Feeling Fat and Ugly? Is a Bad Day an Excuse for A Binge?

We all have days when we feel less than our best - when not only do we feel fat and ugly but pretty much useless and unlovable as well.

You know how it goes, you find a stain on the work outfit you wanted to  wear at the last minute,  you miss the bus, some guy at the coffee bar scowls at you, you're late for work. One misery heaps on top of another and before you know it a case of the "fat and uglies" has descended. You reach for a double chocolate muffin or stuff in some potato chips to console yourself. You might as well eat, you reason - no one is going to even look at you, never mind love you. Then you abuse yourself even more because you broke your diet yet again.

Bad feelings come in hordes. They start off as a trickle but if you pay them any attention others are soon joining in the party. And before you know it you have a veritable rave of bad thoughts going on in your head.

And the problem with this is that when you feel so bad it's difficult to pull yourself out of your mood and do something positive. You can't see the point.

Well there IS a point - the point being that every small good thing you do can start to turn things around and help you take further action and make things better. Positive thought and action create positive momentum that makes you feel good. Negative thought leads to negative feelings and lack of action which brings despair in its wake.

Moods are not caused by circumstances but by how you react to them. And any food you eat in reaction to a mood will not make you feel any better - in fact just the opposite. Avoid getting in a downwards spiral which might lead to a binge by

a) shrugging your shoulders when something fails so go according to plan. Tell yourself whatever happens you'll cope

b) smiling at fate - sometimes life's little ironies are there to really challenge your good mood. Don't let them get to you.

c) being curious about the world ("I wonder what's going on in that guys life that is causing him to scowl like that")

d) learning from mistakes. You are not the worst person in the world because you ate a donut but you may want to think about how you can resist in a similar situation next time

e) deleting poor thoughts. Whenever you give yourself a hard time you know you would never say those things to someone you love. So why say them to yourself. Whenever you catch yourself in the "I'm fat, I'm ugly, I'm stupid" mode just say to yourself "Delete that thought. I'm doing everything it takes to get things right and I WILL succeed".

Maybe you ARE having a bad day. Maybe you aren't looking your best. Dwelling on it won't do you any good at all. But you can make yourself feel a whole lot better by being positive and taking action which will eventually lead to far fewer days of feeling "fat and ugly" in the future.

Copyright 2007, Janice Elizabeth Small