The Big Storm Made Me Eat. And other lies I tell myself.
A big storm is coming, and it brought out all my “shit” about eating.
Well at least some of it. I’ve got a lot of “shit” about eating.
When a big winter storm comes to Charlotte, NC, maybe once or twice a year, the whole city shuts down. It’s not worth buying enough snow plows to keep the streets clear for a once-a-year event, so everyone hunkers down, laughs at all the people with bald tires trying to drive up the hills, and wear their mittens with their blazers to pretend they are staying warm.
Oh – and everyone goes grocery shopping. People buy food like they are going to be house bound for a month.
I blame the media. They started this morning with all the talk about empty bread shelves and no milk at the stores. They showed sad little pictures of empty racks.
It’s a blizzard watch.
I must eat my way out.
(Well, at least that’s how my brain interpreted all the storm jibber jabber.)
But all this was enough to trigger my fears.
My fear of starving. My fear of my children whining about what’s there to eat.
A storm triggers my fight, flight or freeze response.
“What if we can’t get to the grocery store?”
“How will I cook if the power goes out?”
“What if we run out of food and I have to choose which child to eat?”
Obviously, I took all this fear and outlandish thinking and used it to fuel a carbohydrate shopping binge.
English muffins, bagels and ice cream topped the list.
Looking back, it seems like I should have seen this shopping binge coming.
It’s ridiculous.
But I didn’t see it coming.
And that’s okay.
It’s all part of the process.
The process:
I catch my thoughts and define them…
Toxic (crazy-ass) thought: “We are going to starve in the one-inch blizzard.”
Pick a new thought: “I can stock up on a few extra healthy meal supplies.”
New action: Create a three-day “Fun Blizzard Meal Plan” with shopping list for next year’s blizzard. (Making it fun for me is important.)
I’ve devised a game plan about the pushback I’ll get from my kids, too.
It’s not the media’s fault I panicked.
It’s about me.
These things happen. It’s all part of bringing up the toxic thoughts so I can dissolve them.
It’s all part of the process of reinventing my life, one lovely bite at a time.
PS – The photo is my son’s bare footprint in the snow as he forages for clean snow to eat.
No Bigfoots were harmed in the writing of this post.
No Bigfoots were harmed in the writing of this post.