| Work has become a nightmare. There are so many things to do. Everybody wants everything done at once. There are about a million deadlines. The pressure is something you can hardly stand. Your boss has become an incredible jerk. You can hardly stand him. All he knows how to do is get angry. You think he’s picking on you. Even your co-workers are frazzled. Everybody is making demands on your time. They want everything right now. All those reports have to get out by the end of the month and a bunch of them are your responsibility. Now you hate the fact that you have to work. It’s just too much. You can hardly cope with what’s going on. How are you going to handle the stress, the pressure? Well, you’re going to get something to eat. Yes, you’re going to go out for a big lunch. You and your friends simply have to get out of the office and get some food. You’re going to have some “comfort food.” It’s going to taste great and it’s going to make you feel a lot better. You might even be able to make it through the day. Food. What a great thought. Of course, you still have that little problem of being 30 pounds overweight. Your clothes don’t fit and you have to have them let out or buy some new clothes in bigger sizes. You dread doing that but you can’t see any alternative. You hate to look at yourself in the mirror. Of course, getting on the scale is not a possibility. If you did that you know you would be very close to a major depression. You don’t even want to know the bad news. Yet, here you are desperately to do the one thing that is guaranteed to make you even unhappier: eating more food and gaining more weight. You don’t even want to think about it. That would rain on your parade. It would make you feel guilty about doing the one thing you feel you must do to preserve your sanity at work – eat some food. Doesn’t it strike you that eating food to solve your problem at work is kind of counter – productive? You know it’s going to make you unhappy so why are you even thinking of eating? What is it about eating that does so much for you when you are under stress or you become frustrated? Don’t forget that eating is essentially only putting food in your mouth for a little while. Do you really need something in your mouth to get you through the day? What do you think would happen to you if you didn’t eat anything? Would you be anxious, frustrated, or unhappy? Is it the thought of having those feelings why you are thinking of eating? Is that why you are going to do something that you know you really don’t want to do? You know it’s got to be something powerful to cause you to do something that is going to make you unhappy. You know you’re going to be sorry you did it. So why do you want to put food in your mouth? You really have to come to grips with the real reason you want to eat the food. It’s the reason you weigh 30 pounds too much. |
