Day One Hundred and Twenty Three!!!

How you can celebrate without food!


For those of us who are emotional eaters and have somehow connected ‘feeling good’ with carbs we have to learn to celebrate without food. I remember being a kid and every emotion was met with food; if I felt sad I would eat because I didn’t deserve to feel sad, if I felt happy I would eat to celebrate the good feeling with more good feelings, if I was angry I would calm myself with food. Wow that is a sad sentence. 
Even when I was on a diet when I was a kid the motivation to lose weight was food! I would plan that if I lost any amount of weight, whether; 2 pounds, 1 pound, half a pound, at the end of the week I would reward myself with food! A chocolate bar, cake, pizza, whatever, THAT would be my motivation to not eat it! Insanity right? On paper it sure is, but people still do it to this day! 
“Oh, I starved myself for weeks and lost 20 pounds so now I can eat whatever I want!” What? Who thought that would work?…Other than me….for years…?
We have now learned that consistency with eating is the way to go for losing and maintaining weight, not crash diets, but loyalty to what works for you, whether it be keto (my personal choice and what this whole blog is about), vegetarian, 5;2 diet, vegan (I don’t know how this could work since it is all carbs), or whatever. It’s consistency.
Now, putting aside the obvious “reward yourself every so often with carbs” slip rule I have made, here is a list of things you can do to reward yourself without eating so you can learn to stray away from that emotional dependancy on food.

1. Buy stuff for fun (within reason)!

I for one love buying stuff online! I recently discovered Wish so sorry wallet, your gonna be hurting for a while. But I personally like the thought of browsing online, finding something you didn’t realize you need, storing the money away until you lose 5-10 pounds (or whatever floats your boat), reaching the goal, and then getting it! The only draw back is waiting for the delivery or if you are hurting for money at the moment and can’t afford to reward yourself with a $50 dollar something. 


2.   Keto cheat food!
I know I said that I wouldn’t include cheat food, but I promise this is different! I love keto pizza, mozzarella sticks, and nachos! I can lose weight on all of these but they take a while to make. The pizza crust takes a fair amount of work, and so does the mozzarella sticks, the nachos are more like, I don’t want to eat them without ground beef but I’m too lazy to cook it in the moment. So! To celebrate set a date for when you have time to make these delicious foods and enjoy making/eating them! (P.S. you can find the recipe for all these things under my recipe tab!)


3.   Have a Skype convo with your best friend!
Now for this one you might be thinking “why isn’t this go see your best friend?” but I personally am still having trouble not falling into the pit of ‘well I’m here might as well eat a box of cookies.” Sooo… if you Skype your best friend or call them you can still gossip and ‘hang out’ without the threat of cheating on yourself. I mean, you would’t take your phone to a restaurant and pretend to eat pasta with them… would you?


4.   Make stuff!
I myself am very artsy craftsy so I LOVE making stuff! I actually spent two hours rebooting my old computer on the off chance it might have saved an old dress pattern from a couple years ago. It was there! Totally worth it. So if you know that you have shrunk a dress size, or you want to make a target outfit (not recommended since I did this and it took me five years to fit into it *dies inside*) then go for it! It certainly doesn’t have to be as elaborate as a 1950’s style dress, it can be tie die! Or crocheting socks! Or something you always wanted to learn how to make but never gave yourself the time to do it, like finger knitting! Or painting like Bob Ross! (I want his chia pet so goddamn bad).


5.   Try something new!
I actually just bought a bunch of nail stuff online (remember how I mentioned Wish? yeah.) So that was a reward for myself that I have never tried before! I watch a lot of nail tutorials and finally got the courage to buy some nail building gel. I AM SO NERVOUS! But take note, think of something you wanted to try, guitar lessons, dance lessons, whatever. Give it a try and don’t get discouraged if it doesn’t work out.


6. Facials! I know they sound expensive (a face mask can be over 5 dollars sometimes!) but Vaseline or petroleum jelly hydrates your face and is super cheap!  


Always believing in you,


Emerald.