When Unhealthy Habits Start Pulling You Down

Photo by Ian Espinosa on Unsplash

This week my sister published an amazing article about handling bumps in the road when in recovery from an eating disorder.  This has inspired my blog post this week, so make sure you check it out!

My road bumps that I am discussing pertain to handling bumps in the intuitive/mindful eating process.

This week I have definitely been struggling with eating when I am not hungry. Though there are plenty of instances where it is perfectly fine to eat when you aren't hungry, for me, it was falling back on the behavior of eating just because the food was there. I wasn't hungry, and I didn't really want the food, and I wasn't hanging out with friends or family or anything, it was just there.

For me, in particular, this behavior is problematic because I start obsessing about the food I have around me. And I get this weird anxiety that somehow if I don't eat it NOW that the food will somehow not be there when I AM hungry. I have yet to discover where this particular fear comes from, but I can relate it to the "feeling of missing out" (FOMO) commonly associated with chronic social media use.

When I start obsessing over the food then I quit being able to focus on things that deserve my full attention. Like my job, or my relationships, or driving. And slowly my day dissolves into just thinking about food all the time.

But officer...there is cake in my break room!

Thankfully I was able to catch on to it pretty early this week. It all started with some cookies in the break room. I only had a couple, I was hungry, but I didn't want to eat lunch yet. So I had a couple, then all I could think about was going back and eating more. The next day it was muffins. I wasn't hungry, and though I did want a muffin, I didn't particularly want it right then, but I took it anyway, and basically forced my way through it, even though I wasn't hungry.  All of this tied to a very unrealistic fear that they would somehow not be there when I was hungry (despite the fact that the cookies have so far survived a week).

Then it bled into my home life. I was making snacks out of habit, not because I was hungry, but just because I was used to having a snack right now, so dang it, I was gonna have a snack! I wasn't enjoying my food or paying attention to it, I was just putting it in my mouth, and then all of sudden I had worked through a whole plate and didn't remember it at all! This leads to a decrease in my satisfaction with my meals, and consequently lead to me feeling randomly hungry at all times of the day!

When I realized that I was falling back on an unhealthy habit, I started with the simplest step. Slowing down. I couldn't stop eating it just yet, but I could slow down. I quit holding the muffin constantly, and put it down between bites and doing computer work. Then I would have another couple bites, etc.

I listened to how my body was feeling. I wasn't hungry, and my stomach was a little upset at why food was being put into it when it was quite content already. A lot of grumbles from it over that, plus I felt really sleepy. I then noticed how because of this habitual overeating (meaning I was just falling back on my habit of just eating because the food was there, I don't mean overeating when you indulge at a family meal, or out with friends, etc.) that I wasn't hungry for the lunch that I was excited about. A meal that would not only fuel me, but also give me nutrients, protein, and satiety.

And slowly I have been able to pull myself back from a slippery slope.

It's still an hour-to-hour struggle some days, and some days I give in so that I don't have the time to obsess over the food. But it is getting better.

How do you handle your unhealthy habits when they start coming back into your life? Let me know in the comments below!