Food hangover and guilt

Ever had a food hangover?  I have,  more times than I care to count in the past.

Food hangovers usually hit after a night ( or day)at the all you can eat buffet, Christmas/Easter/Birthday dinner or a night of self pity with icecream and drive through Maccas aplenty. Funny how food hangovers are never with fruit and vegetables.

Food hangovers don't have to be from overeating....just from not eating well, especially after following a healthy eating pattern. I've noticed that since I've cut a lot of processed foods out of my diet, I have become sensitive to whatever those clever scientists put into processed food.....and that's enough for a food hangover.

Result: Wake up in the morning feeling bloated, stuffed, sore tummy, feeling ill and like you weigh 1000 kilos....and if not ashamed of myself, disappointed in myself. I look and feel like Homer Simpson on a bad day. I have the movement and motivation of an eighty year old sloth on valium.

So, what to do.

Well, first thing, I roll myself out of bed and drink a glass of water.  This is supposed to help move things along ( if you get my meaning) and the faster I can get that moving the better. Then it's water, water, water throughout the day.  Flush all those nasties out of my body as much as possible.

Next, I have a clean breakfast...berry smoothies are good, with a few oats added to thicken it up. The easier I can make things for my stomach right now the better!

Then, and this is probably the hardest, I lace up my shoes and go for a walk or a gentle run. Exercise, albeit gentle exercise, helps to 'move it along' too.  And like I said before, the sooner my body ditches the toxins, the better.

And lastly, to tie in with my walk/run, I think.  What went wrong?  Was it emotional eating?  Was it just poor planning?  Was it just one of those things and what can I do to prevent it in future? Was it something I ate that set off a sensitivity? One thing I will NOT feel is guilt.  It is a useless emotion that stops me from moving on.  It's happened, nothing will change that fact.  But I can change it from happening in the future.

Let's look at guilt for the moment.

Logically, guilt is not an emotion with much if any value. It keeps me in a loop of constant self loathing, getting bigger and bigger each time it goes round.  It is a weight that cripples me, making it near impossible to move forward.  So now...

Instead I do LEARNING. Our eyes are put on our face and not our butts for a reason.....looking forward is the way to go, instead of looking behind.  So I find out why it happened and what I can do to prevent it.  Was it poor planning?  Emotional eating? Food I am not used to eating anymore? Was it an out-of-my-control type of thing?  An example is when my father was in hospital emergency recently for 8 hours....those vending machines don't deliver much in the way of clean eating. I come up with strategies to prevent these things from happening again as much as possible.

And I carry on with my day, drop the guilt and make the plan. And if one plan doesn't work, then I make another.