First, an announcement special for you who are an Eating Peace reader. In preparation for my upcoming Eating Peace Immersion starting again in May, I’ve created a new Eating Peace webinar:
Three lies we believe that keep us obsessing, managing our bodies and avoiding inquiry…instead of eating peace.
At the end of the webinar, I’ll share about the eating peace program and you’re welcome to ask questions to see if it’s right for you. If you want to receive alerts for the webinar right into your Inbox so you don’t forget it, you can sign up to receive those here.
We’ve believed it about food, eating, ways of eating, right food, wrong food, the size of our thighs, our weight.
The way I’ve eaten is WRONG WRONG WRONG. I have proof. Look at the evidence.
I was soooo “good” for awhile and then I “blew it” and ate through half the junk food in America.
We’ve been talking about shame lately….but it’s such a cycle of doom.
All our fears, dread, trauma, and difficulties appear, and the belief is “I can’t handle it” or “If I have fear, sadness or anger, I’m WRONG” or “I’ve committed a crime” (by what I’ve eaten)….
….and then “I might as well EAT!” (and we stuff ourselves).
And not only did I have judgments about what I was eating, and what really good perfect people eat, but I also had many judgments about emotions, and expressing them.
Having strong emotions them meant I was TOO EMOTIONAL! Something’s wrong with me!
Who would you be without the belief there’s something wrong with you because you’ve experienced compulsive behavior–with food, eating, exercise, following your emotions, or anything? How would you treat food without the belief that if you eat it, you’re wrong? How would you treat yourself?
Without this belief that something’s wrong with me because of how I’m eating, I’m curious.
Without the belief, I’m LESS fixated on food and eating, and more open to what else is going on.
A sudden sense of self-compassion enters my awareness.
Maybe it’s OK not to “know” all the answers when it comes to food, or to focus so acutely on every bite that enters my mouth in such a rigid way.
Turning the thought around: there’s something RIGHT with me because of how I’m eating. And yes, I mean the binge-eating or the junk-food eating or the desperate eating.
What is it expressing? What’s “right” about it?
Now that’s a fascinating and wonderful question.
It helps us be open to understand what’s going on….a first step.
If you’d like to learn more, join me for the webinar I’m offering, coming up 3 times next week (and 3 times the following week as well). Sign up for alerts for the webinars right here.
Eating Peace: Working With The Dread of Eating Wrong…and The Belief “I Might As Well Eat!”
I was deeply moved to receive this note the other day after someone watched the recording of the Eating Peace Webinar. The last live session is Sunday, November 11th at 10:00 am Pacific Time. It will surely be slightly different–I change things each time I do it:
“Grace, I have to say that this was the best understanding articulated on this topic ever! Does Byron Katie know what you have accomplished here? Magnificent, important, Rhodes Scholar work…and most helpful. Thank you so much.”
This work of eating peace in some ways has been my entire life’s work, because like Geneen Roth has said, it has been my doorway into understanding my sense of presence and awareness, and fear and agony about being alive.
Exploring our compulsion(s) is truly at a deep level the work of consciousness, the personal mind that believes it must be in control (or feels out of control), the way our perceptions move us to action, and what’s happening when we eat (or do anything) off balance.
There are so many approaches to healing our ways with eating.
We know something’s wrong. We usually believe it’s us.
We’re simply “addicts” or we’re too emotional or we’re trying hard to cope or we’re lazy or we’re rebellious.
This work of Eating Peace is for me about evolving. It’s about watching, wondering, and becoming the one who is in balance and at home with oneself.
Quite some time ago, a friend suggested to me that the dawning awareness and the end of compulsive eating behavior that I’m so passionate about studying, is like the journey of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
I’ve been thinking about this as I prepare for the new group who will travel together soon in the Eating Peace Immersion program.
Dorothy lives in black-and-white (not color) as an orphan on a farm in Kansas and a tornado comes along (disordered eating, craving, desire) and sweeps her away to another country full of sparkles and learning and frightening encounters and flying monkeys.
Through her journey she’s understanding the depths of her nature, including compulsion.
