As we are almost finished with the month of April, I  honestly got sidetracked about the topics I had scheduled to talk about each month. Earlier in April, my sister-in-law passed away, which took us to Trinidad and Tobago to pay our final respects and to be with our family to lay her to rest. There are many life lessons to learn from death and the passing of a loved one. First and foremost, what the deceased meant to us and their place in our life and family. Then, we begin to look at the dynamics of death in general and how each of us handles it.  Let’s face it, life is complicated and hectic. With our regular schedules jampacked and overbooked, when an unexpected event such as a death of a loved one occurs, it stops us in our tracks. Our regular schedules get put on hold for a while as we focus on remembrance, tribute, mourning and all of the events surrounding sending our loved one to their final resting place. As with our daily lives, we’re faced with numerous emotions and stressors. Death also brings with it a host of emotions and added stress as well.

I was originally going to write about how to deal with stress and emotional eating for the month of April since this time of year is full of all sorts of celebrations, births, graduations, proms, wedding, religious celebrations (christenings, communions, confirmations, bar and bat mitzvahs), and quinceaneras. These kinds of celebrations are always accompanied by food and the emotions surrounding each celebration. It’s very interesting that during this month, my family experienced a loss of a family member, which is also coupled with many emotions as well as; food.

When I think of spring, the first words that come to mind are – NEW BEGINNINGS. How appropriate for us to look at our emotional eating and stress eating and turn the page to a new beginning and enjoy a life without turning to food for comfort as a way to avoid and push down our emotions.

So, if we’ve used food to help handle emotions whether painful or joyful, how do we get through all of these events that are part of life? Since stress eating or emotional eating is something I didn’t realize I was doing, how do we know we are stress eating? Do we reach for food more when the occasion is happy or do we look for food when the occasion is more somber? Do we eat differently? Once we’ve figured out that yes, in fact, we do eat to handle stress and our emotions, what do we really do about it?

I’ve written before about emotional eating and how to figure out if we are really hungry or are we eating because of our emotions, I’ve included a link to that post for you to look at, http://weightitgetsbetter.com/why-am-i-really-hungry-emotional-hunger-vs-physical-hunger/

I’d like to continue this conversation and dig deeper into emotional and stress eating so we can all learn what drives us to eat and then seek other ways to handle those stressful emotions and finally be free from these free from those patterns.

Stay tuned!