How Motherhood + Emotional Eating Are Connected
How Motherhood + Emotional Eating Are Connected
The school bell rings at 3:15 pm releasing my 4th grader from school. I am patiently waiting outside the school building while she makes her daily rounds to several of her favorite teachers to chat a minute and tell them goodbye for the day. In my head I am reminding myself that
…I am thankful she has such a big heart and makes the effort to say goodbye to them each day…..she’s only in 4th grade once and before long some of that sweet innocence will be gone…it’s silly to be frustrated that you are one of the last parents standing in the freezing cold waiting for your daughter…have some patience for once, Marlee!
My inner dialog is a little dramatic at times, especially when it really only takes her an extra 5 minutes or so to get out of the school after saying her good byes.
We rush home and the kids start to unload lunch boxes, talk more about the day, I break up some bickering between the 3 siblings, and focus on the next task at hand for the afternoon leading into a busy evening. Baseball practice started at 5 pm for my youngest and Kendaylnn has a soccer game at 7pm.
What is going to be the best time to fit in dinner? Will my husband be off work in time? I have groceries scheduled to pick up between 5-6pm, do I leave baseball practice to go pick them up? What about the cold items??
Mooooom! My long train of thought was interrupted by a startling yell from Kamdyn, my middle son, who was tattling on his younger brother for annoying him and my daughter adding in that she has 4 pages of homework which she is going to need my help with tonight also.
Okay, adding a new addition my list this evenings, homework help. Should we use this after school time to do the homework or get everyone dressed and ready for the sports events now instead of later?? Hmmm…
Quickly, I separated the boys and send Kolt off to get dressed for baseball. Kendalynn to her room with the same instructions of getting ready for her game and homework would be done in the car while watching Kolt’s practice.
Needless to say the evening went off with only one more hitch, you remember the groceries I needed to pick up ? Well, after practice I dropped the kids off to eat dinner, that I had ready at home, with my husband so I could go pick up the groceries. After waiting for about 30 minutes in the “pick up” area of Wal-Mart, I was informed that my grocery order was delayed and hasn’t even been completely gathered off the shelf yet. Reeallly???
Thankfully my husband rushed the kids to the soccer game and I followed behind arriving a few minutes after it had started.
Are you wondering why in the world would I describe you to my crazy, but very eventful afternoon and evening??
Well, the point was to explain how much we do as Mothers…
How much we think about at one time
How much we try to organize our kids activities and social events around one another
How we try to prepare ahead of time - but usually run late (blaming it on the kids hehe)
and How we are constantly on a whim adjusting our plans over the daily speed bumps
While in the moments of the hustle and bustle we somehow dig inside ourselves and find the last bit of remaining SuperMom power to make it through another crazy evening until bedtime. Some days, the chaos is so much that our minds don’t even register the full capacity of what all we are doing until we finally say the last goodnight and kiss the last forehead at the end of the day. When the day is finally done and you are mentally clocking out of Motherhood duties for a few hours, that’s when the rush of the day, rush of reality, and rush of the chaos actually hits us like a freight train!
In this moment of weakness while still trying to process all you did and accomplished in those few afternoon/evening hours ( I mean the kids are still alive so you should get a gold star Mom), that is when the emotional eating happens. Well, it was for me anyways!
Emotional Eating is directly linked to anxiety, over stimulation, and being continuously over whelmed according to researchers at UCLA.
The biggest culprit connecting Motherhood + Emotional Eating is how often we are multitasking. Multitasking can actually be negative to our health, emotional state, and mental stress levels. Neuroscientist Dr. Daniel Levitin, author of The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload, believes that switching tasks literally uses up energy and nutrient stores in the brain leaving you feeling exhausted and disoriented.
Levitin reports, “Repeated task switching leads to anxiety, which raises levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the brain.” Multitasking is “a powerful and diabolical illusion,” he adds. “Multitasking has been found to increase the production of the stress hormone cortisol as well as the fight-or-flight hormone adrenaline, which can overstimulate your brain and cause mental fog or scrambled thinking.”
As women when our stress hormones are constantly increased causing us to reach to tangible items like sweets, sodas, or others “junk food” type items to try and comfort ourselves. Unfortunately, this is exactly what emotional eating is and why it can be so hard to live a healthy lifestyle as a Busy Mom!
If we don’t complete all of the task during the day, when we break down and yell at our kids, or the realization there is a sink full of dirty dishes waiting for us at the end of a long day can cause the feelings of failure, “mom guilt”, and inadequacy. These feelings are the same feelings that would cause me to reach for the oreos or a bowl of cereal before bed and totally blow any clean eating I had done during the day. Just to get a feeling of release over the anxiety and stress overload.
