Self Care

A therapist told me once that when you have any kind of addition (be it food, alcohol, drugs, gambling, shopping, whatever), your development of coping tools basically stopped at the onset of that behavior. In other words, "normal" people spend most of their adult lives developing tools for their "coping toolbox," but people who have an addiction or an addictive behavior STOP creating and honing new tools.

I started binge eating in my early teens. Pretty much ever since then, it has been my go-to behavior for any extreme emotion. My most favorite thing to do when I'm feeling low, tired, sad, bored, or even celebratory is to get something sweet (ice cream, cookies, candy) and read in bed while eating until I am stuffed and just on the edge of overfull. In other words, my main forms of comfort, self-indulgence, and self care have to do with eating and being lazy. And if you follow the theory this therapist shared with me, my self-care and coping techniques are kind of stunted back to the behaviors of a 12-year old, because that's when I started binge eating and stopped developing other tools.

I felt like I was starting to turn that around earlier this year when I was exercising and training for the triathlon. I got to the point when my body was looking forward to movement, and it felt like self-care to go for a swim or a circuit-training session. But then I got a pretty severe injury three days before my first race (tore two ligaments in my ankle and am still recovering 4 months later).

So I want to come up with some other ways of taking care of myself during this protocol (both the low-cal phase and the maintenance phase). As I've said before, I feel like if I don't work on my brain and work on my habits during this time, then I'll just go right back to where I was before, and I really don't want to do that.

Self-Care Ideas

• take a hot bath (this will be nicer and nicer the smaller I get, because right now, the water doesn't cover my whole body, but it will in a few months! Also nice during the winter months!)
• have a cup of tea and listen to music
• take a walk around the block with my ipod
• yoga (usually I don't want to "waste" my exercise on yoga because I don't think of it as hard enough, but it will be a great thing to do while I'm eating so few calories, and will maybe help me relax as well) 
• journaling (both on this blog and in a notebook I'm keeping where I track my daily foods and weights)
• reading (instead of watching Hulu all night, if I read at least an hour before bed, I feel a lot calmer and more rested).
• bed by 10 p.m.
• creative pursuits (when I feel my creativity, I feel happier. I need to figure out a way to make some time every week to do something creative.)
• regular check ins with friends who make me feel good about myself--not necessarily the people I see the most or the people I'm related to, but the people who make me feel strong and confident and loved--if you even know about this blog, you are on that list!

I am a mother of two young children (age 2 and 5) with a full-time job. So time is in short supply, and one of the nice things about binge eating as a coping mechanism is that it doesn't take any time. Most of the things on my list take time.

But look, I have to just make the time. I have to replace what I've been doing with something else, because if eating less just opens up a huge, needy hole, then I will fail.

Any other suggestions? What do you do for self care that doesn't involve food?