I have major issues with food.  Sometimes I feel like I’m alone in this but I know I’m far from it.  Why does food have such a hold on so many people??

I have gone up and down and up and down for the last 10 years.  I will lose weight and then gain it back.  It feels like a never ending cycle.  I do well with exercise, I schedule time to take care of myself, and I focus on making healthy choices.  Then life happens and work is stressful or there is a death in the family or school is freaking me out.  That results in studying for long hours, working at crazy times, or just plain not caring because it doesn’t seem important in the face of a tragedy.

And then I end up where I am now.  Three years after working really hard to be healthy and lose weight and I’m back where I started.  I thought for sure I would get back where I needed to be this summer.  I would have all this free time when not in school and could spend lots of time exercising outside.  Of course this has been one of the hottest summers in Indiana history so me and the kids have been stuck in the house most of it.  We’ve been busy and pretty much just eating whatever happens to come along.  Yeah, that doesn’t make for a healthy lifestyle or a slimmer Brandy.

I haven’t been particularly liking what I have seen in the mirror lately but I had been ignoring it.  Until yesterday when I got on the scale and the number pretty much slapped me in the face.  I ignored the bacon in the fridge and had oatmeal for breakfast, I had a yummy grilled chicken salad for lunch, I measured and weighed my pasta dinner and wrote everything down for the day.  I tracked it to see what I was doing.  I was proud of myself by the end of the day but I was also a bit miserable.

I was craving junk food like I can’t even tell you.  I wanted something greasy and fatty and maybe something filled with sugar.  I didn’t need it.  I wasn’t hungry.  I was full and done eating for the day.  All of that didn’t matter because I LONGED for something horrible for me.  I wasn’t hungry.  I didn’t need it.  I just wanted it for no good reason, something I wish I could explain.  I’m going to say it again, I DIDN’T NEED IT.

I can happily report that I didn’t eat any of it.  I left the chips alone.  I didn’t dig through the freezer for ice cream.  I track using Weight Watchers and I was well within my points for yesterday.  While I wanted something bad for me I talked myself out of doing it.  I ate good food and enjoyed it and fought my cravings instead of giving in to them.

There have been a lot of studies about sugar and fat being addictive and I absolutely believe that to be true.  My body doesn’t need it but when I try to get some of it out of my life, I feel a horrible urgency to eat them.  I feel like I’m trying to detox my body away from those things.  I am drinking more water and putting healthy food into my body.  I’m hoping the next 2-3 weeks goes by quickly as I try to break the habit I have created of eating junk.  My body doesn’t need it and I don’t want to be dependent on it any longer.

Why do parents judge one another? Why do people without kids seem to think they know how to raise them better?

I would like to be clear about something. I have seen far too many comments disparaging the parents of the 3-month-old that was injured in the shooting in Aurora, Colorado last night. These are NOT necessarily bad parents. A 3-month-old is NOT aware of its surroundings, very likely is up at that time of night, or just plain sleeps through anything.

Gabe and I took Aiden to the drive-in multiple times when he was just a few months old. He was born in March and we went to many movies that summer. I could nurse him in the dark, I could snuggle him when he needed it, and I could lay him in his bucket seat with a bug net over it for him to snooze. Did he care when Spider-Man was losing? Or that Bumblebee was actually an alien robot? Nope. When Olivia came along she was a bit bigger when it was time for the drive-in but the only difference was that she slept in a pack n’ play instead of a bucket seat. Normally they were asleep before the first movie started and snoozed most of the night.

We weren’t horrible parents for taking Aiden and Livi to the drive-in as infants, no more than those parents are. We were better parents because we could relax and enjoy each other while making sure they were both happy and safe.

Can we now please stop judging one another and focus on supporting a community that has suffered a tragedy?

I am a person that most definitely gets cravings.  And that usually isn’t a good thing.  Most of the time my cravings are for something big and chocolatey.  It’s not all the time and it’s not always a sweet but I do struggle against them when I am trying to have a healthy lifestyle.  Lately I haven’t paid much attention at all and if I had a craving I filled it because I was busy and, honestly, didn’t really care that much.  That is SUCH a bad place to be in and I am trying to be much more mindful of when and why cravings hit.

Where does that leave me?  How do I block out the cravings or ignore them when they come on?  More than anything I think the answer is I don’t ignore them, I don’t try to block them out, but that I try to attack them head on.  Acting like they are going to go away is never a good thing.  It doesn’t work.  All it does it make the craving worse and then even harder to ignore.

There are things I have found that help me with cravings.  One thing is assessing why I’m having the craving.  Am I stressed out and worked up over school and everything else?  Am I hormonal and emotional and don’t really want to deal with it?  I have to think about these things and try to decide where the craving is coming from.  If it’s from stress there are a LOT of times that a good work out with make me feel SO much better that the craving passes.  If it’s emotional or hormonal usually a talk with a friend to get out my emotions and just talk it out will make that craving less important.

That’s not to say that the cravings always go away.  That would be too easy.  But that doesn’t mean I have to deprive myself when absolutely nothing else will do but something sweet.  First, I can do something at least moderately good, like a low-cal but sweet snack, like the awesome Ginger Snaps Weight Watchers® offers.  It’s not something they have all year long, only at limited times.  Last year I fell in love with them so I bought like 10 boxes (there are only 3 packages in a box) so that I would have them when one of those cravings hit.  A small bag is only 3 points but it makes me so happy.  I can make a nice hot cup of coffee and savor my little cookies and I feel like I’m getting a treat.  Last week I found the 3 boxes I still had left in the pantry.  I was ridiculously happy about it to say the least.

Normally I try to steer away from pre-packaged foods to track my points because I don’t want to be reliant on them for a healthy lifestyle.  These don’t feel like that, these just feel like something yummy that I do to be nice to myself.

Okay, so I talked about a couple of ways to deal with cravings, figuring out why and how to get past them and satisfying them with something good.  I absolutely know those do NOT always work.  Sometimes you just have to have what you’re craving.  I don’t think this is a horrible thing, as I do think that tracking and moderation are the key when this kind of craving hits.

Last week I absolutely wanted NOTHING other than chocolate.  I tried drinking water, I tried working out, and I tried figuring out why.  Those things didn’t work.  I finally did what I wanted and ate some homemade chocolate frosting.  And it was GOOD.  It was also 12 pts.  And I get 33 points a day.  If I had an eyes bugging out of my head emoticon to put here I would.  It was not a lot of a SMALL amount of frosting but at the time it was what I wanted more than anything else.  I also tracked it and compensated for it throughout the rest of the day.  Sure, it wasn’t the most healthy way to spend my points but did it kill me?  Nope, not even close.  I’m still working out more, making healthy choices, and trying to live a healthy life.

I guess my final point about cravings is that as long as you recognize them, you deal with them, and if you’re trying to watch your calories or points that you account for them, that cravings are NOT the end of the world and you should NOT beat yourself up for them.

Hhhhhmmm, I think I hear some Ginger Snaps calling my name!