<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" I have never been a stress eater. I have never been a binge eater, either. When I&amp;#039;m truly stressed or upset, I either feel too sick to eat or I forget to eat altogether. And I&amp;#039;ve always been more of a &amp;quot;grazer&amp;quot; than a binger when it comes to food. Whenever I eat out at a restaurant, I always have a take-home container and I don&amp;#039;t eat more than a scoop or two of ice cream when I eat it. The trade-off is, I can sit at my desk at work and mindlessly nibble on stuff all day and probably take in as many calories as if I&amp;#039;d binged on it. After work I come home and it&amp;#039;s a flurry of dinner, cleaning, laundry, homework, baths and bed until the weekend. On my weekends with the kids, they keep me pretty active. In good weather we go on hikes, in bad weather we&amp;#039;re either outside stomping puddles or inside dancing around the living room. I don&amp;#039;t have a lot of down time and that keeps me from eating too much outside of meals. Then come the kid-free weekends... I try to do a project or two, but there&amp;#039;s so much free time (it seems) that I find myself bored, sitting down in front of Netflix or opening up my Kindle and mindlessly picking at microwave popcorn for a few hours each day. I had such grand plans when Peter moved out to do all these great things on my kid-free weekends. Endless road trips to interesting places (I can&amp;#039;t afford them, so they&amp;#039;re mostly out the window), hiking in parks and woods in my area (which I&amp;#039;m kind of afraid to do alone). home renovations (which I need to learn to do more of) and maybe even scrapbooking (all the stuff is still in a tub in my basement). I need to find more inexpensive, honestly do-able activities, not just to burn calories, but to keep the boredom at bay because the boredom makes me eat. I read a really good article that discusses the links between boredom and weight gain and it even has some suggestions for activities. Unfortunately, they all seem to revolve around cleaning and organizing. I need more things that I want to do. What are your favorite boredom busters? How do you keep yourself busy in a quiet house? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a46138/need-to-find-activities/>