We’ve all said to ourselves: I’m never going to do that again. We make resolutions. We vow. We promise.
I’m never going to smoke again. I’m never going to binge again. I’m never going to drink again. I’m never going to eat “x” again.
Then the following week (or okay, a few hours later) we’re doing it. Again.
Someone asked me recently how you could ever make a single promise and keep it?
While you can never know the future, it made me reflect on when I’ve known a promise was keep-able.
What an interesting question, because a positive, supportive and enduring “promise” is very different than a promise made out of fear, anxiety, desperation or rage.
It’s not a “diet” promise. It’s not a violent promise. It’s not a promise that feels forceful and like imprisonment.
It’s important to give foundation and support to a deep commitment and do it with a mind that’s clear, and a heart that’s understanding.
There’s a basic thought you may not have questioned for many years: someone needs to tell me what to eat, and when.
This arises out of deep self-doubt about what, when, and how we’re eating.
I had this thought regularly when I binge-ate and when I starved and categorized foods into “good” or “bad” foods.
But it was a stressful thought. It kept things on edge. Never trusting what I chose or trusting I was able to stop when full, eat when hungry.
Trouble is, when I felt doubt about knowing how to eat, I dismissed my own sense of hunger or fullness. I completely ignored by own body sensors, my own feeling about what and when to eat.
Who would you be without this very stressful story that you don’t know when or how to eat?
I found, far more confident.
Able to be anywhere, with anyone, at any level of hunger, without getting scared or judging myself.
Without this belief that you don’t know how to do it right, you can become your own very kind caretaker, and very wise caretaker.
One of the most painful experiences I had in my early days of trying to find peace with eating (and with life) was my efforts to control the chaos.
I attempted to control my food, my exercise, my cravings, my thoughts, my emotions, and my experiences.
I had recognized the insanity of my thoughts and my eating, so one of my first solutions was to apply MORE force, control and rigidity to my behavior and plans with food. Food was frightening and should be kept at bay.
This is not uncommon. It’s the mindset where “dieting” comes from. Activate willpower, discipline and control, and you’ll find peace.
The problem was, I was so at war internally….I was full of anxiety, even when I no longer binge-ate for a couple of years.
One day, I cracked. I ate for hours, like a wild rebellion cut loose like a geyser. I felt so awful, I wanted to die.
This is when I decided there has to be another way besides dieting or controlling what I’m eating. Because even though I had been “abstinent” from binge-eating for a couple of years, I was miserable.
In pursuit of knowledge,
every day something is added.
In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.
When nothing is done,
nothing is left undone. True mastery can be gained
The debate about following food and eating plans or not following a plan is strong.
Some say if you’ve been a compulsive overeater, you’ll always be one. You can’t take “one bite” kinda like an alcoholic can’t take one drink.
So you need to follow a plan that’s given to you by someone else. Because left to your own devices, you’re a mess and you’ll screw it up. You need boundaries given to you.
Others notice greater anxiety WITH a food plan. They feel boxed in, rebellious, or sad, and like they’re missing an important journey in restoring a sense of self-trust.
I think there are two key questions you might contemplate around your relationship with eating;
1) What’s your ultimate goal, feeling, purpose in balancing your relationship with eating? Is your goal to be thin or at a certain weight? Do you want to quit binge-eating, quit dieting, and stop any sort of eating that’s whacky or unnatural? Or do you want inner peace, beyond this predicament of eating or even thinking about food or your weight?
2) What is the most kind and gentle thing you can do for yourself right now in your relationship with food, eating or your body? This may seem like an obvious or trick question (doesn’t anyone want kindness?)…but it’s not.
In the past, I thought change occurred through control or discipline, not love. Without rules telling me what was “good” I felt really lost because my self-esteem was shot to hell. If this is the case for you, it’s OK to have an eating and food plan that you follow for awhile.
Very early on in my wonderings about eating, weight, and food….I knew I wanted to understand ultimately why I was doing what I did.
I wanted to address the compulsion at the root.
I knew I wasn’t born with something missing. I was born a full human being, capable of eating normally. I could feel this was true. I knew something was going on that led me to eat wildly, then starve myself, then stuff myself again, then look for diets endlessly.
It wasn’t really about food.
