It's Been A Stressful Day...

Good evening Beautiful,

Today has been stressful. I woke up tired and groggy (apparently I woke C up screaming in the middle of the night, I must have been having a nightmare or something that I don’t remember…) which didn’t start my day off right. The fact that I woke up tired sucked a lot because this morning I was doing a test on my insulin pump settings to make sure they maintain my blood sugar at a steady number, which means I wasn’t allowed to eat anything until lunch time.

For those of you who know me, you know that my picture resides beneath the definition of “hangry” in the dictionary. Seriously, I eat like every 2 hours and if I’m hungry, I’m super irritable and get angry very easily. C now knows better than to egg me on when I’m hungry. He now finds food for me instantly and doesn’t talk until I’m done J. Haha.. he’s smart. So I couldn’t have coffee this morning to help get my day off right. I also couldn’t eat breakfast, my favourite meal of the day. So I got to work, sat down in my cubicle quietly and just began working to take my mind off of my grumbling stomach.

At 11am, Jenny and I went upstairs so she could grab a coffee and I grabbed a decaffeinated mint herbal tea (caffeine can make blood sugar rise in some diabetics… I wanted to avoid that…) instead of my usual second and final coffee of the day. Boy did I ever miss that coffee…. But the tea helped wake me up a bit. Finally, it was 11:53, I’d been checking the clock every minute on the minute since 11:30 because I wanted it to be noon SO BADLY so I could finally eat! I knew I was doing this test since last night so it wasn’t surprising by any means, it just sucked.

I had packed my gym clothes to go a resistance training workout on my lunch break today and so I could run outside after work. Well, both of these did not happen. Why you ask? I worked through my lunch break because I learned I am going to be out of the office tomorrow and I needed to make sure my stuff was all caught up, and there’s a long story as to why I didn’t end up going for a run tonight. But first, I want to touch on the subject of emotional eating, and more specifically stress eating.

Do any of you knowingly stress eat?  I do, and when I do it, I do it badly. Today what triggered my stress eating was when I went to pay my bills and realized how much money I don’t have because I went shopping on the weekend. I know this is totally my fault and was somewhat irresponsible of me, but I honestly didn’t realize how much I had spent until today. So that basically put me over the edge because it’s no secret I’ve been trying to widdle away at my debt for some time now and it just doesn’t seem to be going away.

So I ate three, huge oatmeal raison cookies. And my god were they EVER GOOD.

After I ate them I felt like shit both emotionally and physically, but I didn’t even care. This is one aspect of food that I have issues with, eating for emotional reasons. I’m getting much better though! Being aware that I’m emotionally eating got me thinking, why the heck is it that people relate food to feeling good? Why can’t I emotionally run? Why can’t I emotionally do a Crossfit workout? Wouldn’t that be much more productive than consuming 1000 calories in cookies? So I Googled it, and this is what I found.

Basically it comes down to cortisol. Stress can bring on an increased level of cortisol known as the “stress hormone”. Cortisol has a beneficial function in the body but excessive levels of cortisol brought on by chronic stress can cause a slew of problems in the body. Among other things, high levels of cortisol can create cravings for salty and sweet foods. So taa daaaaa… this makes sense, right? I was having a day of increased cortisol, which isn’t good. Tomorrow will be better I’m sure.

Anyways, so I’d been reading The Wealthy Barber and that was what originally inspired me to get rid of my debt and start saving for long term goals. I was talking to a friend of mine that I know who works in finance and told him that I want to buy mutual funds and asked for his advice. Basically it ended in “Before you can buy mutual funds, you MUST get rid of all credit card debt!”. So he told me what to do, and I did it. I marched my way to my bank when I got home, and I spoke with the lovely man there named Dan about consolidating all of my debt into a low interest loan so I can pay it off over time and not pay the credit card companies an insane amount of interest. So I got myself approved for that loan, got myself a payment plan, and in X-amount of months I will have paid everything back and will officially be debt free. YAY ME!

This totally helped me in my stress factor. I’m so glad I have a plan now, and understand when to spend money and how to spend money, and how NOT to spend money that isn’t mine. Toodle-Loo Credit Cards, it’s been NICE KNOWIN’ YA!

With that being said, there are still some financial goals I have in mind, like to start buying mutual funds and stuff like that, but that’s all in good time.

Also, due to my lack of being anything but lazy today I am now behind in my weekly fitness goals. I have to kick it up a notch for the rest of the week!

How are your fitness goals for the week going?

Stay sweet.
xoxo