Someone wrote me yet again (probably the 7th or 8th time) with the very same question: how do I stop my “diet thinking” but still notice I really can’t eat certain foods without getting sick? It appears I have to eliminate some things for balance to happen.
Great question.
It’s entirely possible.
Peace is all in the mind.
Diet thinking looks like believing concepts like: I can’t (and it’s so sad), I’m not allowed (and it’s so sad), I don’t get to eat (and everyone else does), my food is so boring (and if I changed it the excitement would be totally worth it), I’m in prison with this diet (and I want to break free).
Basically diet thinking feels like you’re a victim.
It claims you can’t be trusted, you need to be thinner (always), you shouldn’t eat and be fully satisfied and nourished, you’re guilty just for thinking about food, and you have to watch yourself like a hawk.
It’s not fun.
But I notice, however, that without diet thinking, with absolutely freedom and joy around the energy of eating…I do NOT eat all day long, I do NOT overeat and stuff myself, and I find my own personal inner balance and great pleasure with food without making rules.
I stop when I’m satisfied, and I eat when I’m hungry, and things work out beautifully.
Many people feel the very same way without eating entire food groups, ever. They notice they don’t feel satisfied, joyful, truly free, or healthy, so they don’t eat those things.
If I’m not a victim, if I’m not missing out, if I feel my hunger and fullness….things are balanced.
Much love,
Grace
P.S. If you have become deeply interested in questioning your mind around eating issues, I’m starting a new eating peace program in a different way this fall/winter (not sure of start date yet). Everyone who is already a member of the Eating Peace Immersion will receive automatic invitation at no additional fee.
We’ll do more live inquiry, which is so meaningful for us all, and practice The Work.
Here at Family Camp where we eat dining room family style, with big servings of food on the tables…
…I heard a woman share about how upset she is with all the overeating she’s done during camp.
She said she kept telling herself she’d be OK later, once she returned home.
I remember feeling horrible that way….or even mildly uncomfortable.
We don’t have to experience this lack of peace.
The mind just can’t have what it wants, if it wants to believe a bunch of opposing thoughts about meals, food, unusual types of food (“I’ll never get to eat this again”), or not listening to the body for the cue called “FULL”.
In the end, the peaceful way is listening to the body FIRST.
Full and hungry get immediate response. We take action gently responding to these two states of the body.
Eat with joy anything you want (and aren’t allergic to), go slow, relax, stop when full. The hunger scale can be useful, but you don’t need to think about numbers at all really.
Only stopping the minute you feel satisfied.
Then move on. No tug of war. No fighting. Just acceptance.
Move on.
You will get to eat again–in fact, in only a few hours most likely. Your body will be open to it. So can you wait?
If you are suffering around this, you’re telling yourself a lie.
Let’s get honest about how this all works: the body is the one that says eat, the body is the one that says stop. NOT THE MIND. (And even this may not be true).
The mind can’t have what it wants if it wants to go outside the parameters of responding to the sensation of naturally full and naturally hungry.
And here’s the thing: the mind will be relieved and happy if you let the body lead the way. It really wants something else to take charge.
Many of us have been places where there are scheduled eating times and eating hours for large groups of people: conferences, cruises, workshops, courses, schools.
There are eating halls, cafeterias with limited hours, dining time and blocks where the kitchen is off limits.
Sometimes people notice when they participate in gatherings like this, or structured programs that include meals….
….they’ll say “I gain ten pounds every time I go on a cruise!” or “I eat too much when I’m at a workshop or on vacation!”
What are your thoughts?
this is soooo good, I might never get it again
I can’t stop eating this delicious meal
I have to eat more than enough, because it’s so rare that I have this available to me
I need to eat a lot because there’s a break until the next eating hour
Let’s look at one of these beliefs that sometimes permeates them all: I might not survive! I must take care of myself (like it’s an emergency)!
If you think you don’t have this kind of survival worry about eating and food….notice how you’re acting!
Falling down hard (binge-eating) after a long period of being binge-free can be terribly discouraging. Almost suicidally full of despair for some.
You can question this thought.
You’ve just “lost” the battle, you’ve just “lost” your abstinence, you’ve just “lost” your year of supposed freedom.
Is it true?
