Eating My Emotions

Have you ever turned to food for comfort? I'm not talking like lady cycle comfort, like legit you turn to food to make yourself feel better. I did for my first year of sobriety...YIKES!!

So, for a year I ate and ate and ate. Didn't care, zero fucks and had a yolo attitude with whatever I wanted because "I quit drinking!" I found myself using this excuse a lot that first year, it was some "dry drunk" behavior I went thru.  Sometimes I wasn't even hungry but would eat to satisfied myself when I had a "feeling of life"or even when I would have the urge to drink. There were some days I would have urges every hour, starbursts and skittles were my besties and so was DIET COKE. I use to drink up to 6 sodas a day.  I ate my way to almost 180 pounds!!! At the time, honestly it didn't matter to me because the first year of sobriety was so scary I just had to exist in life and get thru each day. Never in my life did I think I would find comfort in a bag of KIT KATS, it was better then therapy.. TRUTH! But there I was eating treats to not feel like I did with alcohol pushing feeling down that I didn't want to deal with like, accountability, the hurt I caused others, repairing relationships, dealing with feelings from your childhood like was I ever good enough for my parents??  The list could go on but that's for another day. You get the drift!

I started noticing after some time what a slippery slope I was going down. The summer of 2013 I had enough and didn't want to feel like shit anymore. It wasn't until I saw this picture that I'm sharing where I had a wake up call. Maybe I finally snapped out of my own delusion of a year of just trying to deal with sobriety. I've said it before and will keep saying it, SOBRIETY IS NOT EASY BUT ITS WORTH IT. Lots of feels go on during the recovery journey.   You may see one sober pal killing it with exercise and nutrition from the get and think "why can't that be me" but you can't compare to others and maybe that person took a few years to get to that point or maybe that's just how they dealt from the get it go. One of my closet pals was able to go out with friends right away when she stopped drinking but I could not!  Everyone is different!!

I got to the point where  I felt lethargic all the time, my sleep was awful, my anxiety was soaring and I hated the way I felt. I felt uncomfortable in my own skin and starting to feel extremely shameful after I would eat like this.  I wouldn't even change in front of my boyfriend. I felt like I was slipping into another addiction. It's funny they usually say where there is one addiction there is about 2-3 more.  Was food addiction about to make my list?!?!? If I kept going that route yes I would of had more of a problem but I recognized it and dealt with it by looking for different outlets of healthy activities.

I started to cope with exercise and learning more about cleaner nutrition to fell better. Don't get me wrong I still have days especially this past year of falling into a habit of eating my feelings due to infertility issues.  I am human but I snapped out of it again because I was starting to feel like garbage. The last few months I've gotten myself back on track because I know eating myself into numbness will not solve anything and just make myself feel worse.  I talk with a lot of women in recovery and ones who are early on in their recovery  and they all say how they have gained weight and are SO hard on themselves.  Ladies, go easy on yourselves... Honestly, gain the weight!!!! It's better then the alternative, this is just my opinion.  Focus on 90 t0 200 days of your recovery and then start working on the fitness and nutrition part.  Step by Step you will get there. I really believe in early recovery there is so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect! At least I felt that way until I started to just chill after so many months and realizing sober life isn't so bad and that it wasn't a punishment.

Give yourself a break for a bit and just get use to your life sober. Let it go and let it flow, the rest will fall into place

Always,

CMA