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Category: Eating Peace Videos

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I made a mistake: that bite, that food, that pound gained.

If you’ve recently been reading my eating peace ebook, thanks for being here! You’ve arrived just in time to attend a live webinar I don’t do very often, in preparation for the Eating Peace Experience coming up at the end of January.

Eating Peace Webinar: Monday January 13th 10:00am PT/ 1:00pm ET/ 7:00pm Europe. Sign up here to attend live and ask me anything. There are also 4 other options for taking this live masterclass–you’ll see them when you click the link to register. A great opportunity to listen, share and do this work together.

(If you’d rather not be on this list, scroll down an unsubscribe any time. I usually send out an email and eating peace video around once every ten days). 

Looking at the world through the eyes of opposites, of right and wrong, of duality….is common. It’s often the only way we seem to know.

In this belief system, there is a Right Way and a Wrong Way to be. With food, eating, body size, appearance.

Right/Wrong, Mistaken Way/ Correct Way, Bad/Good, Successful/Failure, Uncertain/ Certain, Strong/ Wishy-Washy, I Know/ I Don’t Know, Against it/ For It.

Everything’s very black and white, and “clear” in a way, and that’s the GOAL. To know the FINAL answer (like the game show, LOL).

In this world, no ambivalence is allowed, no uncertainty. It’s much better to have certainty and to be right about your way. You might even have supporting data for how your way is the best way, perhaps even the only way.

And then….a “mistake” is made.

Trouble is, when YOU screw up or make a mistake….you follow the usual steps of self-attack, punishment, criticism, anger, disappointment, confusion, fear and a return to “your” way (which is the “right” and “best” way).

I love thinking about all the right/wrong perspective and how it lives so fully in our minds sometimes. It happens in ways that are so much more than only food, eating and body image.

Last week, for example, I offered my live webinar for the first time and made a “mistake” of locking people out of it.

So, the live webinar went to no one “live”.

It was a fun teaching and this material is incredibly profound and powerful for help with understanding the suffering around eating issues–at least it has been for me–but I had no interaction or questions or chats, which seemed confusing.

No comments, no feedback, no emojis.

But is it true that I made a mistake?

Consider the times you’ve taken a compulsive bite of food. You’ve repeated the pattern of overeating, over-indulging, eating the “wrong” thing, shame, secretive thinking. The pain of stuffing in food chaotically without caring about yourself.

Who would you be without the energy of right/wrong and condemnation about this experience?

What if you opened your mind, relaxed with yourself gently, and turned to the possibility that you are not a problem, and there is another way?

Who would you be without the idea that a mistake has been made? Who would you be without the belief you’re sick and twisted and broken and you have to crack down and be rigid?

What if there was another way besides being RIGHT or WRONG?

What if I can notice I’m panic-eating….and be mindful and do The Work of inquiry and shifting my own mind?

Turning the thought around: I have not made a terrible mistake.

I can start again, today, right now. I can breathe deeply, regroup, get support.

Turning around the thought again: my thinking is making a terrible mistake

Yes, especially when I condemn myself and the world and eating and food and weight and other people–or anything else in reality.

Much love,

Grace

 

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The ambivalent pain of both wanting and not wanting to stop eating.

Sign up for it here (pick your best time from 5 other choices). This workshop online will be super informative and very helpful for how to work mindfully to end your eating issues and relax.

One of the most fascinating experiences around compulsion of any kind, is to inquire and look at our ambivalence about ending this destructive off-balance eating thing.

We know even if we feel comfortable today with being “in control” around food and eating, that often LATER, in the future, we might be haunted by the urge to eat.

Things are good now. I might change my mind. I “have to” stay in charge. I need to build up the willpower.

And the inevitable happens.

One day, down the road, we overeat, binge eat, graze eat, blow the “plan”.

Have you ever looked at how stressful it is to stay “on” the plan? To be doing it perfectly or just right? To be following the rules?

Byron Katie says “Don’t be careful, you might hurt yourself.”

I was soooo careful with food, eating, health, body weight, image that I hurt myself deeply.

That can be over at that level. Life with food is supposed to be relaxing, and fun!

Who would we be about the stories we’ve been so sure are true?

If you’d like to join our free facebook community Eating Peace: Question Your Thinking, Change Your Eating visit us HERE. The only requirement is a desire to end disordered thinking/disordered eating. Everyone is welcome.
Much love,
Grace
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The torture of swinging between too much and not enough (+eating peace webinar)

Eating Peace Experience is coming. This is my highest touch, thorough, deep dive program into identifying and questioning the thinking that drives any kind of off-balance eating.