But since this is a healing process, that takes time, there may be some ways you can have your hand held before walking on alone.
Under compulsive eating or an urge to engage in any addictive process, if you want to call it that, is something that’s upset, troubled, unresolved, off-balance.
Feelings. Beliefs. Memories. Mind. Thinking.
To get to the bottom of it, you’ll have to deal with messy, chaotic things like emotions. You may have to refuse to keep eating when you aren’t hungry and wonder why it feels so hard.
You may have to see how you look at the world, and life, at a very deep core level….
….your attitude towards being here on planet earth….
Thank you all of you who answered the survey questions I sent last week. So, so much.
Now, we’re taking it a level deeper. Another 4 questions.
Even if you’ve never answered a survey, or filled out anything I’ve sent before, I’d love to read your answers to these four questions.
I find communicating and hearing and reading what you deeply have to say about your experience as an eater….can clarify for me and ultimately for all of us our needs, our emotions, our experiences we’re wondering about and wanting to understand when it comes to eating.
Answer the questions here (and yes, if you answered the first survey, this is a new one and I’d love your answers to these questions, too–thank you):
Communicating has a strong energy in it. It’s wondering with words out loud, or in writing. Making contact. Being honest. Telling the truth.
Speaking and clarifying, and telling the truth about our experiences and our perspectives–even if they aren’t necessarily “True” for all time–is so powerful.
Accessing strength, clarity, or power in a really solid, energetic, sharp, beautiful way is sometimes what is called for as we seek peace with eating and compulsive behavior.
The feeling of powerlessness is so harsh and difficult. Sometimes when we feel like there’s no power anywhere in sight, we feel completely resigned and in prison with this eating thing. No way out.
But there is a way out.
We can say “No more!”
We can pause, and not hit the drive-through fast food places, or eat a whole bag of something. We can stop.
There is another way.
Today, I’m sharing a simple way to access power. You can find your own touchstone or inner picture or word or name that helps you notice power.
This is the good kind of power, where you stand up for what feels true for you. Where you can listen, be, and hold your love and integrity clearly.
One of the greatest contributors to off-balance food, eating and hating your body is fear.
Not only does everyone feel fear at some points in life, but we also feel afraid of fear!
At least that was the case for me. I felt afraid, and I also felt afraid of feeling afraid.
Good heavens, that’s a hard orientation to have towards fear. I had to run, hide and duck constantly!!
The way I did that of course, was to eat. Secretly, quickly, sneakily. I didn’t eat out in the open (if I did, I was very, very careful).
But my fear itself caused a huge resistance to looking at fears, whether I felt terrified or even only a little nervous.
I wanted to either put my head in the ground like an ostrich and try not to think fearful thoughts OR I wanted to run, eat frantically, and isolate.
I really did not feel anyone would ever understand me or care about me if they really knew me and my fears.
When I felt listened to, accepted and loved anyway, that’s when I began to feel more free with food and eating and my body image. I no longer felt worried about being rejected and cut off, or that love would be withheld from me.
What do you feel afraid of?
I’m reading and listening here.
I’ve created an anonymous survey where you can feel comfortable answering questions around fears and dreams, and inner conflicts. It means so much for me to read what you share.
Your answers contribute to all of us accessing the peace we all crave so deeply, especially around compulsive eating behavior that seems so persistent and crazy and disappointing.
To answer the questions, click HERE. Very grateful for your honesty and sharing.
My eating was war-like because my thinking was war-like and oppositional and fearful, and so were my feelings.
Eating was grounding, a way to push the pause button. You have to slow down to chew and swallow, and enter a world of doing something for apparently “no reason”.
When I was eating, I wasn’t doing something “good” or getting tasks done from my endless to-do list, or saving the world, or writing a book, or even being good.
I was simply focusing and taking in for myself alone, and processing my troubled thoughts in a way (although, not permanently).
So instead of feeling so upset and ashamed at how rotten and selfish I was, and entering the self-criticism mode about me….
….I connected with others so that I could talk, share, express, and say what I was troubled about. And oh boy was I troubled.
I had deeply stressful thoughts about careers, jobs, bosses, work, money, survival, pain, fear of hurt, family, relationships, mother, father, sisters, competition, being left out, feeling muted.
