I know this may not seem relevant to fitness and weight loss, but days like these, hard days when we are trying to cope with everyday struggles, losses, emotions, etc. are the days when we can lose focus and fall back into bad habits. I gain strength from others when I know they are dealing with hardships, and yet they remain strong and focused on their weight loss goals.

So, I have been re-reading profiles and posts from others, and reminding myself that we ALL have struggles, and so many are dealing with such difficult ones. In them, I am finding strength, but also those lessons in not being selfish and self-centered and allowing the pity parties of the past. The world does not revolve around me and my rocky little world.

So, here is what I decided to do.

When life gets me down and I have the choice to revert to old habits, or create new and productive ones, I am going to choose the latter. I vow to never 'eat' my way past a heartbreak, a sad moment, a bump in the road. While I am not really feeling like I want to down a bag of chips to soothe my soul right now, that feeling is still symbolic to me, a reminder that I need to be doing more positive things. I was thinking about how much money I have wasted over the years on junk food as a coping tool instead of developing a stronger character.

So, I am making a 'Jar Of Emotions'. The idea is this. There will be things in any given day that will cause some emotional stress for me. I fed that over the years, and I was thinking that if I had donated the cost of whatever I was putting in my stomach as a way of coping, how many hungry children could have been 'fed' in a much more productive manner. If I had turned my emotional negative into a positive that could have provided a meal for a hungry child, a homeless individual, or even a shelter animal, how many moments of true pain, stress, hunger, sadness, could I have prevented? A lot, I realized.

That is how I am going to cope with these down days, sad moments, and emotional stresses. One dollar will go in my 'Jar Of Emotions' each time I am struggling. I will be able to see what, in the past, I would have wasted on snacks during my pity parties. I will be able to see that grow into something that can, when donated, be of true use to someone who is truly HUNGRY. I set the donation date of November 22, 2014, just before Thanksgiving, when I will donate all of my 'emotions' where they will do some good. And then, I will celebrate Thanksgiving this year with a new understanding of what one really needs in this life and I will be thankful that every difficult emotion I experienced between now and then will have value and purpose in someone else's life. It will be okay for me to feel sad, because my sadness will lend something to someone, or something else's happiness. That, in turn, will give me a reason to celebrate, to be happy.

Would anyone like to join me?