I’ve been trying to analyze my eating habits so that I can improve or modify them. And if I post them and get suggestions, that is great and if not it is a record I can look back on when I need to.
I have no idea if I am an emotional eater or not. I may have been when I was younger though. My house rarely had junk food, if you wanted a snack it was usually pretzels which were not bad. Other things were reserved for special occasions, like a party or something. However my dad had a huge box downstairs, full of cookies, cakes, chips, candy bars and so on that he would take in his lunch for work. This food was always separate from the kitchen, and he had a key which he used to lock when he was finished packing his lunch. Occasionally he would share something with me, a cookie, a mini candy bar, but again that was rare.
Well my mother thought this was unfair. She typically did the grocery shopping, so when I was older she used to get some snacks for us, anything from chips, crackers and cake and so on. When my dad was at work we might eat some chips and watch a movie (which he also did not know about). However if I knew that the next week he would work a different shift and I’d not be able to have a snack, I would usually overeat. I know I did, plus I was a kid unaware of portion sizes and calories. Also alot of times I could only eat the stuff at night, so that was not great either.
My sister did the same thing I think. Once she had a job she began buying her own junk food and soda and storing it in her room. I think she was even blamed for drinking soda in the kitchen once, and my mom put my dad straight and told him how my sister had began to buy her own soda and store it in her room.
Now I typically drive and sometimes my mother and I will go out to a restaurant if my dad is at work. (This is not every day) It usually happens if we were out shopping and want lunch. However, I now realize that the dishes you order in restaurants can be more than a portion size. While I’d like to split one meal into two, and take home leftovers I don’t always get to do that. Instead if we go home, my dad will usually get home and he did not know we ate at the restaurant so we need to hide the evidence so to speak. Things that need to be refrigerated must be either eaten or wasted. So that also leads to overeating, even though not intentional.
Right now I still have the restaurant problem, but not so much the junk food problem. In fact since my dad doesn’t have his little junk food box he has taken to eating all the junk food in the house before me. I think he has his own little overeating problem…only he sees food in the house and thinks, I need to get my fair share before every other person in the house eats this! So he can consume a whole cake in a handful of days…maybe less. It’s kind of like first come, first serve to him so he wants to be the first to eat it all before it is gone.
I think when I get out on my own this problem might resolve itself. I mean, I won’t have the competition in my own nest so to speak about who gets to eat all of what. Also, if I do go to restaurants I will be secure in splitting my meal in half and making it into two meals rather than eating 2 servings at once.
(I know, I’ve got a weird family…)
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