So today, I wanted to share a very key belief that you may have running, that’s really important to question:
If you’re interested in learning more about this immersion journey we’re about to take together, where a group will travel online, live to share in accessing peace with food, visit this page here.
Love to have you join me. Registration closes at Noon Pacific Time on Tuesday, November 14th.
I Feel An Indescribable Peace
“What’s been happening for me since the EPP course ended is that my inner mentor has been coming forward more and is now ready to be fully in charge. I’ve realized that the compassionate advisor is my own inner mentor and she’s the one that shows up during the work for “who would you be without the thought”. It’s been powerful for me to see that this is ME and not an external character….I am a mentor to so many so of course my inner mentor is key to deepening my eating peace process. It’s so clear now. I feel an indescribable peace.” ~ Participant 2017-2018
Whenever we feel uncomfortable feelings, and we hate feeling them, the process of addiction actually works.
Kind of.
We feel very upset because of some contact with reality, with people, with difficult situations. We FEEL triggered, upset, troubled, and we want to calm down.
So, we eat, drink, spend, escape. We change the channel. We don’t feel bad anymore, we don’t feel guilty anymore. For about five minutes. Or a few hours.
Then, the medicine of numbing offered by our behavior wears off, and we feel then feel horrible about ourselves and our eating (or other behavior we dislike). We think we deserve punishment!
When we feel awful about ourselves, we think violence, control and punishment will create change. It can force something to happen (but it never works in a permanent, abiding way of course).
Here are the steps to enter a more compassionate state, vs the mean ruler voice that often steals our peace:
1) Notice you are experiencing emotions. I am filled with feeling. It’s uncomfortable. I may even begin to panic about these feelings.
2) Interrupt the cycle. Instead of reaching for something to eat, let’s pause and slow down. Just for 60 seconds. Can you wait for 60 seconds? Can you handle these feelings, without doing anything? Can you relax, even though emotions are running?
3) If you actually eat or do something to help you cope with your feelings, you’ve spun into step 2 on the Sin-Guilt-Punishment Cycle. You feel horribly guilty and like you are a terrible person. But it’s not too late to once again interrupt the cycle and question your thinking.
You’re a bad person, you are wrong…is it true? Are you sure that’s true? Who would you be without this belief?
4) If you still feel bad, and you believe punishment will indeed resolve your discomfort with experiencing feelings like anxiety, depression, or anger which led to escaping those feelings….pause and interrupt at this phase if you can.
Notice the meanness of that voice, and what a dictator it is. “You deserve to be punished, now that you’ve gone and done it again.” Is that actually true? Could something else be going on? Could you be reaching for love, peace, calm, understanding?
Self-Compassion can interrupt the cycle in any place on the merry-go-round. Self-compassion is kindness to yourself.
Self-Compassion reminds us that we can handle feelings, and they won’t kill us.
You can handle this moment. You can handle this discomfort. You can pause, breathe, slow down, and notice feelings are a part of you, not all of you.
Can you imagine someone or something that is very compassionate, kind, loving, unconditionally accepting?
This could be your guide. Your Compassionate Advisor. Maybe it’s God, the Force, Love, Life, a tree somewhere, a Guide, an Angel, A Fairy Godmother.
If you find that you absolutely cannot seem to stop the merry-go-round cycle of addiction: a) Believing your feelings are a sin or crime, b) suppressing or escaping from your horror or discomfort, from your feelings (by eating or whatever else), c) punishing yourself for being a bad person….
….then find people you feel safe with to connect with who can help support you in your feelings, and not want to crush them with an addictive process.
Twelve step groups, therapy groups, spiritual groups, retreats, support groups offer immense value for helping us connect honestly, and breaking this cycle.
You can end eating your emotions, and discover eating peace.
“Addictions are always the effect of an unquestioned mind. The only true addiction to work with is the addiction to your thoughts. As you question those thoughts, that addiction ceases because you no longer believe those thoughts. And as those thoughts cease, as you cease to believe them, then the addictions in your life cease to be. It is a process. And there’s no choice; you believe what you think, or you question it.” ~ Byron Katie
If you’ve spent some time, perhaps years of your life, wanting that other thin body….
….or years of your life wanting this heavy body to go away….
….have you ever considered you might not want the thin body?
