Steering Into the Skid

This morning I noticed I was eating when I wasn't really hungry and that the things I was eating were not my typical fare -- in other words, I was eating lots of junk food.

If I still had Diet Head, I would have chastised myself harshly, thrown away or declared off-limits any and all of the junk food I was craving, as well as a host of other foods for good measure. Then one of two things would have happened: I might have starved myself or exercised excessively for a good while to make up for my transgression until finally I could take it no more and binged, or I might have been unable to resist the cravings right from the start and then binged even more to deal with the guilt and the feelings of failure.

But a wise woman suggested a while back that it is far better to "steer into the skid" when facing the urge to overeat. Believe me -- it's scary to give yourself permission to do something when you're afraid you might never stop. Once I got up the courage to try her advice, though, I quickly understood the wisdom of it.

So today, steering into the skid, I said to myself, "Hm. Your eating pattern is really different today. Is something going on?" And I immediately realized the answer: I am exhausted, having gotten only four hours of sleep last night. (The kids still aren't sleeping well.) I have been coping by eating.

And then I said, "Oh, my, you must be so worn out. Here, have some more of that if that's what you need. You know, you could have yelled at the kids, or hit them, or gone to bed and left them to fend for themselves, or popped pills, or collapsed into a blubbering heap in front of the children, but all you did was eat. Hmm. Not half bad when you look at it that way, huh? Maybe you're not such a terrible person after all."

And so I ate what I really wanted for lunch today: nachos. They were good. I hadn't had them in a long while. And now the urge to eat is, at least temporarily, gone. What great advice -- steering into the skid.

And now, in following some more age-old advice, I am going to "sleep while the baby sleeps."