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Category: thoughts that drive eating

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Do you eat because you’re bored?

In the Eating Peace Experience, I share three troubling perspectives about life that appear to trigger compulsive patterns.
I know that sounds crazy simplistic.
Just three?
When we’ve done this compulsive thing over and over for years, and it seems random, chaotic, upsetting, emotional.
It seems complicated!
But how helpful it can be to direct our attention to these points where we get thrown off balance by our thinking and our uncomfortable feelings and notice how we’re disturbed so often by the same things.
These three areas are quite large, big umbrellas of “thought” that show up and cause havoc in behavior when we don’t understand, when we’re upset.
What makes us eat (when it’s not hunger):
  • Feeling fear, feeling threatened (life is too much)
  • Feeling powerless (victimized, small, despairing, resigned)
  • Feeling bored and empty (life is not enough)
Powerless. Afraid. Empty.
I’ve heard a lot of people sharing lately about feeling stuck at home, not having a normal routine, being in the same four walls all day.
Bored.
The third concept above.
Usually when we’re bored, we have fleeting images of what would be more entertaining.
NOT this moment.
This moment is not good enough, fun enough, full enough.
Let’s eat something interesting. That’s at least more pleasant.
What if we studied what was happening in this boring moment…..where entertainment, contact with people, busy-ness, or pleasure appears to be more appealing?
How curious we might become with the mind as it talks away about how boring everything is.
Noticing something is here besides empty space and empty moment.
Could it be more satisfying than we *think*?
This moment is so boring and empty....let's eat something
This moment is so boring and empty….let’s eat something
The Eating Peace Experience is all about using The Work of Byron Katie, a powerful inquiry process, to identify and question our deep-seated beliefs about food, taking in this substance called food, body weight, thin, fat, troubling feelings, soothing, pleasure, urgency, grabbing.
We’re working with the way the mind tends to over-think and over-whelm our experience of life with dread, emptiness, anxiety or wanting.
Being in Eating Peace, we study compulsion and we also study peace.
We’re peace students.
We’ve already probably been peace students–or peace hunters–for a long time, and wondered how the heck to find it?!
Can you imagine being so interested in the compulsive urge that we see what it really is? No special medicine required?
The only requirement for joining Eating Peace is the desire to understand our repetitive impulses for arguing, defending against, debating with the present moment (or really, our thoughts about the present moment).
Especially when it involves food.
Wow, when I think of my old relationship with food, it was brutal.
Never peaceful, ever.
The way I related to the world and food was so fearful, worrisome and contentious.
I felt so disappointed. I tried so many things to find peace.
Eating Peace is a program for people with off-balance thinking, feeling, eating patterns….like the kind I once had.
We’re exploring how our our beliefs about feelings, eating, bodies and other people throws us out of balance and into the past or future. Into fear and neediness.
Our great question for the five months ahead, that we all explore together:
Who are we without our stories about eating, food, having a body, relating, taking in, absorbing, digesting the experience of life?
Love to have you join us, if the timing is right.
We’re learning to love what is.
Register for Eating Peace Experience HERE.
Much love,
Grace
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Eating Peace Webinar: Five Belief Blunders Even Smart Therapists Make

Eating Peace. It seems so hard to find.

We’ve heard about changing our mindset and ending our bad habits, including our troubling “thinking” habits. We’ve read the books about transforming negative behavior, or quitting an addiction. We’ve studied the compulsion problem…sometimes for years.

And yet, something persists that keeps us overeating, binge-eating, under-eating, starting another diet, gaining weight, losing weight, trying harder, redoubling our efforts at sticking to a plan, graze eating, eating when bored, eating carrots to try not to eat ice cream. We’ve been told weighing and measuring every bite is the best idea since we can’t be trusted. We’ve thought we should just accept ourselves as fat (there’s a difference between acceptance and resignation though).

We’ve noticed the imbalance and lack of peace. And what hurts most of all, is the self-hatred and self-criticism. Shouldn’t we know better, by now?

Perhaps we have great knowledge of compulsive eating and the dynamics of how it’s created, but it seems even knowledge and learning isn’t the ultimate answer. We really just want peace.

Good news. Eating Peace is possible for anyone.

I know this because I’ve worked with both myself, and the many people who discover, through self-inquiry, an unshakable peace they couldn’t see before.

