This is posted on 2 different groups so sorry if people see this twice.

I know I'm a stress eater. I really try to work on it. This Saturday my cat got really sick and we had to take her to the emergency vet. They thought it was her thyroid which is very treatable and has a high success rate so I held up pretty well and made it through the day on plan. We got the call back Sunday that blood work shows it's not her thyroid at all and that she's either got a major infection (which she may or may not fight off) or it's liver failure and there's not much they can do. Yeah Sunday was not a plan day.

Anyway back to the subject at hand. Does anybody have any recommendations for handling stress eating? Normally I would get up and excercise or get out of the house but it's kind of hard for me to do that when I'm having to sit in one room monitoring her for condition changes and I'm not getting a decent amount of sleep because I'm having to force feed and force water her every 3 hours around the clock. I tried bringing in some movies to try to destract me but so far it's really not helping.

I'm sorry to hear about your cat I hope she pulls through.

I really don't know what else to say that might help except maybe doing some exercise in your apartment? I think the on-demand freezone for cox cable has free workouts or you could watch them from your computer?

Herbal tea? Sometimes that pulls me through. And constantly reminding myself that eating will only help for as long as I'm chewing. As soon as I stop eating I feel terrible.

I like to chew gum or munch on celery.

I took up hot tea because of stress. I make it a kind of ritual, with the heating of the water and watching the tea bag and dunking it, warming my hands on the mug and concentrating on nothing else for my "tea time". I try and make it "my moment alone" even if I'm not. I like watching the color eek out of the tea bag into the clear hot water. Taking really deep breaths to increase some brain oxygen lol

I hope your kitty gets better soon. I know how awful it feels to be so worried over your furry homie. How's she doing?