Sometimes I Get Emotional....Well, Emotional Eating That Is

Emotional eating, it's been there with me my entire life. This is one of the things I can confidently say I know that I am not alone in because I see people post about it in fitness groups on Facebook all the time. We do great, we are set with healthy choices, and then something goes wrong and that craving for homemade granola over low fat yogurt quickly spirals into an entire pint of Blue Bell's crazy cookie dough, not that I know from experience or anything but y'all crazy cookie dough could definitely be someone's kryptonite and bride's cake may have helped me usher in my 30's.

I have joked with my husband before about my non healthy relationship with Little Debbie growing up. I told him that Little Debbie was my best friend during those awkward teen years because she always stuck by my side...well, to my side. Some can eat one swiss cake roll and be done. I would eat one and then plot on how I could hide the fact that I ate another from my parents. It was an unhealthy relationship, but I didn't know how to get away from it. When I was sad, Little Debbie made me feel a little better. When I was discouraged, Blue Bell was there to save the day. When I was stressed, good ole Ruffles knew how to calm me down. I was ashamed that I emotionally ate, which led to even more emotional eating. Shame can keep us trapped far longer than we ever thought. It was a cycle for me.

Then, my twenties happened. I went through a divorce at only 23. Out of respect for the other person involved and because it isn't just my story to tell, I won't include any details other than I went through a divorce and it was the hardest time in my life at that point. I decided to try something new. Instead of emotional eating, it was emotional working out. Every time I would start feeling depressed, I would go run. I found this great track that almost no one went to so I could run and then just talk/ yell to God how much everything sucked (Sorry to everyone who corrected me about saying the word suck growing up. As you can see, it still stuck, but your voices reminding me to say stink are always still there every time I use it). I lost weight and got healthy. I felt amazing! I had finally beat the emotional eating right?

Nope. In 2012 I had a tragic accident. Okay...so I had an accident on a kid's inflatable water slide, more comedic than tragic. It left me needing two surgeries and being told I could no longer run. Cue the emotional eating again. The great thing about being stuck on a sofa after surgery...people feel bad and buy you all your favorite foods to pig out on. The bad thing about being stuck on a sofa after surgery, well, read the last part of the sentence before this one. I put on about 30 pounds in a few months.

I would love to say that now that I am down 80 lbs that I have fully conquered emotional eating, but I haven't. Last week, we got some hard news about a family member's health, and out came the jelly beans. Just yesterday, I had something discouraging happen and I broke out a serving of reduced fat Nilla Wafers....the Nilla Wafers people. My husband looked straight at me when our pastor then had a part of his sermon on how do we do when we are discouraged or things don't go our way. How do pastors always know about those emotional eaten Nilla Wafers? 🤣

This post isn't to say, "Hey, look at me! I've conquered this and you can too! This is how you do it in three easy steps!!' It's saying that you aren't alone if emotional eating has been a struggle for you. It's one I am daily working on. For me, putting on worship music and very loudly belting it out so that the entire county around me helps. One of my sisters loves to go for bike rides in nature when she is stressed. I mean, I now have a metal plate and five screws thanks to a water slide accident so I'm thinking I can't afford the medical bills that would result from me biking. I know that the key is to stop associating food with comfort and getting over stress and start actually dealing with the source of the emotions. So, that's where I'm at right now. I'm taking it each day knowing that, even though my emotional eating is now GERD friendly healthier options than before, it's still emotional eating and that's not too healthy. A Nilla wafer should just be a Nilla wafter, and a jelly bean should just be a jelly bean.

So, if you are in the same boat as me, let's try to both work on it this week. Find someone to encourage you, or, in my case, stare at you when the pastor is talking directly about you. 😳 When you get stressed out or discouraged, know that Little Debbie and Duncan Hines won't solve the problem and will possibly leave you with a stomach ache later. Let's get creative in how we can replace emotional eating with something healthy. Feel free to comment on this post or on my post on The Cajun Coloradan Facebook page if you are in this with me or if you have some great ideas for me.

                                                       The Starer...aka my amazing husband

Husband update!

So, I'm a week late on the one month update for my husband. My second blog post was about how he and his friend were going to do a 30 day challenge to eat the way I eat. There was a lot of laughing (me) and crying (him), but I am so proud of him for sticking it out.

We realized on..oh day 1 or so that we would have to change a few things up if he was going to stick to it and I was going to keep my sanity.  The words, "I'm going to die" were used and "I haven't eaten anything all day." Rest assured, he was eating. There are some foods that I don't eat because of the acidity that are still healthy. So, I've worked a few of those into his eating. I'm looking at you salsa 😉. I also can't have any meal over 3 grams of fat. I upped this to five grams of fat for my husband because he was struggling with snacks and meals that qualified under how I eat. I think the first week brought a lot of perspective for him to see just how much of a struggle it was for me when I started out.

