Welcome to the Good Friday Edition of Carol's Corner. Easter weekend is upon us. Let us remember what it truly stands for. I am dedicating my pictures today in memory of a sweet dear lady from our church who passed away this week. I have been asked to sing “In The Garden” at her funeral services in the morning. Pray I am able to do it justice. This was also my grandmother's favorite hymn. I hope she'll be smiling down from heaven as I sing HER favorite song too. In Lucille's honor I'm calling my outfit today” Walking Through The Garden”. It totally looks like a beautiful flower garden with some of my favorite colors.

My husband kind of cut off part of my hand in the first pic, but the second pic shows my FitBit combo I chose for today and I love it. Whenever I get to wear my beautiful wire wrapped pendant and this gorgeous ring I love it. I didn't even realize I had so many things I would be able to wear them with.

Decided to do another spot on conquering emotional and stress eating to try and help some people who are needing it right now.

I found something from Psychology Today that I am going to use. It is titled” 5 Strategies For Overcoming Emotional Eating”.

Emotional eating is the tendency to eat in times of stress, anxiety, anger, or sadness. Emotional eating is a huge barrier to weight loss and is one that is hard for many to overcome. Emotional eating adds many unnecessary calories to your day and creates a physchological and physiological reliance on food for emotional coping. Here you will find strategies to conquering emotional eating once and for all.

1). NAME THAT MOOD. The first step in overcoming emotional eating is to get a clearer understanding of when it happens. Keeping a diet journal will be most helpful in this regard. Make a note of your mood each time that you eat. This will allow you to identify episodes of emotional eating. Figure out how often you eat when in bad moods, what time of day, which days of the week, which foods (keep these foods out of the house). This will give you insight into the patterns and help you to know when to utilize the following strategies.

2). RIDE THE STORM OUT. Negative emotions ebb and flow like the tide. Sometimes it feels very bad, and other times it pulls back and is barely noticeable, and this can all occur over a matter of minutes or hours. Knowing that a bad feeling will subside is important, because learning how to deal with the bad feeling without eating involves developing the ability to tolerate it. This means to just feel the emotion in it's entirety without doing anything to prevent it. Let high tide wash over you. Sounds fun, eh? No not fun at all, but bad feelings take on a life of their own when you put up a fight or run from them. The author of this article used to work in a phobia treatment clinic that used a therapy called “In vivo exposure”. The theory was that if you experience fear without doing anything to escape it, it will go away. She led patients through a 3 hour protocol where they confronted their feared object, slowly but surely. One person was deathly afraid of snakes.( that would be me, I hate them) He shook, sweat and cried throughout the treatment. She wanted to do something that would comfort him or interrupt him, but was instructed not to, because they said he needed to power through it, to let it run it's course. By the end of the treatment he was relaxed, smiling, holding the snake, and cracking jokes. ( No way would you ever find me holding or even petting a snake) Patient after patient the same thing happened. When you eat during a negative emotion, you are distracting yourself, which does not allow the feeling to run it's course. The next time you have an overwhelming emotion, the writer challenges you to just experience it, making no action to prevent it. Notice how it eventually subsides. By using food to escape from bad feelings you will never discover that you can tolerate bad feelings and they will subside.

3). DON'T EMPOWER YOUR VICES. By eating during a negative emotion, you are giving food a new power beyond just meeting your nutritional needs. Foods become a coping strategy, making your desire for it intensify. You believe you need food to get through bad feelings. Worse yet, studies show that eating high-fat and/or high-sugar foods, can affect activity in parts of your brain that manage stress, which will further reinforce your reliance on eating in response to stress. If you feel you can't resist eating in response to a bad mood, consider reaching for raw fruit or vegetables since these foods are unlikely to have that effect on your brain.

4). HEALTHY COPING. The key is to find ways to cope with negative feelings that don't cause more problems. Eating causes more problems, as does drinking, sleeping too much, and getting lost in TV for hours at a time. Exercise and talking with a supportive friend are good examples of healthy coping. When considering a new coping strategy, ask yourself,” Will doing this make me feel better or worse right now? And”Will doing this make me feel better or worse tomorrow?” If you can say “better” to both questions, it is probably a healthy coping strategy. There is no sense feeling better in the moment if it costs you tomorrow.

5). CONQUERING THE HARD TIMES IS THE KEY TO LONG- TERM SUCCESS. The author has had patients who have had trouble losing weight say: “Well this isn't a good time for me to try losing weight, things are so busy and stressful right now”. This is a Fair Weather Loser-someone who can only live healthy and lose weight when all in their life is calm. My personal thought on this is that, that probably is never. That is just life and nothing is EVER calm all the time. When is that ever going to happen? Life is constant chaos. The secret to weight loss success is being able to keep a healthy lifestyle even in the midst of chaos. If you gain weight every time life gets stressful, your weight will always go up or down. Challenge yourself to keep your healthy lifestyle going during stressful times. This will give you the confidence that you can do this no matter what comes your way.

I'd like to leave you with these two motivational pictures . Print these out and look at them when you are tempted to let emotions take over.

You have the tools, you can do this. Believe in yourself and what you can do. Make yourself a mantra and repeat it over and over till you actually believe it. Hear it often enough and you are eventually going to believe it yourself. When it moves from your head to your heart, your miracle will start to happen. Count on it. Till next time, God Bless.

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