Who would you be without the past? (Which I notice is gone, and only a memory now).
A few ideas that may help, if you’re having this experience of “on” then “off” a plan:
1) Recovering from eating begins with cultivating willingness to learn from where we stumble.
2) When we keep believing our thoughts that we should be thin, thin, thin…then no amount of time being binge-free will bring us freedom.
3) If we decide we’ve failed miserably, or that this “stumble” is a disaster, we’ll most likely eat more, eat again. Being open to learn from what happened is the easiest way. Like learning how to walk, it’s not done immediately. We fall down sometimes.
4) When you believe your thoughts about food, eating and your body…with stress, mistrust, and the urge to manage, your mind will be filled with Jibber-Jabber. Everyone talking at once, screaming.
Do you have to believe any of this jibber-jabber? Is it just noise?
What I notice is everyone’s mind has noise in it, and what a wonderful experience to look at this noise and all this thinking as white noise, or jibber-jabber. Babbling brook.
Uninteresting. Untrue.
Can I simply NOT be alarmed by what’s happened in the past?
Can I stand up again, stepping into another day?
This is a new moment, right now. This is an experience of the “Don’t Know” mind. The place of No Control.
In this place is a slowness, a feeling of the body, I don’t know what to do and I don’t have to do anything.
You lost your abstinence, you “lost” a year of freedom from binge eating…is that true? Can you absolutely know you lost it?
No.
How do you react when you believe that thought?
Listening to the jibber-jabber and screaming thoughts and freaking out and intense emotions about disaster and control.
Who would you be without the thought? Who would you be without the belief there’s a future to plan for and control is required, and something is missing?
Turning the thought around: I’m OK. I’m safe in this moment. I didn’t lose anything. Today, now, can be relaxed. Only my thinking fell over. My thoughts went off, not “me”. Not the inner me, not the inner “I.
The other day I had an interesting moment when someone said they’d be filming me from behind as I walked and ran.
Ummmm.
That doesn’t sound so good.
My thighs won’t look good.
I look ugly, I look terrible, people will think x, people will reject me because of y, people will judge, they’ll know I eat x, they’ll think I do y, I’m reject-able because of this appearance.
It boils down to this body being wrong, off, unworthy, imperfect….
….and very, very, very important.
Who would we be without this terrifying story?
Who would we be without the stories and meaning we place upon “fat” or “thin” or “just right”?
Accompanied by the belief “I don’t care if I’m full and if it will make me sick, I’m eating anyways”.
But is that what you really want?
Are you absolutely sure?
How do you react when you believe you want it (food, or anything, honestly)….
….AND notice whether or not you also have the belief “I should not eat it”. (Often these two beliefs come in a pair).
Notice if you are thirsty and you want water….do you battle within yourself about acquiring the water, or stopping when full? Usually not.
What else happens when you believe you want it (and you shouldn’t)?
Who would you be without the belief you want that food?
Especially when you keep eating it–interesting to acknowledge the first bite when you’re hungry is relaxing and pleasurable, but several bites in, the belief has naturally changed.
“You want it” when you are no longer hungry–is that really true?
Who would you be without this belief? You might notice you actually DO NOT BELIEVE this thought already!
You’re overriding your own truth.
You want something else, you want to stop, you don’t want to feel sick, you want to release anxiety….but you don’t want “it” (eating this item, in this moment).
Turn the thought around: I do NOT want it.
Is this truer?
I want my thoughts about it, not the actual eating of it.
What feels true about that?
Why would you want to tell yourself you want something that you don’t actually want? Is there something frightening about noticing you don’t want it? Do you think you might be left with other wants that can’t be resolved, or are too scary to be resolved, or require discomfort?
Sit with this inquiry, using your imagination to wonder who you are without this thought.
Ahhhhhh. The end of war.
Much love,
Grace
P.S. Retreat at Breitenbush Hotsprings June 12-16 has a few spots left. Come join me and the wonderful Tom Compton to soak in inquiry and peace. Call Breitenbush to make reservations 503-854-3320.
If questioning our mind is also known as meditation, then identifying our thoughts and asking four questions–especially when they are stressful–is a process of developing a deep, unconditional friendship with ourselves.
