I hope you all prepared your kitchens for success, stocking it with key foods that match your style of either high-volume or low-volume foods…

Today I want to talk about Mindless Eating…

Just yesterday, my daughter woke up late , around lunch time and at a bowl of Special K, witin an hour or so, she was back in the kitchen looking for somethng else to eat and getting frustrated that she couldn’t find anything that appealed to her…Her 18 year old brother pointed out to her that she probably wasn’t hungry as she had just eaten a ahort time ago.. I piped in that she has done that from the time she was little, forgotten she’d just eaten.. She seemed shocked when she realized how little time had actually gone by since she had that bowl of cereal and left the kitchen in frustration…

I can’t tell you how many times I search the kitchen and find nothing and realize it’s because I’m not really hungry…Weight Watchers really helped me to see that pattern and work to break it… 

This was something I use to know, after all I was one of the thin people for a majority of my life..

. it was simple , you just ate when you were hungry, no extra grazing….

Well, that all changed when I closed my business and was home caring for my mother and worried that she was so bad that I would go in and find her dead.. I was having nightmares about it.. She was so weak and couldn’t even go to the bathroom without help, as she didn’t have the strength to get up off the toilet… After 3 bouts of  congestive heart failure flare ups in a short time span a pace maker was put in that changed all that.  

I spent the next four years worried and stress eating , mindlessly going to the kitchen and trying to ignore the pain and panic of the idea of losing my mother too soon (after my father died when I was just 13) .  Eating my feelings became the new normal… 

I knew from the moment I began Weight Watchers that my relationship with food was forever changed. I was  no longer was programmed to eat when I was hungry… A new programming of using food to soothe stress had taken over and I seriously doubted I would ever get back to the ability to just eat when I was hungry…

I think that’s why I planned to  eat smaller meals several times throughout the day…It really does help me not need to stress eat.. Of course I still find myself, just like my daughter, grazing the kitchen with nothing appealing to me. The difference now is that I recognize that and it’s no longer mindless, but a conscious decision to either get a drink or chew gum… 

Yep, my cure for mindless eating is a large box of packages of gum from BJ’s that sits in the center of my KItchen Island….

Now to be honest, that works most of the time… but I am prepared for the times when it doesn’t and have my trusty yogurts or even a piece of dark chocolate in my freezer…

It really is about preparing your enviroment for Success~

What can you do today, to prepare your kitchen for those times?  

Would love for you to share your ideas or what works for you, as the more chances are that we can help others! 

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