Clutter:
Avoiding clutter and mess in your house or work space will help you feel clearer headed and more focused on the task at hand. From a Mother who actually had to really put effort into being organize and not cluttered all the time, this was really hard for me! When I would look around at the clutter it would just make me more anxious and eventually more stressed having to take extra time that I didn’t have to organize the clutter.
So, if you can relate to how I was feeling my tip for you is this….Hire a maid! :) and then tell my husband I need one too! No, seriously what really helped me was, to choose 20 minutes each day either right after school or before everyone got in bed to do nothing but pick up the house. My family and I are mainly in the kitchen/living room area of our home so these are the main areas we focus on first. All of us, including my kids, work together to pick up toys, organize the bar that collects everything, help with dishes and whipping down the counters.
I have to admit, setting the timer on my phone for 20 minutes and everyone trying to do as much as they can during that time really does get a lot accomplished! Plus, it’s teaching my kids a routine they can share with their children, responsibility, and saving my mental sanity from not having to do it all myself.
Actually Finishing Tasks:
How amazing does it feel to mark something off of your “to-do” list! For me it’s the feeling of accomplishment and motivation needed to complete another task. Completing tasks are much less likely to happen when we are multitasking because we aren’t giving our full attention to one project to see it to completion. Instead we are spreading our energy over several projects and when our time or energy is up we normally haven’t completed any of the tasks feeling worn out and over whelmed instead of accomplished and motivated.
As a recovering multitasker, it helps me to make a list at the beginning of the week for all of the items I would like to get done and try to schedule them. Examples of this include:
Meal prepping freezer meals for the week
Scheduling house cleaning ex: which days to focus on laundry, bathrooms, or bedrooms but not all in the same day to save time for other tasks.
Schedule projects, this can include a kids school project, a craft project you enjoy, or even a home improvement project.
Listing these items out before the week starts can help you evenly spread them over the next 7 days. You can realistically see which days are going to be busier and which days you would have extra time to do more. Having a plan allows you to feel confident going into the new week. Also, this allows you to not get so frustrated when a “speed bump” or issues happens to pop up during the week that you weren’t expecting. You know there will for sure be at least 1!
Take Time To Fill Your Cup - First
I bet you have heard the phrase “Netflix and Chill” before. Well, if I had to guess it was started from a worn out Mom at the end of the day needing to somehow shut her brain off after a crazy chaotic day! She has her favorite sweet treat, pop corn, drink, and the remote ready to take advantage of some much needed alone time at the end of the long day.
For many years I was this Mom! The problem was I would stay up way to late watching episode after episode and only getting a few hours of sleep each night. I would wake each morning at the same time as my kids. While they had lots of energy from their full nights rest I would be exhausted and already feeling the anxiety of the new day.
I craved time for just being by myself to read a book, not share my food, enjoy the quiet, and actually be able to get a full nights rest. The only way I was going to accomplish this was by getting up earlier each morning before my children were awake.
Finally, I got smart! This time to myself in the morning was AAAAAMMAZING!
I was able to drink all of my coffee instead of putting it in the microwave 3-4 times .
I was able to work out.
Really soak in my devotional and spend time with God actually sitting in the quiet early morning hours of the day.
I was able to mentally prepare myself for the day and get focused on the plan ahead.
MOST of all, I ACTUALLY filled my love cup each day with the good stuff. The positive things I wanted to instill in my children. The at home work out helped to release my anxiety and stress instead of food. The quietness helped to clear out the “mom fog” instead of Netflix. But, the best part was really soaking in my devotional and how much God loves me, because then that same love was able to flow from me to my children when they got up instead of a monster mom who was exhausted and already stressed for the day.
Giving myself this time first thing in the morning instead of at night was a really key point to the success of it! I was carving out time for myself each day which means I was as much of a priority as everything else going on, but since that time was spend first it allowed me to start my day with my BEST self mentally.
Emotional eating can be linked to perfectionism too. That was really hard to actually face but it was amazingly eye opening once I was able to work through it. If you are flooded with mom guilt and feel that might be a perfectionist too. Please read my blog on how I was able to start the process of working through that as well.
Motherhood is supposed to be something we find joyful. If you are in a season where it’s hard and you aren’t getting that same joyfulness like you used to, hold on girl! God will see you through this hard season too. Life is all about perspective. For me, I needed a perspective change instead of an actual season change and this might be you too. Once my perspective of how to affectively deal with stress and anxiety changed, my whole season of life changed for the positive.
I want to encourage you to try some of the tips mentioned above and if they work for you please reach out and let me know!
"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline." 2 Timothy 1:7