Opening up to looking at this mind, and seeing what it’s saying (and taking it to inquiry) is not so easy.
But noticing what takes you away from simply eating when hungry, and stopping when full….those are thoughts in the mind. Those are feelings that have followed thoughts.
The good news is, we can question them. We can actually meditate.
We can practice, just a little bit, each day.
We can notice what we feel is “too much” about life or “not enough” about life.
Go easy on yourself with this.
Identify one thought only at a time, when you feel like eating when not hungry or starving yourself when your body needs some food.
Just one thought (the one on top, as Byron Katie says) and question it using The Work.
1) Is it true?
2) Can I absolutely know it’s true?
3) How do I react when I believe this thought? (I get scared, lonely, angry, sad…and I eat)
4) Who would I be without this thought?
Can I find turnarounds? The complete opposite of the thought?
Bottom line: if you have stressful eating, then you are thinking in a stressful way, and feeling in stressful ways, and these beliefs are based on lies.
I was tortured by eating. It felt like a nightmare.
The worst part?
The experience of a binge. Eating like a crazed person, then feeling sick, stuffed and horrible (and often forcing myself to vomit).
The origin of the word “binge” comes from nautical terms. It meant to soak a wooden vessel in water, so the wood would swell and the boat wouldn’t leak.
What if we were like that–believing we’ll “leak” with emotion, energy, fear, emptiness, hunger–unless we binge.
We think we’ll lose air, we’re frantic, we’re full of urges, we’ll sink to the bottom of the ocean…so we binge.
Eating Peace Process has begun, and we’re still in the Foundations Module. These foundations are practices and exercises that help us open up to our suffering with food and eating and our bodies, and find some other ways to be with What Is without violence or control or willpower.
I love what someone asked in one of first our private group calls yesterday: how do I stop in the middle of a binge?!
In Foundations I offer several “calming down” exercises like tapping, or shaking, or writing unedited for five minutes.
I suggest meditation on a daily basis, and invite everyone to begin to practice meditating, whether you’ve done it before or not. Start with five minutes.
All these foundational activities, which include wondering about ourselves in new ways by answering questions and journaling….are all great and everything….
....but how do we stop in the middle of a binge?
Holy smokes.
That could be the hardest place to “stop” of any place in the cycle of this compulsion. Right in the middle of the height of the energy.
First of all, even though it can seem practically impossible, it’s helpful to question the belief: I can’t stop, this is too much, it’s too difficult to pause.
Is that true?
Who would you be without that thought?
I have found a few more ideas that have worked well for me, too.
The good news is, the more you practice pausing, stopping, waiting….the easier it gets. The mind literally un-hooks itself from the cycle called “BINGE!”
If you find stopping practically impossible, then simply feel what it’s like to be WILLING to stop in the middle of a binge.
Give yourself loving kindness–no one binge eats who is happy, peaceful or feeling at ease in life. Binge eating is a response to upset and urges to survive.
Being gentle and caring with yourself can be one of the most important steps to take at all–that you’re eating for good reasons, and you’re willing to find out why and to stop, since it isn’t ultimately working for you.
Much love,
Grace
If you still want to join Eating Peace, it’s not too late. You can begin with the Foundations Module immediately when you sign up, and listen to the first live call via recording.
Module One is released May 15th. I won’t open Eating Peace Process again until January 2020, so if you want eating peace help, sign up here. We meet until August 15. Everyone has access for lifetime, meaning you’ll always get the chance to join when I offer it again.
Joy of Inquiry on Eating
“I feel like I could do the work on the exercises and images that came up for the rest of my life. I actually watched it in two sittings, stopping between writing the turn-arounds to the actions that undermine peaceful eating. Thank you, thank you.”
A Combo of Gratitude and Fear
“In intending to watch the videos, even now I have the familiar feeling of being sooo scared. I feel tears coming to my eyes. I am so grateful for your work…which has put into words what I am, and what I have experienced. Tears of gratitude for your open and honest sharing.”
The Why Behind Eating
“I have read CBT books and worked with nutritionists but neither of these methods addressed in detail the intense emotions and intricate thought processes that your videos mention – and which resonate with my personal experience. T
hank you for trying to help people like myself as we navigate the why behind what is happening.”
