"If hunger isn't the problem, eating isn't the answer." ~ author unknown
This quote came to me in a newsletter from a friend of mine in Wisconsin who has lost a bunch of weight. She sends updates on her weight loss journey to her friends and family on just about a weekly basis. She also started a challenge for her chubby buddies who also want to lose weight. We all send our weekly weigh ins to her. She sends tidbits of motivation and encouragement, and sometimes includes a healthy recipe.
This quote showed up on a particularly timely email from my friend. My husband and I had just spent the previous evening, eating our cares away. Granted, it was sushi, which for us was a relatively healthy path. The unhealthy part of the sushi-fest was the motivation behind it: we basically took a one-two-three punch in the gut that day when we discovered the house we've been trying to buy since last June (we've been renting it, the owner is in over his head, we put in a short-sale offer, which took B of A six months to approve...our Realtor at the time was incompetent, etc.). We also learned that same day that our plan B and plan C home options were no longer available to us.
To "solve the problem" (drown our sorrows) we bought over $100 in sushi "appetizers." We knew it was wrong, we knew it didn't solve our problem, but we did it anyway. Actually we never really stopped to think about it. We just knew we were devastated.
When I read that quote the next morning, it really hit home. Hunger was not our problem that night, and $100+ of sushi certainly didn't get us the house we've been working so hard to buy for the last several months. Also, in the grand scheme of things, not getting the house is NOT that big of a deal. We are both relatively healthy, as is our beautiful daughter. Things could be a LOT worse.
The GOOD news is, I have a very vivid situation in my mind that I will hopefully return to in bad times. I try to remember "hunger is not the problem, so food is not the answer here."
