Save me from myself

What makes different people react differently to stress? Why is it some people will get depressed and tune out the world while others get even more involved than they already are? Some people eat when they are upset, some people get outside and run a mile or climb a mountain. How are these people different, and how can a person turn from one to the other?

For most of my life I've been the type that deals with stress by eating and tuning out. What is the root cause of this? Is any of it genetic, or is it all conditioning from when I was a child? Did I learn my coping methods from my mother, who was my main parental role model and therefore my example source of how to behave? She was very much the same, most of the life I can remember with her was spent indoors, sitting in front of the TV.

I need to be different. I need to find a way to re-create my basic response to stress, so that I'd be the one to go out and run that mile instead of vegetating in front of the computer playing a game. Not that playing Everquest or some other computer game is bad, I love gaming and always will, it's just that ALL I do is play computer games, avoiding my responsibility to my personal health. Of course my recent back problems have made it difficult to WANT to go out and run, bike or perform some other type of excercise, but I need to find a way to at least want to try to do something when I'm upset as opposed to nothing.

I also need to teach myself that food is fuel, not entertainment. When I'm stressed I eat, and the more I eat the more depressed I get, which leads to more stress and a vicious cycle. Three years ago when I was unemployed I started a 6 month campaign to lose weight. I did an excellent job, changing my habits to where I was drinking only water and not eating any sweets at all. Of course it was easier not being out every day at a job where the candy machine proves an ever present temptation, but I was out and about several times a week either riding my bike, walking or doing some other form of exercise. I lost almost 50 pounds, but then got depressed when I couldn't quite break through the 300lb mark and slowly converted back to my old habits and gained back about half of that weight. I know I can do it again, but I'm finding it difficult to re-capture that mind-set. How did I ever quit smoking cold-turkey???

No one else is going to do this. I need to save myself from myself. I can only hope that by the time I've learned what I need to do to accomplish it that I'll have some time left to enjoy the results.