Overall, he has done amazing. I'm so proud of the changes that he has made that are sticking. He has been trying to cut out soda for years, and this challenge has done it for him. I'm no longer stocking up on potato chips and cookies. Within just a few days, he noticed his joints weren't hurting like they usually do after work and his body was just feeling better overall. In his words, "I don't feel like death." How many times have I heard, "You get older and things just start hurting." Well, he changed what he was fueling his body with every day and things stopped hurting.

Challenges along the way. We have had a few interesting days. He has probably had about five days where he completely went off track. July 4th was one of them. I may have cried quite a bit that day. Holidays are a reminder to me that other people, like my husband, can eat stuff whenever they want and then go right back to healthy eating and be fine. If I do that, I will be in a lot of pain and on medicine. It just isn't worth it, but it's okay to say that it stinks sometimes (like 20 times in one day). And it stunk watching my husband load up on hot dogs, deviled eggs, and chips while I sat there with chicken breast and a baked potato. I mean, I wasn't dramatic about it or anything 😉, but I may have sung,"You've lost that loving feeling" to him in the car that day after he ate like he wanted to and I couldn't.

So, lets get to the good stuff. How is hubby doing now, a week after the challenge is over? He is sticking to it!!! This challenge gave him an insight into just how good his body feels when he is putting good food in it. Every time he has a "cheat meal" (I hate that term. It's still just a meal. No shame in it) he feels miserable after and declares that he doesn't know why he does it when he knows he won't feel well. He has decided that this is his new permanent way of living and he will just go off of it for one meal when he has days when be dealt wants something.

After one month, he is down 15lbs and feeling great! It feels great to cook one meal for the whole family now, and we are trying new healthy meals each week.

                                                Don't get jealous ladies, this one is all mine. 

Let Them Eat Cake!

Okay, I'm going to be completely honest. I was totally bummed yesterday. I'm used to eating my GERD friendly diet every other day, but holidays still get to me. Barbecue was out of the question, and there was no way I was making my traditional apple pie. So, I decided to do something to cheer myself up.

The challenge: Could I make one of my childhood favorites healthier and GERD friendly without losing the quality? I decided to take Mrs. Betty's Apple Coffeecake.

Y'all no one cooks better than a Southern church lady. It's a fact, not an opinion, so don't even try to debate me on it. I don't care that I live in Colorado now. I still want to be considered a Southern church lady when I cook. I took this challenge because I couldn't ruin Mrs. Betty's coffeecake.

The original recipe called for oil and eggs. That knocked me out of the running because each serving would be 14 grams of fat, and I can only have 3 grams of fat per meal. So, I replaced the eggs with servings of egg white substitute and the oil with applesauce. Because of the sweetness of applesauce, I cut the sugar in half from two cups to one cup. I was afraid of it being too sweet. My husband said this is a fear that I should never have. 🤣

Here were my ingredients:

1 cup of sugar
1 cup of applesauce
2 servings of liquid egg whites
3 cups of flour
1 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 tsp of salt
2 tsp of vanilla
4 cups of diced apples

I first creamed the sugar and applesauce together. Then I added all of the other ingredients to the bowl. The recipe calls for four cups of apples. I used medium honeycrisp, and it took two and three quarters apples. I could have increased the fiber by using wheat flour, but I decided to try with white flour for the first time trying this. I poured everything into a greased pan (I used a 9 X 13) and baked it at 350 degrees. Mine took 35 minutes before I felt it was ready.

What were the results? Half of the pan is currently gone. It cured my Fourth of July I can't eat any delicious food funk! It actually got better as the day went on and tasted more moist.

Feedback from my husband and father in law was that it needed more sugar (my father in law said this as he ate his second piece 😉) My husband said a little cinnamon sugar on top would have worked instead of more sugar in the cake. My mother in law said it was sweet enough already. It was more dense than Mrs. Betty's so I would whip the egg whites before adding them to the mix next time to give it a lighter texture. I plan on trying this again for sure, I mean for scientific blog purposes only of course.

Now, for the nutrition. I put the recipe in My Fitness Pal so that I could get the nutrition. The big one for my GERD diet is fat. I love the original recipe, but 14 grams of fat would have had me in pain and possibly telling Ben what to tell the hospital workers if an ambulance has to come get me (I may be a bit dramatic sometimes). This new recipe has 0 grams of fat per serving instead. I wouldn't recommend eating the entire pan because of course it is still a dessert, but I would definitely make this to cure those I need some dessert blues. These facts are for 1 piece when I divided the pan into 16 pieces. You can see from the picture above that it was a good size piece.

Mission success!!! 🎆🎉

Help! I Hit A Roadblock!

So, you've decided to eat healthy. You've bought healthy food, made a plan, and are determined to really stick to it this time. Your motivation is high, and your bank account is now low (healthy food isn't exactly cheap). What could go wrong right?