Why couldn’t we see it? Because of all the beliefs, mental activity, and uncomfortable feelings and impulses coursing through our systems.

It really helps to know what thoughts and stories to question that drive off-balance eating.

Often, people seek eating peace with a very unpleasant feeling of despair, rage, disappointment or worry. They often say “I don’t know what I’m thinking or believing that makes me eat! It feels like I’m a walking zombie gobbling everything in sight, in a trance, under a spell–and I can’t stop trying to stop myself, and keep eating at the same time!”

It’s all so confusing.

And then….to add more fuel to the fire: the pandemic.

Isolation, a fridge that’s just over there a few steps away, deep worry about the future.

So I’m offering a complimentary webinar, before I begin the Eating Peace Experience immersion program this year, where I’ll share five belief blunders–I think of them as spells because that’s what it actually feels like for so many.

We’re under the spell of our stressful, troubled thinking. Our eating reflects it. Stressful thinking, stressful eating. Compulsive worrying, compulsive eating.

We can question the beliefs that drive the eating, and un-learn our habits.

What I find over and over is when we identify and question the false or mistaken beliefs about ourselves and about eating, food, body and emotions, our thinking actually shifts. When our thinking shifts, so does our behavior. It naturally becomes more balanced and sane. Our weight becomes more balanced.

Change happens from the inside out, not the outside in. No diet, control, or will is needed. No special gym training, counting or weighing and measuring meals, or special program of eating. We become free.

Join me in learning five belief blunders to eating peace. It’s my joy to share this with anyone who is attracted to this work. It has changed my entire life. I used to be haunted with thoughts of food, eating, perfectionism, angst, anxiety and worries about rejection. I used to feel very separate. That is no longer the case. It’s been a wonderful process, and it continues every day. There is no more binge-eating, binge-thinking, or binge-worrying about food.

At the end of the webinar, I’ll stay for a live Q&A where you can ask me anything about eating, freedom, peace and ending any and all eating struggles.

Please register and choose the day you will be attending this 90 minute workshop:
*Tuesday, October 6th, 2020 11am PT/ 2pm ET/ 8pm Europe
*Weds, October 7th, 2020 10:30am PT/ 1:30pm ET/ 7:30pm Europe
*Thurs, October 8th, 2020 11:00am PT/ 2pm ET/ 8pm Europe

Sign up for the free webinar HERE.

Much love, Grace

P.S. This webinar is offered before beginning the immersion program, and can assist in helping answer your questions if you have them (I’ll answer at the very end).

Learn more about the full program Eating Peace Experience HERE.

Much love,
Grace

 

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The dis-ease of pandemic thinking, pandemic eating…and how to stop

For decades (centuries?) humans have wondered and studied the answer to the question: where does eating stress begin and how do we stop it?
Pan-Demic means literally “pan” which is all-world, every-thing, every-where, across-all-things. “Demic” or dem means people.
All People. Everywhere.
Affected by a disease.
Several weeks ago, I received a list of research done during this pandemic around those suffering from disordered eating, and how much off-balance eating behaviors have spiked. In some, 70% worse than usual. For some, a return of old behavior with eating.
Although pandemic means a disease affecting human bodies in the physical world, it seems thoughts, too, can feel dis-eased and all-encompassing. Thoughts about sickness, isolation, worry, weight, self, the future. They become overwhelming.
Compulsion is especially like that.
It feels like we’ve been enchanted like in a fairy tale, or taken over like a zombie. Like we have no choice but to do our eating thing.
Must eat it. Now. Can’t stop. Chew, chew, chew, gobble. Hunt for next item. Get it while you can. Pretty soon we need to deal with this damage, but for now hurry and eat.
 
The mind is running wildly, careening around like a terrified animal almost, when on a binge.
Graze eating without being able to stop getting up and getting more, with pauses in between, is like a constant underlying anxiety running.
Then, the same mind full of frantic thoughts also starts to attack you.
Why did you just eat that? Can’t you remember the diet? What’s wrong with you, you stupid idiot?
 
The stream of thinking that feels so global and pandemic doesn’t care what the target of its commentary is….it is frantic, furious, terrified, angry, frustrated, stuck and it thinks frantic, furious, terrified, angry, frustrated, stuck thoughts.
More and more and more of them.
Eventually for this eating episode, you’re exhausted and you quit eating and fall into bed, or do your purging behaviors, and vow to yourself to quit this for the thousandth time.
So what is going on with this chaotic eating?
Something seems dreadfully wrong.
But what if what you were doing was trying to make something right?
 