It changes and updates every single time.

We begin January 27, 2020 and go until April 16, 2020 (and probably a bonus week beyond).

Before the program starts, especially if you’re curious about the program or where to begin on this eating peace journey, I’m offering a webinar workshop online at six different times: “Five Stories We Tell That Keep Us Fighting Eating Wars”. 
Save your seat

You can sign up for it here (pick your best time).

I like to think of these five stories as “spells”. Like magic spells, it’s like we’re under a trance assuming what we think is true. We experience craving, eating, stuffing, starving, vowing, worrying, dieting, punishing, criticizing and everything in between when we tend to believe these stories.

How incredible to get off that ride and out of that mindset, for good.

Join me by signing up for the free webinar right here (you’ll get to take a look at the dates offered and choose your best time and day).

NOTE: If you are a previous Eating Peace Online participant, and you’re joining us again (everyone who’s enrolled so far in the program has had access for life) then please make sure you let me know so I can include you in my “active participants” list.

One of my favorite things about this journey of studying compulsion, stress, worry, agony, addiction, pain and suffering is how it becomes easier and easier along the way.

I’m still on a journey, for example, of relaxing around the mind. I feel the anxious nature of mind, and move (hopefully sooner than later) to question the beliefs arising.

The beliefs don’t result in eating off-balance, or hurting myself badly….thank goodness. But they might cause me to wake up at night, or ruminate on something and study it.

Which is OK. Nothing wrong with that. It’s called being human.

There’s nothing wrong with you if you’ve been in and out of compulsion, even for years. You just haven’t learned another way.

Wherever you’ve come from, you can open up to where you are right now, and now, and now and begin to access freedom and peace in this present moment–the only place it actually is.

Here’s how and what to do if you think you can’t and you’ve been having a terrible time with eating (or planning your next food or diet program):

If you’d like to join our free facebook community Eating Peace: Question Your Thinking, Change Your Eating visit us HERE. The only requirement is a desire to end disordered thinking/disordered eating.

Everyone is welcome.

Much love,

Grace

P.S. Friday January 3rd is “First Friday with Grace” which is a 90 minute open complimentary session in The Work of Byron Katie on anything and everything. Join me here.
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Stressful thinking, stressful eating: calming the mind when it comes to feast and social gatherings

I’m researching our fears and worries about young people and eating. Have you ever felt terrified your daughter might be developing an eating disorder?

Have you felt nervous about all the junk food at your sister’s house where she’s raising your nieces and nephews?

If you’ve had any worries at all, I’d love to have your candid answers on this survey here. Thanks for taking the time.

This work will be used for future support for how we can be with eating, food and body image ideals and not freak out but support our children, teens or those we live with. Even if your kids are grown, or you’re not a parent but have definitely been worried about someone developing eating issues….I’d love to hear from you. To fill out the survey please visit here.

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Have you been stressing because of family or other social gatherings, parties, celebrations, feasts?

Lots of food can be present. In fact, even if we’ve wished it to be so, it would be weird NOT to have food at social gatherings with others.

But disordered eating I found was born from disordered thinking.

Those thoughts. They do seem like a problem, don’t they?

In the past, I really believed everything I thought about food, eating and body image.

It was all pretty scary.

The mind was screaming at me: “Watch Out!” or “Get Ready, This Will Be Hard!” (about a holiday feast or celebration for example) or “Be Vigilant!”

You can’t be very internally calm or free when you have a voice running like this inside your head, right?

How to calm down?

Dis-connect yourself from that part of your mind. Notice that it is NOT you anyway–you’re already Not That. It’s only a voice.

You can stop watching that horror movie and stop getting worked up.

Watch how to handle this kind of alarm right here:

If you’d like to join our free facebook community Eating Peace: Question Your Thinking, Change Your Eating visit us HERE. The only requirement is a desire to end disordered thinking/disordered eating. Everyone is welcome.

Much love,

Grace
P.S. I’m working hard behind the scenes on an upcoming free webinar for everyone, coming LIVE in January in preparation for Eating Peace Experience which starts January 27th. Stay tuned for how to sign up for the free webinar and share it with others so we spread the word that eating peace is possible for everyone.
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The only time you aren’t safe with eating, is when you are fearful with food and eating.