Have you ever thought you actually might like, in some inner corner of your being, the body you already have?
What’s so great about thinness? Are you sure it’s all that great? Have you ever heard of “bad” things happening to thin people, or around thin people?
Have you ever believed those thin people are in danger, or need to be extra careful (like not only with their diets, but with relationships of certain kinds, or something else)? Have you ever thought those with the perfect thin body are missing something, or left out?
Have you ever believed heavy people are happier for some specific reasons? Or safer? Or more comfortable in certain ways?
It can be really interesting to discover what you really think that underlies your thoughts and beliefs about body shapes that scare you, alarm you, worry you, disturb you in any way whatsoever.
Who would we be without these interesting stories?
“Without awareness of our unconscious practices, we have little chance of freeing ourselves from the suffering they cause. So, practicing being aware of where attention habitually goes and the suffering it causes and practicing finding the willingness to direct attention to the experience of life we want to be having are powerfully helpfulas we work out our own salvation diligently.” ~ Cheri Huber
So what is the hunger-fullness scale and why should we use it as a guide or a stepping stone to eating freedom?
Well for one thing, my favorite thing of all about this scale is that it’s really a felt sense within. Not another thing you have to read about and follow by studying a book.
This scale is something that’s felt in the body, with no absolute definition. It’s subjective.
It means you are the one in the driver’s seat…or really, your body is. Your mind and your “plans” are not in charge.
Your physical feeling sense of empty and full is the one in charge. Not your EMOTIONAL FEELINGS, either.
This contact with physical sensation has to include the part of you willing to slow down, check in with your inner sense of satiation, and honor it deeply.
In today’s video I answer a few questions I get about the Hunger-Fullness scale and talk about it a little more.
The Hunger-Fullness Scale can hold all diet plans, ways of eating (vegetarian, vegan, meat-eater, and any kind of format for eating, weight watchers or a diet if that’s where you are right now).
It can accompany any way of eating that eliminates some foods and adds in others. Always, the body and the sense of honoring it’s guidance leads the way.
You don’t have to be there instantly.
Just know about this scale of awareness, and practice.
You may have had your head, or counting, measuring, weighing and other methods of portioning food or following rules lead the way and be in charge for a very long time.
This is about seeing the freedom built into you as a human. This freedom and feeling gives you exactly what you need when it comes to boundaries and guidance with eating, if you’re willing to feel it.
And if you are not willing….you might ask yourself why not? What would override your hunger-fullness boundaries?
Whatever would override this scale is deeply worthy of exploring. It’s difficult to do at first, but oh so possible.
It’s so powerful, that turning towards it to look and understand whatever would override NOT EATING when you aren’t hungry and EATING when you are, can result in immense insight and awareness.
If you follow this hunger-fullness scale, you automatically return to the simplicity of eating when hungry, and stopping when full. No diet or control of any kind is necessary.
And as for inquiry…..this is very, very important. You have to know how to identify what takes you away from the natural process of the hunger-fullness scale within, and then question it.
If you’d like with guidance through the tool called The Work of Byron Katie for this process of inquiry, you might love the Seven Day Course for Dingalings. It’s helping people go through this profound practice one bite-sized amount at a time, for a week. Sign up for it here.
I’ve created a course just for brand new beginners to The Work called The Work for Dingalings (LOL).
It’s a Complete Idiots or The Work for Dummies Course where you’ll receive an email per day for a week. You’ll need 20-30 minutes per day to complete your homework.
But sometimes, it’s very difficult to find gratitude when it comes to our relationship with eating, food and our bodies.
These have caused so much strife, hell, stress, desperation, self-criticism.
How can we find gratitude for the weird diet foods we’ve eaten, or the ugly foods we’ve placed before us, or the sick feelings we’ve had when it comes to eating, or the disappointment about our weight, or worst of all, the compulsion to eat when not hungry?
This is NOT a “should”.
But it’s worth trying anyway. The power of appreciation is immense–and maybe more magnificent than you ever imagined.
Take a moment today, and think about the service this relating to food, eating food has been for you.
When I think about my truly whacky disordered eating, it almost seems nutty to consider that experience in my life with gratitude.
