Unlearning beliefs like “there is something wrong with me” (+ Eating Peace 101 starts Thursday)

In these summer months of heat in the hemisphere where I live, I’ve heard from many about their urge to cover their bodies, never go to the beach, and hide themselves from the world and all those critical eyes.

The other day, I received a note from an Eating Peacer that she closed her blinds and stayed inside all day because the only cool place outside was the lake, and she was never, ever, ever going to be “caught alive” (she said) wearing a bathing suit in public.

I remembered this kind of shame about the body, and how it actually escalated my eating behaviors and turned them into crazed eating instead of normal teen eating.

My thoughts were constantly filled with stress, as I tried to get a more perfect body. I starved myself, then binge-ate, then starved again, then worked out for hours, then ran five miles, then ate, then vomited….

….and repeated the swinging flip-flop back and forth with enormous pain.

I believed something was desperately wrong with me.

I always aimed to try harder, use more willpower, get it right.

Which, actually, I finally sort of did. Although, I’m not sure “I” did it (I’m pretty sure nothing actually happened because of my plans, honestly). But my failures did lead to giving up, in a good way, and stopping the pursuit of a perfect body.

I just wanted peace.

If you’ve felt the pull to peace, and it’s become the most important jewel in your relationship with food….then peace tends to rise above all plans, controls, or management of eating and your body and dieting.

The upcoming Eating Peace 101 telecourse is a good place to focus more openly and deeply on peace when it comes to eating, to food, to our bodies (no matter what weight) and to our feelings and thoughts.

We’ll be looking at our belief system, our ideas, our screaming internal thoughts and voices, and investigating our moments of following a craving, or overeating food, or pursuing at all costs the perfect body.

Who or what would we be like without our stories?

In today’s Eating Peace video, I talk about one key important belief everyone can question who’s ever had trouble with compulsive or dependent behavior of any kind, not just with food: there’s something wrong with me.

Why do The Work?

Because when we do, we unlearn all the decades, centuries of beliefs about thin, fat, full, hungry, good, bad, need, emptiness, control, power, eating, food, attraction, should, shouldn’t.

You are not your mind. You are not your weight or your appearance. You are not your personality. You are not the food you just ate, or the way you ate it. You are much, much vaster than that. (Thank you, Adyashanti).