“All of the sudden, one day you wake up and you say ‘I’m done’….What you already know starts to wake up. What you already know.” ~ Adyashanti
Last Saturday morning I so enjoyed offering the last live Eating Peace webinar on mental beliefs that get in the way of our peace with food, eating or our body image.
Get out a pen and paper and listen to the replay right here.
It means so much to me to receive all the comments and emails about the help given from this webinar to those who are suffering with either a wee bit of food and eating trouble, or a big lot of eating pain.
I shared some of my story on the webinar….but it was brutal.
Almost daily, I experienced agony around eating. I hardly ever had a normal, peaceful meal. I hunted for food, I overate, then under-ate. I binged then purged.
I really needed help. It was a nightmare.
In my history I saw almost twenty therapists if you count them all, I went into a six-week in-patient program for people with disordered eating, I did Course in Miracles, Twelve Steps, Living Binge Free, and quite a few programs for self-improvement like est, TM, a 9-month program called People House and even got a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Science to understand the mind and emotions better.
It was a group therapy program that helped most of all.
That was where I found freedom from the more extreme behavior….and then The Work of Byron Katie.
Those two components were what saved my life, literally, from having my head in the toilet forcing myself to vomit, or constantly dieting, or feeling fear in the presence of good foods, or feeling disgust in the presence of mirrors.
Group work and self-inquiry. What a powerful combination.
My mind felt like a very bad neighborhood, and like I just could not find my way out.
My thinking was violent, fearful, dramatic and desperate when it came to my views of the body I lived in, eating, and ultimately relating to the world with a need to eat.
Ugh, that was rough, to say the least.
Now, I’m dedicated to continually looking at mind, thinking, beliefs and how they pile together to form fear and an urge to grab, worry or isolate.
In today’s video I share more about how these both worked, and why.
And meanwhile, if this sounds like an adventure you’d like to take with me and our eating peace group right now….I’d love to have you join me. Our first live call is Thursday, but live calls are only a part of the program.
This program is the only one I offer where there is content material pre-recorded, personal exercises, journaling, meditating, watching video lessons and webinars, and inviting you to follow on your own and do it in a way that works for you.
Most of the work I do with people is live: solo, retreat, and meetings where we all do The Work of Byron Katie. I consider myself having little to teach, but that the true work is about identifying your stressful thoughts, and then applying the four questions and finding turnarounds.
However, in this work, with such desperation, angst, and anger (like I had myself) I began in 2015 to put together offerings around eating and mindset to help people find a second of peace, then another second, then another.
So many people who contacted me to work on eating issues said “I don’t know what I’m thinking!!!! Please help!!! I just FEEL HORRIBLE!!!!”
So I started developing a program they could follow that would help get relaxed enough in the first place to settle into self-inquiry and not panic about the food or weight.
As it turns out, that first program I offered to a lovely group of 14 people. Then, after receiving fantastic feedback, I rewrote it, and I offered it again….then I offered it again after rewriting it again, and then repeated the overhaul yet again and offered it again.
No Eating Peace Process has ever been the same. I keep taking what works, and leaving out what doesn’t.
Eating Peace Process is something I hope you can follow on your own step by step, and also find answers to your questions by being in a group of people who share the same thinking, who have suffered from these thoughts.
These are people who are devoted to finding the truth for themselves through the process of inquiry, slowing down, awareness.
Eating Peace is not a program about dieting or food plans. You can be on any food plan or way-of-eating you want.
This work is about the internal disruption that results in our reaching for food, or resisting food, or hating our bodies.
People who are perfectly normal in weight or even thin, people with athletic bodies, people with twenty pounds to lose, people with a whole lot of weight to lose….all benefit from this mindful work.
It’s about our bodies, but it’s NOT about our bodies. We must start with where we are and what we have, with this body we’re in, and this mind we’re using….
….and begin to treat it with kindness.
In eating peace process, we start with Foundational work to help us commit to a return to kindness, even if it doesn’t feel natural or normal for us.
It is our true nature to be accepting, joyful with food, compassionate with other people and ultimately with ourselves.
How do I know?
Because of how “right” and easy it feels when I’m there.
If you’d like to join me on a group program of sharing, inquiry, learning, and awareness….I’d love to have you in Eating Peace starting this week.