Roadblocks. 🚧 They are always there no matter what your goal is. What you don't expect is that many times the attempted roadblocks on your healthy journey are the ones you care about the most. Family, friends, coworkers. What do you do when temptation is all around and others are encouraging you to just eat "a little" (let's be honest, it turns into a lot and you wind up feeling guilty, miserable, and, frankly, craving more)? Sometimes people do it innocently, like grandmas who love you so much and just want to make sure you are fed and full....every...minute...of...your....life. People who really love you and support you will still get it wrong sometimes, but most of the time they will make an effort to support you. There will always be others though. Not everyone or every situation will be supportive. Someone I know was recently at a work event where people repeatedly put soda and cookies in his face trying to get him to eat them even though they knew he was trying to eat healthy.

In the end, the responsibility falls on the person trying to be healthier. So, how do you do this?There will always be roadblocks, but let's talk about some detours that have helped my family.

1) Always have snacks with you!- If you have a healthier option on you, you are less likely to "need" the non healthy option. This seems pretty easy, but it requires planning. At any given time, you can ask me and I'll have a small apple in my purse. (Reminder to myself: put a new apple in after son confiscated the last one at the park today). I snack throughout the day when I'm working. As a teacher, this means snacking at planning, eating my lunch, and snacking right after the students leave and I'm working in my class. "I'm always on the road all day" I totally get this one. My husband drives a semi and is often waiting in line for hours for his load. He needs snacks that can easily be eaten in the vehicle while he is sitting in line. I pack a portion of nuts for him, an apple, and something small like a fig bar. Other small options that you can always have on hand in a purse, in a pocket, or in your car: one portion of lower fat granola, some dry cereal (I'm pretty much an 80 year old with my eating habits so bran flakes is my go to), or a small piece of fruit (cutie, apple). For those with access to a refrigerator, low fat string cheese is a great option.

2) If you are tempted by sweets, HAVE A BETTER SWEET AVAILABLE!- I have already talked about apples, but sometimes that just doesn't do the trick. When I first got diagnosed, sweets was such a struggle. I love sugar! Gilmore Girls was one of my favorite shows growing up, and I aimed to eat like a Gilmore Girl. There are always sweets in the teachers' lounge...ALWAYS...and I felt like I was always depriving myself. So, I started keeping two jelly beans in my purse. Yep, just two. When I was trying to avoid cake, donuts, and every other sweet known to man in the teachers' lounge, I would just suck on my two jelly beans to enjoy them slowly. I took care of my sugar craving and saved myself a lot of calories and sugar. If you don't have GERD, you can do the same thing with a mint. If you do have GERD, avoid mints because they are a trigger.

3) 🎵Have a little help from my friends...🎵- Yep, that would be a Wonder Years reference, another part of my childhood. Despite all attempts, sometimes it just stinks. Have some kind of accountability person that you can talk to, even if it is just shooting them a text saying that there are donuts at work today for the third time this week and you really want one and sometimes it just stinks because life would be easier if all you saw was carrots and broccoli and everyone ate like you and.....okay, so I may be drawing from experience from this one. I normally text my husband, and his usual response is, "You've got this". Those three little words set me up for complete success and help me to walk away with a little more confidence. It's also cool to have friends that totally understand that you might eat a little different and support you in it, like when they are all ordering burgers and fries and you are sitting there with your English muffin with no butter or jam (yep, that happened recently. Shout out to my amazing friends for no judgement and plenty of laughs that night!)

4) It's okay to say no!- I feel like some of us need to read that daily. I was raised with amazing Cajun manners. You always show respect. Part of this had me feeling guilty for turning people down with food. "You wouldn't want to hurt their feelings" was the little voice I heard every time. The truth is, it's okay to say no! It's healthy to say no sometimes. Like I said before, your family and friends love you and want to support you. Sometimes we are the ones making ourselves feel badly. We go over to eat at my in laws house after church on Sundays. Nine times out of ten, I stop at a store and pick up some chicken breast tenderloins to cook for myself to go along with something else for lunch. I know that my GERD diet is different than what most people eat so it's just easier for me. This week my mother in law had steamed some broccoli so I just paired it with my chicken for lunch (followed by fat free Cool Whip in a sugar cone which I highly recommend for dessert! Yum!). When I first started, I felt so guilty about not eating what my in laws had cooked. I even considered eating something that I knew would give me a reaction because I didn't want anyone to feel badly. No one had made a comment or tried to make me feel badly. I had to get past my own self imposed guilt. This one was helped along by the hubby who gave me a look like I had just landed an alien aircraft when I said maybe I would just eat a little. I had to teach myself that it is okay to saw no.

You've got this. Roadblocks happen, but detours always help. To quote a song we use to sing in kids church that has been constantly in my head while typing this, "Hey, what do you say? Move that mountain out of my way!"

And to those waiting on my Cajun food post...keep watching because I'm working on some recipes this week. The one I am most excited to try to recreate isn't Cajun, but it was a huge part of my childhood. For those from BBAG, I'm going to attempt a healthier version of Mrs. Betty's apple coffeecake!


                                 My amazing little guy decided to do sit ups with me today.