This morning a lovely group of inquirers joined together on the phone to begin an 8 week investigation of our relationship with food, eating and our bodies.
Anyone who shows up to do The Work to look at painful beliefs about food and eating, has usually gone through one heck of a lot with dieting, weight, binge eating, starving.
Because there are a lot of tempting, enticing solutions to this problem with food and eating out there that seem a little easier, clearer, or simpler than questioning your beliefs about food.
There are diet books, diet groups, exercise training programs, meal plans, nutrition coaches.
And many of them are scientifically sound, really balanced “eating” programs, and of course truly awesome people that help. They seem like doing them will offer THE ANSWER we’re looking for.
When I follow that program, or that diet, that activity…I will succeed. My food problem will be eliminated. Finally.
I remember long ago one day, driving my little Honda car given to me by my parents for college graduation (it took me an extra two years to graduate with my bachelors degree because of my violent relationship with food).
I had done therapy both individually and with my family, I had gone to O.A. (Overeaters Anonymous), I had failed many diets….and I had learned a whole lot. My binge-eating was going down in frequency. Not gone, but I felt better.
I felt the intense craving to eat that afternoon.
I had just been offered a job, after having a very successful interview. But I wasn’t really that happy. I felt scared, like I would make a mistake, like I wasn’t really qualified, like I had tricked them.
I wasn’t even sure I wanted the job. It was a 45 minute commute to drive there.
I felt fat that afternoon. And trapped. Life with a regular 9-5 job sounded horrible.
Which is very discouraging. Dang. I thought I had the eating thing under control. I thought it was over.
As I drove away from that job offer, on the long drive home, visions of where I could stop to get food floated through my mind. I could feel the mounting urgency, and panic, the thought of tipping over into an eating frenzy.
And then I passed Weight Watchers. A huge building, with a huge sign. It said there was a “special” sale on memberships.
Fifteen minutes later I was calling my parents from the Weight Watchers parking lot and asking to borrow the money to join. They were both on the phone.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
My dad said, “Weight Watchers? But why now? Aren’t you trying to stop dieting sweetie? It’s not an emergency to join right now, right?”
After a few more minutes of discussion, when I realized they were saying NO, I hung up on them, furious.
I went to the next grocery store and bought a bunch of junk food and started eating through it like it was the last food on earth.
But I knew my parents were right.
This wasn’t even about food.
You almost have to try at least one food and eating “program” to discover that there is still something unsettled inside you, something deep within, that doesn’t get “fixed” by changing your behavior.
Too bad, right?
It would have been nice to have the Low Carb diet end all my problems with food, or Weight Watchers, or the South Beach diet.
But alas…for some of us the programs or diets never quiet seemed to get rid of the difficult relationship with food and eating.
And there is nothing wrong with the programs—they can be awesome, helpful and educational.
They just didn’t get to the core of the matter for me….my addictive, compulsive THINKING.
There are solutions for fixing your money, your career, other addictions like alcohol, or your spiritual life….there are numerous programs offered that will help you “get there” to where you want to go.
Recently I heard a wonderful new friend, with experience in this department, say that sometimes, getting set up in a “program” or going on a diet is like mowing the lawn….and there are a lot of dandelions in the lawn.
When you first mow, all the dandelions get cut, and the grass, and everything looks pretty dang good for a few days. Green and smooth. All cleaned up.
And then the dandelions start poking through, and we know, of course, that under the surface are weeds and roots and tangled up beliefs that we haven’t questioned yet.
And they start to grow.
So the minute I felt afraid, insecure, and super discouraged about my life….like I did that day with getting a job….then here came the usual distraction.
Food entered in for me as an obsessive solution and problem all at the same time.
But if I could have had the Work at the time, my afternoon might have gone very differently.
I might have recognized in that moment, when my thoughts were screaming “I have to eat food now!” or “I am trapped!” or “I am in danger” or “It has to go the way I want”….
….that I could PAUSE.
I could ask if it was absolutely true, in that moment, that I was trapped, or that I absolutely had to eat.
I might have been able to see that without those thoughts, I could sit still and look around. I could stop.
I might have been able to question whether I really had to take a job I didn’t want…OR, that I wasn’t good enough to do that job.
Turning the thoughts around, I could find where it was just as true, or truer, to believe the opposites of them all:
I don’t have to eat anything right now, I am free, I am safe, it is going the way I want.
What if you held in your heart right now that there is nothing you must do, nothing you need to know that you don’t already have, that your mind is able to question and understand itself?
What if you give up helping yourself altogether, chasing for the right solution, to any problem…not just the “eating” problem?
Mysterious. New. Open.
“The soft overcomes the hard; the gentle overcomes the rigid. Everyone knows this is true, but few can put it into practice. Therefore the master remains serene in the midst of sorrow. Evil cannot enter his heart. Because he has given up helping, he is people’s greatest help. True words seem paradoxical.” ~ Tao Te Ching #78
Love, Grace