that old familiar feeling of wishing I could just hide.  Driving around town with my windows down, blasting the Bouncing Souls should have made me feel young and cool, but it made me feel like a fake.  Punk music has energy, I don't.  Punk is loud and confident, I am not. I feel old and tired and really really FAT.  And those are raw, defeated ways to feel.  I hated that I felt that way, and that it was so hard to shake.  Even when my kids talked me into taking them to the cardio room so they could banish some of their own boredom, I half-heartedly did some work on the bike, treadmill and eliptical.  The bike made me feel good, the treadmill was OK, but bothered my knee some, the eliptical hurt my knee the most.  I got frustrated about the whole situation again.  Then I decided that frustration doesn't fix my body, it eats away at it, damaging it from the inside.  I have fixed my hip issue before, I can do it again.  Now, if I can stop tripping over every little crack in the sidewalk, maybe I can heal.  

I have been increasingly aware of my growing stomach, and how unhappy I am to be this weight, mentally and physically.  I felt the focus shifting away from fixing the inside, to making peace with the outside.  These patterns are so hard to break, especially when you have been dieting for nearly 30 years.  I don't know where to turn.  Yes, I need to fix my mind and how I see/use food, I need to start giving myself what I need to get through the tough situations without senselessly eating food.  But to say I am never going to restrict myself...it is like living life on a high-wire with no safety net.  The trick is supposed to be that, you have to trust your own body to decide what it needs.  But, how realistic is it to run out for food every time you want to eat something?  In my world, not realistic and sometimes not even possible.  So I have modified it to eating what sounds the best of the things I have on hand.  Maybe that isn't the way this program is supposed to work, but it is what works for me.  I haven't been doing enough work on thinking before eating.  I have been very easily swayed simply by having certain food around me.  I will try to work harder on waiting to eat until I am hungry.  It is just about having a few things available to me at all times, so I can choose what it is that I want.  

I don't feel like I really have too much new or important to say.  I am still working on this whole thing.  I have noticed, when I focus on the inside, the outside hurts me less, and I felt the balance I was enjoying, start to shift and it affected me emotionally and I didn't like that.  Tomorrow is a new day; a new week, a fresh chance to work through some stress, because I am guaranteed to find it waiting for me the instant I punch in to start my shift.  I can't control the fact that I will encounter things that stress me out, but I can try to maintain some balance while walking over the speed bumps.  I am not going to let one uninspired weekend kick me in the teeth; I've been through much harder stuff than this.