What if a binge episode, or overeating, graze eating, moody eating, lonely eating was you trying to feel better, or prevent feeling worse?
As Byron Katie says; the alcohol, the drug, the ice cream, the buying spree are doing their job.
If we looked with compassion at this job the mind insists on giving these behaviors or substances, we simply see a misdirected, frightened mindset.
The pair of glasses we have on is dark, scratched, distorted, dis-eased. It’s pandemic. It feels like it becomes everything!
We perceive a pandemic–the mind is producing thoughts that all have the color of worry, fret, self-criticism, desperation, hunger, danger.
So what’s going on if my thinking is so freaked out?
Let’s just notice.
I’m out of touch with my body’s fullness or emptiness. Something else seems more important. Who cares about food being fuel!
I’m thinking something happening is a critical matter, and it’s disturbing as hell.
The thing is, the minute I say “this is not good” as I gaze upon the weight of my body, or those other people who might be looking at me, or my emotions, or the dangers of being alive….
….I naturally want to get back to “this IS good”.
Eating feels good. For a few bites at least. So I eat.
Of course, sooooo disappointing when the joy of the first bites fade so quickly.
Byron Katie suggests to see what you were thinking before you thought about eating off-balance, and investigate it, question it.
Could it be simply “I don’t like it! It’s scary!” is the thought before any eating (or compulsion) happens?
Even beginning to wonder about this can lead to fascinating awareness.
“I don’t like it! Urgent! Urgent!
“I have to do something about the thing I don’t like!”
Is it true?
Are you sure?
How do you react when you believe you don’t like it, and you have to do something about this thing you don’t like?
Are you sure you’re clear about what you do and do not like?
(I sure wasn’t–it seemed the food was good, but not really what I wanted. There just wasn’t any peace. I thought I loved to eat, but I also hated it).
Who would you be WITHOUT the belief you don’t like something, and you need to do something about the thing you don’t like?
WHAT?!!
Not do anything about it?
But.
Don’t I have to watch what I eat, follow the diet plan, worry, forecast the future, regret the past, weigh myself to check to see if I’m doing it right or wrong, suffer, use willpower, make myself conform?
I don’t have to do anything?
Hmmm. What an amazing idea. Just notice.
Turning the thought around: I’m OK with it (the thing I thought I hated). 
Could this be just as true?
Am I breathing? Am I still alive? Did I survive it?
Yes.
Turning the thought around again: I don’t like my thinking. Or, only my thinking doesn’t like “it” (anything we’re directing negative attention to). 
The inner me, the center of myself, the “I”, the witness, the life force I’m a part of, the mysterious, God, source….it is already OK with everything. Not against any feeling, person, incident, place, experience.
Mental energy can feel pandemic, encompassing all of what we are, fueling our behavior.
But it is not All of Us. It is not constant (even if it’s appeared very repetitive). It is not everything we are.
There is something here, without thought, beyond thought.
As Van Morrison says “let’s go into the mystery”. 
There, we are beyond compulsion, restriction, over-consumption, worrying, frantic eating, right vs wrong.
Touching base with that….we are free right now.
If you’re interested in the spiritual, spirited, mysterious journey of eating and learning to hold the experience as a messenger instead of an enemy, then we’re starting on Wednesdays this coming week.
June 24-August 12, 2020 9am-10:30am Pacific Time.
Read more about the Eating Peace Basics course and sign up here.
Let’s access the pan-demic of peace and turn our compulsions around.
If you want to calmly, gently, lovingly relax into peace with eating, food and body weight, it all begins in the mind and heart.
Not against it, but open to it. Welcoming it. In favor of it. Allowing it. Approving of it.
“If you act from fear, there’s no way you can receive love, because you’re trapped in a thought about what you have to do for love….but once you question your thoughts, you discover that you don’t have to do anything for love. It was all an innocent misunderstanding.” ~ Byron Katie in I Need Your Love, Is That True?
How do we stop stress eating? Question our thinking. Open to rest, instead of fear. Notice the peace here, now.
It may not be as “hard” as you think.
Much love,
Grace
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A key turning point in my healing journey of eating peace