What brought me the greatest freedom, was beginning to look at each of these experiences of suffering in my past.
Eating peace is born from thinking peace.
The most simple, lazer-sharp way to do it that I’ve found is with The Work of Byron Katie.
Find one troubling experience, and begin today. It can feel frightening, but it’s better than pushing it down with food, I can guarantee it.
P.S. Four day Mental Spring Cleaning Retreat. We’ll be clearly identifying what’s felt so painful in our experience, and with the power of The Work of Byron Katie and our slowing down, we’ll discover answers that were waiting inside us the whole time. For more information visit HERE.
When it comes to compulsive behavior, our thoughts can get very extreme.
If this doesn’t end now (or very very soon) I will kill myself, I will go crazy, I can’t stand it, I can’t take it anymore.
These thoughts are horrifying or infuriating, and very painful.
I’ve thought them all.
From eating everything in sight, driving my car through a city through fast-food restaurants OR starving myself all day long OR pushing hard in exercise OR finding a new diet to follow….
….there was a constant effort to “solve” the problem of what was happening now.
Now was not good! (Look at this eating, look at this body, after all–see my proof?)
Somewhere else would definitely be better. I hate what is.
But can you absolutely know that’s true?
Perhaps life is unfolding at the perfect pace necessary for your own healing. Perhaps there is more to look at and know, and something occurring that is not on YOUR timeline.
Could it be OK that you haven’t healed before this moment now?
Today I share about this strange process of being willing for things to take the time they take, including healing from addictive or compulsive eating. (And it doesn’t mean you can’t stop eating today. You can.)
P.S. Four day Mental Spring Cleaning Retreat. We’ll be clearly identifying what’s felt so painful in our experience, and with the power of The Work of Byron Katie and our slowing down, we’ll discover answers that were waiting inside us the whole time. For more information visit HERE.
One area I’ve noticed over the years of working with those of us with eating woes is one particular type of eater.
An eater with such a deep broken heart about other people’s suffering…
…that they unconsciously move to help those in need almost as a compulsion all in itself. Like they can’t help it.
Often, they are nurses, teachers, healers, holistic practitioners, counselors and therapists, maybe moms.
Now, helping others is a beautiful act. But often, when we’ve got this underlying belief running about needing them desperately to be OK….our efforts to help them are not really helpful.
When we’re worried about other people we feel the weight of the world on our shoulders, literally. It’s all over us.
We seem images of people close to us, and the suffering of humanity, and feel the pain of it all.
The belief “I need to help other people” can be very, very stressful.
People feel guilty about questioning it, like it will mean they will never help others, and they’ll be selfish, isolated, uncaring people.
Can you really know that’s true, that you’ll forget about others, if you question that you need to help them?
“Being soothed and oral intake are closely associated in the human mind…Food becomes a substitute for nourishment. Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity and love. ” ~ Gabor Mate, MD
One of these things is not like the others. What if we didn’t go to war with it, but relaxed beyond the right vs wrong battle?
Jalaluddin Rumi, the famous Sufi Persian philosopher who lived 1207-1273 had a beautiful quote most of us find very familiar:
Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. ~ Rumi
When I was a young woman, my ideas about food, eating, exercising and being in a body which needed to eat were filled with ideas about right-doing and wrong-doing.
I’m not sure there was one single neutral stand in the entire process of living my life within these confounds. Everything was labeled “good” or “bad”.
Driving around hunting for sweet sugary foods obsessively? Wrong. Evil. Bad.
If anyone saw me…shame and embarrassment forever.
Running 5 miles in the morning at dawn, followed by herbal tea and all raw food? Right. Holy. Good.
I could list for you, at the time, the tick marks I’d give each and every food in the world that was “bad” along with all the foods that were good.
Being quite full was also bad, and starving or feeling empty was good.
I never stopped to question any of these rules and regulations. All I tried to do was conform, and follow them.
Until I began to explore more deeply what my condition might mean, what my behavior might be longing for, or saying to me.
I tried an experiment you’ll find very surprising, that changed my entire approach to the Good/Bad wars of food. I “allowed” myself to eat something I previously considered “evil”.
It helped me go beyond the battle, and step into the field that Rumi spoke of so long ago….someplace peaceful, clear and joyful, without debate.
