Starbucks Pastry, Free Pizza and Smaller Clothes

Today started out well - another half pound down on the scale, bringing me to a total of 23 pounds in 21 weeks.  A pair of pants that was a bit tight on me a few weeks ago zipped up with no problem today.  And best of all, I successfully navigated the FREE PASTRIES at Starbucks this morning.  Yes - that's correct - they were giving away free pastries.  Pound cake, croissants, donuts - you name it, they tried to give me some this morning.  I said no a couple times, came close to caving in, and then ultimately walked away. 

And then I got to work.  Stress stress stress from the moment my butt hit my chair at 6:15 am.  By 10:30 I had eaten my morning snacks plus my lunch, and was under no illusions that it was anything other than stress eating.  By noon I had scarfed down a piece of pizza from the cafeteria and two cookies.  More stress.  At 3:30 I wandered past some cold pizza and scooped up two slices.  Fully aware that I was coping with food, I ate both slices in less than 5 minutes. 

Stress eating is something I've avoided pretty well over the past few months.  But today I reached a pretty high frustration level and I needed to diffuse my stress quickly - and food has NEVER let me down when it comes to that.  So while it might not have been the most constructive way to deal with things, today I made a conscious choice to use it to calm myself down enough to function. 

There was one major difference between today's stress eating and past experiences - normally if I deviated from my plan in such a huge way I'd give myself permission to eat my favorite foods for the rest of the day and start over tomorrow.  I stopped off at the grocery store on the way home and hunted around for something tasty, but nothing looked good - not even the gourmet cupcakes!  I honestly felt full and didn't really have a desire to continue eating now that I felt calm and relaxed, so I picked up some veggies and fruit for the rest of the week, treated myself to some tulips and left the store.  I hopped on the treadmill for my scheduled Couch-to-5K workout (6 minutes running, 24 minutes walking) and that was that!  I'm still not hungry for dinner because I had pizza so late in the afternoon, so I'm done eating for the day.  The scale might be up a half pound or so tomorrow morning but that's OK - the important thing is that I've regained my composure and didn't use today as an excuse to go off the rails and eat everything in sight.  I'm choosing to look at today as a success rather than a failure!

As a reward for my behavior this evening, I allowed myself to go 'shopping' in some bins of clothes that are too small.  I found a leather jacket and a cute cotton spring jacket that haven't fit since 2006 - I can just get into them right now and in 5 more pounds they'll fit perfectly.  A nice end to the day!