Chili Dog? More Like Chili Hog, Round 2

I’ve always thought myself to be a smart cookie (I’d say I’m probably a chocolate chip kind) but there are occasions where I must get hit over the head with a lesson a few times before I finally am ready to be clued in. For instance, last night we were going to go to our University’s basketball game. I had woke up late and then spent the day running errands so I hadn’t had anything to eat except a 130 calorie bowl of oatmeal. My husband and I wanted to eat before the game so he was going to run to a drive thru as I stayed at home getting ready. When he asked me to make a choice as to where and what I wanted to eat, I could have gone for something decent or at least reasonable, right? Nope. I had gotten kind of stressed out and down on myself yesterday (I’ll go ahead and write a separate post about all of that at another time) and I just wanted to stuff myself on something fatty and filling. In my moment of weakness I decided that Tuesday’s chili dog and fries fest had tasted so good that I wanted the same thing again. Only this time I had lots of calories leftover to splurge so I made that two chili dogs along with the chili cheese fries. Now I know that this is too much food and it’s crap food at that. All the wonderful comments and advice from you all on the previous chili dog post should have popped into my head to remind me of the bigger picture. But I sometimes have to get a significant wake up call before I learn a lesson. So I sucked all that food down within minutes. Technically it’s a binge; even if I was within my target calorie range, it was still gorging on food to make me feel better and it was eating past the point of fullness. I of all people know that emotional eating doesn’t solve problems and doesn’t make me feel better. In fact it does the opposite of both of these things in the long run but sometimes I fall back on old “quick fix” habits. Well, I paid the price for this one this time. I was so miserable at the game. I felt like I had a ball of lead in my stomach and I couldn’t sit comfortably. It was literally a painful reminder of why eating in a healthy balanced way is about more than just trying to lose a couple of pounds. It’s about being in touch with my body and my mind and it’s about handling stuff without turning to food as a fix all. The good thing is that I feel like this might be what I needed to get my eating back on track because I feel like I've gotten that urge to uncontrollably eat finally out of my system (hopefully it will last awhile). Who knew that wisdom can come from a trip to wienerschnitżel.