But I can find examples of feeling appreciation for the wayI I’ve eaten:
It led me to explore psychology, peace, relating to other people, learning about all relationships, and improving my communication
it gave me a way to be different from my family, to rebel dramatically, to find freedom from rigid rules about life
it gave me a big Left Turn in my own life–I dropped out, I worked on a ship, I went to therapy
it brought me to my knees and put me on a spiritual path of acceptance, including myself and my emotions
I love the very taste, texture, joy of emptying and filling up every single day–I love eating
it’s helped me learn how to support other people also suffering from the same craziness with food
Today, you can try to simply find a sense of gratitude, of appreciation, for something about food, eating, and your body.
Feel it.
Especially before eating. Practice “thank you” and see what happens.
EVEN if you think you’re overeating, binge-eating, doing it wrong.
Without our stories, we are not only able to eat and act clearly and fearlessly, we are also a friend and listener to ourselves, our own bodies, our fullness and our hunger. We are people living happy lives when it comes to eating. We are appreciation and gratitude that have become as natural as breath, and eating, itself.
Much love,
Grace
P.S. Eating Peace 101 is coming: a six session class on Thursday mornings 8:00-9:30 am PT starting July 26th and will meet every two weeks (every other week) until October 4th. $295. Everything will be recorded. To learn more, visit HERE.
P.P.S. Eating Peace Process, the immersion, will begin again in November 2018 and meet through April 2019. This is an in-depth program for those who are serious about transforming their relationship with food from the inside out. Stay tuned or learn more (not taking registrations yet) by visiting HERE.
Room in the half-day retreat Seattle Sunday 6/10 2-6 pm (that’s today). Last half-day in The Work before summer break. Join us here. Or write grace@workwithgrace.com for directions.
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If you want to be a part of a private, secret, free facebook group of people from all over the world who are interested in healing eating battles applying self-inquiry and The Work of Byron Katie (plus body-feeling awareness)….send me an individual email grace@workwithgrace.com or a facebook friend request, and I’ll add you.
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Have you ever run around cleaning everything in your house because someone texted they’ll be knocking on your door in five minutes (someone like your mother, perhaps)?
You have to make it perfect. You have to make it look right. They have to see you as organized, clean, tidy, a good hostess. You have to work. You have to do laundry. You have to clean the bathroom. You have to mow the lawn. You have to weed the garden.
You have to.
If you don’t finish it…if you don’t at least put in a very good effort and get MOST of the job done (see list in head) then you’re a failure.
Is that true?
“Have to” is a push, a demand, a command, an order. And what do we do with someone who is extremely controlling and bossy?
We rebel, or ditch them.
And if WE are the dictator….then you may very well EAT.
Who wouldn’t want to escape from that voice?
Who would you be without that thought you HAVE TO?
Perhaps a normal, mediocre, addiction-free, relaxed person enjoying this moment in life…not trying to get to the moment when everything’s done and clean and the list is checked off.
Instead, just here now. Unfinished. But absolutely fine, just as we are. Ahhh……
We all know the way we think is influenced by the reality we noticed happening around us, often from an early age.
Even if it’s in the long-ago past, we remember. Sometimes it’s in the file cabinet in our mind without even being super conscious of it, and locked away with a key.
What does this have to do with eating?
Well just like any behavior, many ways we’re influenced appear to start really early in our lives, as we experience the world.
We absorb what’s appearing around us, often without question.
It just becomes “this is the way it is.”
I certainly had this when it came to food and eating, and body image. Thoughts and beliefs appeared in my consciousness that I heard, observed, picked up from those around me: mom, dad, grandparents, peers.
So what did your mother, your father, or other important adults believed about food, body image or eating when you were a kid?
What was your dinner time like? What was happening at the dinner eating event? Who was talking, who was eating, who was cooking? What were people feeling?
Remember well, and notice the beliefs, the ideas, the concepts present around food and the emotional life of your experience in that moment.
Sometimes the awareness of what happened around eating in your earliest memories brings unexpected clarity.
Why do this exercise?
Because when we identify the thinking, the mindset, the characters, the feelings that were pouring out around that typical eating event….we can then inquire more deeply into what’s really true for us now.
