Day #72 - The Bad Mood Habit

I woke up this morning in a bad mood.  It wasn't lack of sleep, it wasn't that I was jolted out of bed by screaming kids, I simply just woke up in a bad mood.  As I was sitting there on the bed I had a startling realization... whenever I try to do something healthy I end up in a bad mood.

When I quit smoking I was in a bad mood for almost a whole month (just ask my family).  When I tried to quit drinking a few weeks back I was in a terrible mood by the end of the week.  Whenever I go a day or two eating healthy I end up in a bad mood.

As I thought about it more and more, I started to realize that I've always ended up in a bad mood when I tried to do something healthy.  In fact, I can't remember a single time when it wasn't the case! 

So it got me wondering why?  I thought about this morning.  I wasn't feeling hungry or deprived when I got up.  I wasn't aching to have a huge unhealthy breakfast and knew I couldn't.  There was really no reason for me to be in a bad mood.

Then it hit me; it's a habit.  I've quit smoking and started diets a million times.  Time after time after time I would convince myself that I was miserable and should just give in.  Yesterday, I wrote about my top 5 excuses, but never really thought about my mood as my ultimate excuse.  Year after year of using my mood as an excuse has essentially trained me to associate healthy behavior with misery.

Have you ever said "I would rather be fat and happy than thin and miserable"?  I know I've said that many times before.  There's a problem with that though... I'm fat but I'm not happy; It's just another excuse.  In fact, there's no guarantee that I'll be happy when I'm thin.  There's no correlation between happiness and weight.  Weight is a physical measure and happiness is just a state of mind.

Fat people can choose to be happy or not and so can't thin people.  To some of you this might not seem like that big a deal, but this was one of those really amazing self discoveries that has me astounded that it took me 42 years to make this connection.  Granted my world isn't flipped upside down, but it's still a big deal to me.

Anyway, my mood improved quite a bit after that and I had another really good day following my eating plan, walking a mile at lunchtime, and getting my gallon of water in.  That makes 2 days in a row and I need to keep pushing for the consistency.  Now when I feel like I'm in a bad mood, I'll have to ask myself is it real or is it habit?

Stay Strong!