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Tag: The Work of Byron Katie

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l with eating, moving my body in a balanced way….But. I want to be thinner.

The orientation to dieting and getting to the right weight is so stressful. More stressful than we sometimes ever realize.

For me, going on a diet and wishing I was thinner set me up for major and massive obsessing about food.

If we want the body to balance out in its own way, gently, we need to allow it to follow the peaceful thinking, peaceful behaviors….in its own time.

Like a little boat sailing across the ocean makes a small change in its navigation, shifting a tiny bit to the left or right can make a bigger change than we ever imagine in the future.

Meanwhile, the stressful belief: I know what weight I SHOULD be. This number I’m reading today is the wrong number.

Is it true? Can you absolutely know it’s true?

Hmmm. It seems like it would be really fantastic if I were that “ideal” number.

But who said so?

How do you react when you believe your weight is wrong today? When the number should be another number?

Wow, horrible. I put my life on hold waiting for the future when my body is “right” weighing. I go nuts on my strategies for eating and food.

I think about food all the time.

So who would you be without this story: “I know what my weight should be!”??

Wow.

So freeing.

You mean I don’t have to think endlessly about what weight I should be at, that’s never the weight I’m actually at? I can be myself today?

Yes. I’d be a person not thinking about how I have to endlessly tweak my food.

Let’s turn the thought around.

TurnAround: I do not know what my weight should be. It is the right number today.

Why is this the case? Why is it OK that my weight is this weight today? How does this number support me? What do I notice is OK within, no matter what weight I am?

TA: My thoughts are too weighty today (my thoughts are very heavy). My thoughts are at the “wrong” number.

So true. Except for my thinking, I’d be happily in the body I’m in, going about my life.

“When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself — that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control. ~ Geneen Roth, Women, Food and God: An Unexpected Path to Almost Everything

Much love,

Grace

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How to find out what you’re really hungry for–being an investigator for your own freedom

We’ve all heard the question: What are you really hungry for?

I’m not talking about food of any kind.

This is what feels hungry within, perhaps at the deepest soulful level.

For me, eating seemed to handle strong emotions of any kind.

Sad? Let’s eat. Depressed? Let’s eat. Hopeless? Let’s eat. Rage? Let’s eat. Thrilling excitement? Let’s eat.

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.