Read about it and sign up here. Everyone who joins has lifetime access. You can join any future live session, you will have updates and new lessons as they get developed and added.
This is a process in motion….always blossoming with what is now and what is next.
Like life.
“We human beings can be addicted to anything. Anything to distract from present pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, the notion that something is incomplete. There’s a sense of lack, a sense of something’s missing. That’s where it begins. Then our lives become a search for what’s missing…The basic disillusion is that something [food, eating, exercising, getting thin] will complete me and make me whole. It will take away the pain of being human.” ~ Jeff Foster
If you’ve had this experience about food, eating, compulsive eating, emotional eating, a body that isn’t right, cravings that are wrong….
….and you’d like to explore it on a deep internal level (not a technical fix, like a diet)….
….then I’d love to have you join me in the Eating Peace Process. A journey in understanding, and no longer waiting for happiness in the future and such unhappiness with food, eating and your body as it is right now, but instead to explore mind and questioning all the difficult oppositional thoughts we have about eating.
Joy of Inquiry on Eating
“I feel like I could do the work on the exercises and images that came up for the rest of my life. I actually watched it in two sittings, stopping between writing the turn-arounds to the actions that undermine peaceful eating and investigating the worst things. Thank you, thank you.” ~ EPP Participant 2017
A Combo of Gratitude and Fear
“In intending to watch the videos, even now I have the familiar feeling of being sooo scared. I feel tears coming to my eyes. I am so grateful for your work…which has put into words what I am, and what I have experienced. Tears of gratitude for your open and honest sharing.”
The Why Behind Eating
“I have read CBT books and worked with nutritionists but neither of these methods addressed in detail the intense emotions and intricate thought processes that your videos mention – and which resonate with my personal experience. Thank you for trying to help people like myself as we navigate the why behind what is happening.”
Reality has some funny plans sometimes…and one thing I know is that arguing with it really doesn’t work well.
So I knew not to believe the thought “this is urgent” the other day when during the live webinar, things went wonky.
Worry, urgency, running away, anxiety, nerves.
These feelings and images accompanying them used to always lead to eating for me. Really, almost 100% of the time.
Rolling with reality is so much better. Surprisingly, even magnificently better.
So, here’s what happened with the Eating Peace webinar:
Right in the middle of it, construction outside caused all the electric power to blow in my entire home.
Which means no internet, no computer, no lights…and no more webinar.
(Working at home can have a few drawbacks, but not many. This is pretty unusual. We’re building a small-almost-tiny home in our back yard).
Today, five trucks are parked outside and machines are sounding loud, men are literally calling loudly to one another, so I’m switching the plans here and we won’t be meeting today either.
Instead, we’ll meet for the final time for this free live webinar on this Saturday morning April 27th at 7:30 am PT. This time might work even better for some of you…who knows?
I trust the Way of It now. Even when I don’t….I know what to do. I inquire.
To question worry, nervousness and the horrors in our minds is one of the most profound reliefs I’ve ever experienced.
Questioning this thought that something, anything (including the urge to get that sugary food or take another bite) is an emergency is a huge step in becoming binge-free and obsession-free.
In my video today, I share about how to question this concept (it’s actually the first of the seven stories I suggest questioning in the eating peace webinar): THIS IS URGENT!!
Have you noticed the unrest, the worry, the anxiousness when you have a craving for food? Or the trance you fall into when you eat? Or the images flashing through you of food, weight, self-criticism?
The mind screams “This has to happen NOW! You have to pull it together NOW!” or “You have to eat it NOW!”
Who would you be without that story?
Without my own story of “this webinar has to happen right now, today, since that is when it was scheduled”….I get a new idea to offer it on Saturday morning for the last time.
I’d love to have you join me live if you have special questions about the power of self-inquiry and The Work of Byron Katie when it comes to this whole eating thing, or any questions about the Eating Peace Process (which I’ll share how the program works at the end of the webinar).
The last live webinar will be Saturday, April 27th 7:30 am PT. Set aside 90 minutes. Join me live right here. No opting in required.
And for more about the urgent story and how to question it, no matter what’s bothering you (even very frightening memories, or gigantic cravings to eat) then watch here:
