Some people deal with pressure, problems, and stress by drinking alcohol, some take drugs of a variety of sorts, some people sleep excessively, some play computer games for hours, or watch television, but my medication of choice is food. Food calms me down and gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling inside, it gives me a sense of life being so gooooood.The worst time is when I am home a lot. I get bored and I head for the frig to see if anything else showed up from the last time I looked 30 minutes ago. I am still being good on not eating any sugar or wheat flour so that helps that I am not eating a half gallon of ice cream a day with chocolate syrup and whip cream all over it. My main vice now is I am eating a big bowl of pop corn most evenings with a half cube of melted butter on it. Right when the popcorn starts to pop I push start on the microwave for 30 seconds and the butter is melted when the popcorn is done.

Patty and I have started fasting for 24 hours 2 days a week with at least one day in between fast days. I have been doing pretty good on being faithful to not eating on our fast days. We go from 8:00 pm until 8:00 pm for our 24 hour stretch, so at 7:00 pm an hour before we start our fast I have a bowl of popcorn and then the next night I have it at 8:00 pm right after we finish our 24 hour fast. Cool, huh!

Coping mechanisms are the strategies people often use in the face of stress and/or trauma to help manage painful or difficult emotions. Coping mechanisms can help people adjust to stressful events while helping them maintain their emotional well-being. I read an article written to help people cope with the virus situation we are in now and they had 40 suggestions, many of them were ones that I do. I rotate activities a lot now often changing every 30 minutes or whenever I start having too many negative thoughts or feeling agitated or depressed. I will work on a project outside and then come in and read for a while, then go back outside and then come in again and memorize Bible verses, then back outside, and then come in and pray for a bit and then I hop on my stationary bike and ride for 30 minutes. With every trip in the house, I check the frig but now I am doing better, gaining some self -control, I am eating healthy low-calorie stuff. There isn’t much that makes me feel like a loser as much as not being able to control my weight.