Finallyfull, I'm glad if anything in my experience helps you. I certainly draw inspiration from others on this board. And actually, writing the answers to questions like that helps ME clarify my own thinking, so it's useful to me.
On Thursday, I got my "steps" in as well as the mini-workout and a good S-day. That made me feel as if I was truly on the mend, despite the lingering congestion. It's funny how sometimes you can have minimal symptoms and feel very "sick" and run-down, and other times you can have symptoms and they don't really bother you that much.
At any rate... on to another day.
I get a list of free or low-cost electronic books in my inbox, and there was a free one the other day on
Emotional Eating - I've put in a link to the specific one. I decided to check it out, out of curiosity more than anything else. To my surprise, it seems actually useful. Even though No-S
contains my emotional eating (and I have naturally started doing it less as a result of No-S, which I've written about - somewhere - before), it's still an issue for me.
The underlying premise is that emotional eating occurs because we hunger for something, and address it with food, and we need to learn to listen to ourselves better to identify what we really need. For the first week, there are three activities. The first is to identify a mindfulness activity to engage in regularly (not necessarily daily - 3-4 times during th week), the second is journaling (which I already do), and the third is completing a "mindfulness eating log" for 3 days of the week. The last is "data collection" about when/why we eat. All of these are put on your personal calendar, like appointments.
I very much like that the author encourages "curiosity with a side of compassion" and letting go of perfectionism and judgment. In fact, she has a "contract" to sign at the beginning that includes "I will make every effort to be curious and not judgmental...I give myself permission to feel confused or unclear..."
I think I may try this. It fits with a lot of the things I've previously done that help me - "be gentle with yourself" is one mantra that I keep repeating, because I need it. A little "curiosity with a side of compassion" is not a bad thing when looking at habits, and this structured approach looks useful.
PS - The book was on a one-day sale as a freebie, and I see it's back to normal price now. But it seems to go on that one-day periodically. When I went to download it this time, Amazon told me it was already in my library, so I evidently "bought" it once before and didn't read it then.