Tis the season for many people for eating, over-eating, binge-eating, too much cooking, thinking about food, worrying about food, feeling frustrated or like giving up, avoiding or stuffing yourself at big gatherings or family feasts, or imagining how your new diet will be after January 1st and this year’s resolution.
How many times did I make another new resolution?
Hundreds.
I gave up after awhile.
But it was either despair and apathy, or, fiercely staying on top and “winning” the battle.
There had to be another way.
I would think this, and still feel like it was elusive and impossible.
It begins to seem like there are two primary options for working with this predicament of anxiety, sadness, disappointment and frustration with eating:
a) force, willpower and diets OR
b) not caring, accepting your limits and that you’re diseased or crippled, and doomed to heaviness.
One thing you can do right now today, is begin to be open and curious about an interesting element or feeling with which you might be viewing eating, food, yourself and your urges, your body, and the world…..and it’s called danger.
The belief is that it’s dangerous to be in the presence of food. It’s dangerous to eat. It’s dangerous to be you, around food. It’s dangerous to hunger, or to be full. It’s dangerous to feel strongly. Food is simply dangerous. Having a body is not very safe (it never looks right, or you have to hang on to your fine appearance for dear life).
Here’s how you might work with this fear of danger and lack of trust:
Head to youtube to watch the video HERE.
Finding safety in eating, food, and body.
If you’d like to join our free facebook community Eating Peace: Question Your Thinking, Change Your Eating visit us HERE. The only requirement is a desire to end disordered thinking/disordered eating. Everyone is welcome.
Much love,
Grace
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Stop arguing with food, stop looking for the answer elsewhere….question your thinking

Eating Peace Experience is coming January 27th-April 16, 2020. An immersion program to investigate key thoughts that produce off-balance eating. We do a deep dive.
EPE includes presentations and exercises to locate thinking and feeling, live zoom inquiry groups twice a week, a special private forum, facebook live Q&A. The delivery of this program is high touch with daily connection to support you in catching and questioning beliefs you’ve sometimes had since you were a child about food, eating, body image and belonging.
Speaking of childhood….I’m collaborating on an exciting project I’ll tell you more about later, but it’s about preventing eating-weirdness before it ever happens. I know some of us worry.
This would be moms and dads, teachers, friends, grandparents, aunts and uncles or anyone who desires clarity in looking at kids, our own history with eating, and becoming someone who feels confident (even if imperfect) about life with food and a body and caring for others who eat, feel, think and believe.
If you’re curious about this topic and have noticed worries or concerns about children you care about and the way they eat (the way they think) then I’d love to talk with you, interview style. I have questions to ask you and would love to hear your candid answers. Sign up for an interview here.
In today’s video, I share a story of a moment when I grabbed for an answer from outside, desperate for someone to tell me what to eat.
Sign me up for that diet! (I screamed)!
It didn’t go as I expected.
And that was for me, a really good thing.

The roller coaster ride of ON or OFF The Wagon….and the surrender and peace of quitting the hunt and inquiring.

Much love,
Grace
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Eating Peace Retreat, thoughts on fasting + a survey to learn more about eating

Announcement: Eating Peace Retreat in northeast Seattle at a private retreat house near me is coming January 15-20, 2020. Three more spots and you can stay close by in an airbnb (ask me about lodging). I made a quick video for you about it. You can also read more here.
Eating Peace Retreat with Grace Bell: Question Your Thinking, Change Your Eating
Eating Peace Retreat with Grace Bell: Question Your Thinking, Change Your Eating
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Recently an inquirer asked about fasting.
I know fasting is all the rage; intermittent fasting and all the various forms or programs.
There’s no denying that fasting can offer amazing health benefits. I even know someone who seems their life has been saved from critical diabetes through fasting.
Inquiry is where I always like to go to understand troubled thinking in any situation: fasting, not fasting, eating, not eating, moving, holding still.
For me, any time I ever want to get more involved in eating than feels like a lovely, normal, balanced way to walk through life with food….I question it. 
You can feel stressed about what you’re eating, feeling, thinking, not eating, or you can feel peace about all these conditions.
But one thing I know is, only you can sense the motives behind your fasting and if you’re doing it because you’re treating yourself with unconditional kindness and clarity, or if you’re using fasting to avoid the turmoil of eating–or for losing weight (without losing the thoughts that created weight in the first place).
I’ve learned a lot from fasting. And, it’s not something I do in my life regularly because I’m so happy to have this peace with eating and food as it is, and I like feeling daily balance.
It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try fasting if you’re drawn for good reasons.
I hope this video today helps, if you have some concerns or you notice yourself getting stressed about fasting:

Speaking of stress about eating, or fasting….I created a survey to learn more about your experience of eating, food and body image. People have reported it’s very helpful to fill out–you’ll learn more about what you’re thinking and believing that sparks off-balance eating.
I’m looking for at least 100 people to fill out this 10 question survey. The survey and your answers will be automatically private and anonymous unless you choose to share your name or email at the end–and only I will be reading any of the answers.
To fill out the survey, visit here. Thank you, thank you!
Much love,
Grace
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You HAVE to eat it (URGENT)–is that really true?

January 27: eating peace experience with Grace–please apply
Recently when at autumn retreat on the east coast to share The Work of Byron Katie, I said at the beginning of the program during an introduction that if anyone at all had any questions about food or eating, I’d be happy to talk at any time during our days together.
Several people came with questions, mostly in private.
One woman mentioned she was nauseated after eating, and often had too much.
We talked about that moment. The crazy trance-like zombie eating moment where you can’t stop (or you feel that way) and the sense is it’s like an emergency is happening.
Urgency is a great story to question.

If you’d love to question this belief system, and many that drive the over-eating or obsessing we do about food….
….come to retreat in January. Three spots left. It’s powerful, kind, compassionate and life-changing.
Eating Peace Retreat Jan 15-20, 2020. We’ll question the way we see reality, and the thinking that causes urgent eating and much more, and change the way we eat.
To learn more about the retreat, visit here.
Also…we’ll be starting Eating Peace Process Immersion, an online in-depth program to support change from the inside out with eating issues of any kind. It begins the end of January and runs through April.
For anyone interested who is new to the eating peace process, please apply and set up a one-on-one intro call with me (after November 15th) to learn more about the new upcoming immersion program. Read more here.
Much love,
Grace
P.S. In one week, come to First Friday Inquiry Jam. This is the free open inquiry we do most First Fridays of every single month from 7:45-9:15am PT. See the Work With Grace public calendar here and join me on zoom next week!
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How do you react when you believe your thoughts and feelings? I ate. So let’s question our stories.

We have so many beliefs about food and eating and our bodies.

A few core beliefs are so extremely stressful and frightening, it’s hard to step into inquiry….but entirely possible.

One stressful belief that you may find deeply discouraging is: I have to figure myself out before I can stop eating. I have to sort through all my trauma before I quit eating. I have to inquire on every aspect of stress that’s appeared in my life, before I stop eating.

I am simply unable to stop–I can’t stand the discomfort of it all.

Is it true that you have to figure everything all out in your emotional life, in your mind, before you stop compulsively eating?

Who would I be without my story?

TA: I have to NOT get it all figured out before I stop eating. Interesting turnaround! Could this be just as true that I don’t have to figure my entire psyche out before I stop eating compulsively?

It’s a bumpy ride sometimes to navigate heavy emotions, or cravings…but we don’t absolutely have to eat to make the emotions or craving go away.

WHAT are you without your story?

Yes, when I was reacting to the world and feeling wounded, frightened, bored or angry….I ate.

So of course, as I did The Work on the things that produced these stressful feelings, the need to eat appeared to drop away.

If you have an interest in doing The Work on what appears in your life as stressful…check out Year of Inquiry. A wonderful small group that shares the journey of inquiry together for an entire year. www.workwithgrace.com/year-of-inquiry/

Much love,

Grace

 

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The moment to question in off-balance eating might not be the one you think

The other day I was working with an inquirer who wanted to do in-depth work on her eating issues.

She had her stressful situation already identified, and a judge-your-neighbor worksheet filled out.

The situation?

The morning when she woke up, and the night before she had binge-eaten entire packages and containers of “forbidden” foods.

Oh the horrible pain. Frustration. Self-criticism.

And the question; “why?!”

What is wrong with me?

Instead of moving into The Work of Byron Katie, and the inquiry on this situation of self-attack, I suggested we look instead at the moment of mid-way into binge-eating, or right before the off-balance eating began the night before.

What is going on when we begin to eat?

That’s the place to capture your thinking.

You don’t have to know the reasons why exactly you’re eating, either. If you hear the thoughts, they may be as simple as “I have to keep eating this food” or “it would be terrible to stop right now” or “I can’t stop” or “this is urgent” (to eat, because I might not get this food again for a year or something).

Much love,

Grace