We can actually change the foundation we’ve built some of our behaviors on, by turning the way we’re seeing around.
It’s such a huge relief.
And it’s important work. You have to know what you think in order to dissolve it, right?
Try this exercise this week. Take a look at what you came to know, or be aware of in your early life with eating.
The most important place to begin?
Mother.
You were nurtured by your mother’s body from the very start, in the simple process of becoming human.
When we identify our thoughts about beliefs about mothering, our unique experiences of mother, we can begin our self-inquiry.
Self-inquiry leads to freedom, in every way.
“I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.” ~ Byron Katie
I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I ate, I fretted, I over-exercised, I under and over-ate, I binged, I dieted, I hated my looks.
So let’s see what these suffering-inducing thoughts are.
Sometimes, there’s great fear put forth about why the rules are in place: Don’t go there! Watch out! Be careful! Never, ever, ever go down that street! Worry about this! Be afraid, very afraid!
This is the attitude I heard, and began to adopt starting pretty young (childhood): Be afraid. Be very afraid of food. Certain types of food are bad and evil. Sugar, candy, bit-o-honey, bread, chicken skin.
People are easily susceptible to overeating, gaining weight, being fat, being ugly, being rejected, appearing as weak.
WATCH OUT.
You must be very, very, very careful NEVER to go down that road, and control yourself…..lest you fall into rejection and have a black mark on your soul.
Yikes.
But I’m not kidding.
In this mindset, we get fixated on needing to appear successful and show up beautiful and forever eat the “right” and “good” foods.
The comparison becomes intense. It’s vital I look a certain way, in order to be safe and connected and seen as a good citizen, good family member, good daughter.
The problem is, it’s a fairy tale, and no way to live when it comes to food and eating, if you want to enjoy yourself.
It’s so important to question this bitter and frightening story that food is a dangerous mine field, and put it to rest.
You can regain your sense of inner peace and personal authority.
Who would you be without the belief that some foods are against the law, you need willpower, you have to control what you eat, or there’s something horrifying about eating? What if there was no Law Book or Bible of Eating and dieting?
What I discovered, is as I remained calm and questioned what I most feared about eating, about food, and about life outside of food and eating….I found laughter, curiosity, peace, and power (in a good way).
Without our stories about food, eating, emotions and ourselves and our potential (to fail, especially) we find eating peace.
There’s very mild fear, exciting fear (amusement park fear) and there’s horrifying fear.
Some of us are fans of the first type of fear while others are not, but none of us really enjoy the second type of fear, when the volume is turned up to a ten on the emotional level.
I used to be so against fear, I’d do anything to set the world up so I wouldn’t feel it. Including not leave my house.
The problem is, something wise within knows you can’t ever be guaranteed to be “safe” if you define safety as not feeling strong emotions, not feeling threatened, and not every getting sick, hurt, or dying.
All those things will happen. They mostly already have.
And why is fear so very important to study when it comes to our strange or off-balance eating behavior?
Because it’s present more often than we realize when we eat in ways that don’t feel peaceful. Fear, in many forms. It could be anxiety, worry, upset, nerves, discomfort–large or small.
It arises out of our fearful thoughts about eating (and really about life).
Fear-inducing thoughts go like this:
I’ll never get to eat this again
I might be hungry later
I’ll miss out on something pleasurable
I’m too fat
Stopping is sad, disappointing
I don’t want to think about “x” and I will think about it if I stop eating
Thinness isn’t safe
The world is a dangerous place
people can hurt me
I need more sweetness in my life–this moment is sour
there’s no easy way to find rest
I hate that there’s no guaranteed safety
I have to store for a “rainy day” (bad things happening)
I am not safe
If I stop eating, I’ll have to do things I don’t want to do
I need to grab it while I can–pleasure is scarce
These are thoughts distilled down to basic commentary in the mind we have going about food, eating and our bodies.
And they don’t feel good.
But here’s the good news: they’re not even true.
That’s why they’re creating FEAR in the first place!
Step One: look and see the fear. Become aware of how your thinking is creating a sensation or experience, no matter how small and fleeting, of fear.
When we question our thinking, we can see other ways of thinking and being with food that aren’t threatening.
