Nothing says "Having a Bad Day" like....

a) Eating Spaghetti and Meat Sauce for breakfast, with accompanying garlic bread (with cheese, of course).
b) Breaking into a bottle of Pure Unsweetened (Still fruit sugar laden) Apple Juice after not having any for months.
c) Using a spoon to polish off the rest of the Liberte Mediterranee Lemon Yogurt (full fat) straight out of the tub.
d) Enjoying a lunch of Spaghetti sauteed in butter and a thin film of Cheez Whiz.
e) All of the above.

If you answered e) All of the above, you are likely having a bad day, or at least eating somewhat emotionally for some reason. You might be like me, still sitting at home on your couch in grungy pajamas, with frizzy hair, vowing not to get ready for work until the last possible second, and generally not feeling well mentally physically or emotionally.

I have fallen prey to my own blueness. Emotional eating is bad. And a lot of people do it. Some of us even do it without realizing. I do sometimes. Definitely today.

I also excuse away the things I eat. For example- I didn't want to dirty dishes cooking anything, so I microwaved the spaghetti and meat sauce in their original container. The fruit juice is all natural and will count as my fruit servings for the day. The yogurt would have gone bad in a few days anyway if I didn't eat it. And there was only enough spaghetti left for one more serving, so I may as well eat it for lunch instead of coming up with something new, and I measured out a 'precise' gob of cheez whiz that was about 2 tablespoons, so that's not too bad, right?

I am not certain of how we start emotionally eating. I think it comes from a variety of different experiences that we have, and it is probably different for many people. I certainly know that it is hard to stop when you are in a pattern of it. But I also know that some of my love for food is lost when you are eating it to feel like you are enjoying something in a time of hardship or stress. Because the reality is that just eating itself will not give you permanent solace from your problems, until you eat yourself into an early grave. And that is not for me. I want to love my food. I want my food to make me happy just because it's tasty and nutritious and eaten with good company. I don't want my food to be a mask or a divider that I use to put space between me and my problems. The question is how to stop looking for the immediate satisfaction/distraction/false pleasure when feeling down. Does anybody have any willpower seeds I can plant?