Following a diet is most challenging to me when I am either busy with a project and don’t want to take the time to make special food, or when I get mad.  I got angry yesterday, and in my anger I went in and ate a donut and a brownie!  I didn’t call my daughters, who are my help line; I didn’t stop and analyze why my anger was throwing me off; I just ate the goodies as if somehow I was somehow punishing someone.  As if I were saying, “Hah!  So there!  Now see what you made me do!”  And there was some smugness involved.

Thinking about it later I wondered why messing up my healthy diet was triggered by anger.  One of my mentors, Tom Frank, who taught my sweat lodge class, once told me, “When you think you are angry at someone, you are really angry at yourself.”

I thought about what Tom had said and I wondered how being mad at someone meant I was really mad at myself.  How could I be mad at myself?  I’m not the one who did the awful thing!  Looking deeply I realized that although I may be angry at someone else for what they did, I am also angry at myself for what I did, what I didn’t do, or what I allowed someone else to do to me.  What Tom said was true.  There was always an element of being angry with myself when I have been angry with someone else.

Perhaps getting mad at someone else triggered me to be angry at myself for letting someone get to me, being frustrated, feeling impotent, feeling misunderstood or abused.  My anger was with myself for not knowing how to deal with the situation effectively.  I began to self destruct.

Or, on the other hand, perhaps eating the comfort food was simply a reach for comfort during my stress of being angry.  But if that were true, why would I feel like I was punishing someone by eating unhealthy food?

Eating the donut and brownie yesterday did not make me feel better, though.  I felt more tired than I have been lately.  Good to know.