Eating Peace Basics 101 Online Live Course will run June 24th – August 12th with live Wednesday calls (all recorded) from 9am-10:30am Pacific Time (which is Noon ET or 6pm Europe).
In this course I’ll share 8 key foundational stories–one every week–that are key to investigating so we can dissolve the eating wars we’ve been fighting.
To identify our thinking inside these common stories, and then question the beliefs running for us, is such a huge relief. Read more about the course here.
Also it feels important and worth mentioning that I’m offering an online retreat starting tomorrow at 4:30pm PT to question the beliefs that cause suffering. We’ll be unraveling our painful thinking using The Work of Byron Katie from June 2-7.
While this retreat is not specifically for eating issues, this work is one of the most valuable tools I use to dissolve compulsive behavior.
If you’ve been here awhile reading Eating Peace notes, you know this already. The Work is the way out of the mind and into our freedom with food, with bodies, with everything.
I’ll be sharing the facilitation of this retreat in The Work with the dear and skilled Tom Compton. To read the schedule and options visit here. If you attend only mornings or only evenings, we welcome you for half-time IF you have some experience with The Work.
*************************
Someone asked me recently to share one of my turning points in healing my crazed eating.
There are several key moments when something shifted from that moment forward (all unplanned, but powerful parts of my journey) and these turning points all are related to stories I discovered were false.
Eight of these stories are actually ones I am including in Eating Peace Basics 101.
But one of these stories is a break-down of my beliefs about being honest about what was happening on the inside of me.
It was about how I perceived connection with other people: dangerous, risky, frightened of their rejection, frightened of their judgment.
I didn’t want to be abandoned or rejected, and I did everything to make sure to prevent those things from happening.
Trouble is, I constantly rejected and abandoned myself, and in my focus on avoiding these experiences, the dark cloud of them all floated around me all the time.
I ate, purged, I starved myself, I freaked out about eating and focused on food incessantly.
Here’s what happened. It wasn’t pretty. But reality was much friendlier–a thousand times friendlier–than my thoughts about it:

If you feel isolated the way I did, you may find connection in Online Retreat with me and Tom C, or the Eating Peace Basics course coming up. I’d be honored to have you in either one. It’s my heart’s joy to share the peace with others and it keeps me on my own journey of waking up to What Is.
Much love,
Grace
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The suffering of “I won’t have enough”

In these strange times when a lot is happening in the world in extra intense ways, you may notice that thoughts you’ve had that feel stressful (or OK, terrifying) are even bigger and more pronounced.

I’ve been working with people all week doing The Work who report that some situation or relationship they previously had found insight on…..is BACK.

Kinda like those horror movies.

Ugh.

Arguing too much, feeling too much, eating too much, spending too much, worrying too much. Seeing images of a difficult or catastrophic or torturous future.

An excruciating belief can be this little ditty (a ditty is a little song, by the way…a little song or song snippet that keeps repeating in your head that you can’t stop hearing, can’t stop singing).

Maybe it feels like a full symphony orchestral piece. With strings, horns and percussion sections.

I won’t have enough.

To hold this belief, I notice I need to have experienced not-enough-ness, heard about other people not having enough, been terrified of Not Enough in the past.

I need to believe in this thing called Not Enough and that it means something terrible.

Like suffering, rejection, abandonment, pain, or death.

Who are we when we believe there isn’t enough, or won’t be later?

Freaking out. Worried. Planning incessantly. Busy. Sitting in our quiet little homes in silence, imagining a torturous future.

So who would we be without our story?

Much love,

Grace

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I have to do it right, not wrong…..I HAVE TO worry about this (eating, weight, conditions).

My right thumb was hurt (you get to see in this video–just the bandaids, don’t worry).
I just can barely type.
But I made you a video on a powerful topic, called WORRYING.
The mind will say “you need to worry about this!” (food, eating, meals, plans, body image, weight, size, shape, feelings, conditions….and much much more).
You might think “Well, duh. Of course I have to worry. Are you kidding me?”
Is that actually true though?
Are you sure you need to worry?
What if you did NOT believe this thought?
Wow.

Much love,

Grace

 

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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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Can you relax in non-diet mentality while still eliminating certain foods? How?!

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.

 

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When you binge after a long period of binge-free eating

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.

Much love,

Grace