Let’s be honest. Sometimes staying on the straight and narrow is just hard. Even with all the on and off scale victories, sometimes you just want to say “Not today, tracking. I’m just going to eat a bit of everything.” Emotions kick in and can run hard leading us to look for ways to fulfill ourselves. A lot of times, when are reaching for food, we really should be reaching out for a connection.

Our relationship with food is one of the hardest tasks to uncouple because it’s not really about the food. A lot of times the more we eat, the emptier we feel. We KNOW that food is never going to fill that hole or satisfy that need, but we don’t know what to replace it with. How about we replace it with connection. A genuine, open human connection. Before the cravings and our brain orders us to extinguish this feeling NOW because we always know what’s about to happen. Reach out to someone for a connection. We need to acknowledge how we feel, drag it out into the light and name it, because that is how we can reclaim our energy. Connecting with someone can help you with that, and it will nourish you the way no cookie ever has.

I’ve known this for a while and will pull it out with my check-ins with Coach Patty. I drag my feelings out into the light, named them, and used my coach as that connection to tackle the elephant in my face. Even though dealing with the emotional aspects is not exactly in our scope of work, sometimes just putting it out there honestly and talking (ok messaging, and maybe some whining) through it can reduced the urge to burn the house and leave no ashes.

Sometimes you want the connection, not the cookie.