The other day I gave you some tips on how to celebrate Valentine’s Day without focusing on food and also got some great reader feedback on that, which included an excellent suggestion from Bruce on giving the gift of his undivided attention. You just can’t put a price on that in today’s busy and hectic world.

Today I’d like to focus on those of you who may not be all that excited about Valentine’s Day. My other post was for couples, but if you’re single and not happy about it you might be feeling kind of down today. Or maybe you are in a loving relationship but you feel a lot of pressure to “do something” for Valentine’s Day to avoid giving the impression that you don’t care (even though you do).

So, this post is mainly for singles who are feeling down today, however it actually doesn’t matter what your current situation is; what matters is if you fit the following:

1. You’re not excited about Valentine’s Day and it brings up negative or stressful emotions in you.
2. You’re an emotional eater.
3. You’re an emotional eater and you don’t want to use food today to try to make yourself feel better. You’re either losing weight and feeling great, or you are working through emotional eating issues and you want to maintain your current weight.

If you fall into any of those categories, what I’d like to suggest today is that you focus on all of the things in your life that you are grateful for. Just because you don’t have a special someone to celebrate with today, it doesn’t mean that this has to be a day filled with overeating and sugar as a compensation for your negative thoughts. That’s right, negative thoughts. If you’re thinking that you’ll always be alone, that no one will ever love you, well then you’re actually right. Your thoughts are creative and what you think is what you will get.

So instead of thinking those negative thoughts (which will lead to negative emotions and emotional eating), let’s look at all that is good and right about today. What can you come up with to be thankful for today? How about pulling out your notebook, journal, or a piece of paper and listing just 10 things in your life that you are grateful for. If you can do 20 or 50 that’s even better, but start out with 10.

I’ll chime in right now with 10 things that I came up with on the fly, 10 things that I am grateful for today:

1. I’ve very grateful to have my body intact. I have all of my fingers and toes and am mobile.
2. I have some great friends, family, and neighbors, people that make me laugh and are fun to be around. I am not alone.
3. I have a warm, comfortable house to live in, a roof that doesn’t leak, a working furnace and indoor plumbing (yeah, we’re looking at everything you have to be grateful for – not everyone has these amenities in their life).
4. I am grateful that I took action and started this blog Fearless Fat Loss. I’ve already met some wonderful people, have gained some inspiration for my own weight loss journey, and am looking forward to meeting even more fine folks. At the same time I feel good about providing quality info to you, things that have worked for me and information that I think everyone needs to know about.
5. Since I don’t have a “special someone” to celebrate Valentine’s Day with today, that means that I don’t have to deal with refusing chocolates or sugar-filled desserts. It also means that I can watch Survivor tonight when it comes on instead of recording it for later (LOL, yeah, I love Survivor 🙂 ).
6. I am extremely grateful for the many times that I’ve already gone skiing this season. Downhill is my greatest joy in life right now, ranking right up there with the work I do here at Fearless Fat Loss. While I do love being online and constantly learning more about blogging, nothing beats being on the slopes, especially when the conditions are great.
7. I have 3 furry friends that live in my house with me, or should I say furry beasts (LOL, they’re cats). They really are something and I am so grateful that I decided to adopt them. They bring more joy to my life than you can imagine, that is unless you have your own pets.
8. I have healthy food in the frig., a reliable car, and clothing to wear. In fact, I even have clothes to wear that will look great after I lose some more weight!
9. I can read and write and am extremely grateful for the public library. I’m grateful to my mom for giving me the gift of the library and the love of reading when I was a kid, and I have an excellent imagination.
10. Every day is a new opportunity to learn and grow, to meet another vibrant person on this wonderful planet Earth, and an opportunity to contribute something positive to society.
11. I am grateful for Mozart, for air travel, for the world’s historical sites and buildings that have been preserved, for ski resorts, the inventor of bicycles, animals, plants, and the Universe. I am grateful for all of the people in the world who are working on becoming the best person they can be, full of love and life for others. After all, every person who improves them self makes the world a better place for all.

OK, so came up with more than 10. You’ll see what this is like once you get started, you’ll probably just keep going and going because it feels so good.

The focus of this exercise is to get your mind wrapped around all of the positive and wonderful things that you have going for you. Why? Because if you are focusing on “being alone on Valentine’s Day”, how in the heck are you going to feel? Perhaps you’ll feel like eating a bag of cookies? And how will you feel about that after you eat them?

Emotional eating won’t help you get what you want in life and the more that you can stay in a positive frame of mind the easier it will be to eat to live instead of live to eat. Sure, there are people who eat when they’re happy too, which is something to be aware of if that is where you’re at. However, if you can really get into gratitude and build up your focus on what is working for you in your life, the more of that you can create instead of creating a focus on food, overeating, and overweight.

I’d love to hear a couple of things that you’re grateful for today. Remember, they can be super simple, like being grateful that you have fingernails.

Focus on the gratitude today, have a Happy Valentine’s Day, and ditch the chocolates, ice cream, and cookies; you’re worth more than that.