One of the first places I experienced deep, horrible, shameful suffering was in the way I ate.
It all started pretty young for me.
I remember “knowing” that people were “good” when they ate salad, broccoli and apples, and “bad” when they ate half a pizza, candy, or big bowls of ice cream.
I was eight.
Slowly the building blocks of beliefs came together to make a perfect storm of being freaked out around eating.
The culture and society praising thin, parents having wildly high expectations of themselves and of me, the beliefs that big feelings were to be shoved under the carpet or you’d make a fool outta yourself, and the incredible comfort of eating food.
Put that all together and you’ve got fear, anger, sadness, and more fear.
It took some heavy work and amazing encounters with wise teachers, and learning to be really honest, to find my freedom.
After a few years went by, people began to ask me about my recovery, how it happened, what it was like….and could I help.
I was hesitant.
It was trickier than I thought.
Fast forward after many years of insight, awareness, reading, learning, a master’s degree, group therapy, individual therapy, family therapy, and finding The Work of Byron Katie….
….and I loved the simplicity of identifying all those beliefs I had as an eight year old kid and a teenager, and questioning if they were really true.
My first telecourse to help break apart the pattern of eating too much or too little, of dieting or obsessing or freaking out about food, was in 2010.
I kept updating it, noticing what worked, what didn’t work, what helped, what didn’t help.
I’ve taught the course 21 times.
The last time I offered Eating Peace was nine months ago.
I’ve been waiting to roll it out again, because I’ve been researching, writing, and compiling piles of information about what’s been missing in supporting people to get to freedom around food.
I surveyed and interviewed almost everyone who participated in the last group…
…and some who participated in classes even before that one…
…and I learned some very important things.
People understood how to question their thinking, they learned how to relax more with food, they felt more self-acceptance in their bodies, they could question some of those big weird beliefs like “I should be thin to be loved” or “I have a problem with food” and turn these thoughts around…
BUT…
…only a few participants felt permanent change in their daily relationship to food and eating, or their bodies.
Sometimes, participants felt enormous relief and flooded with peace. They wouldn’t feel like eating so much, they might not even start a binge.
Then a few days would go by, or a few weeks or months…and the urge to eat would appear again with a vengeance.
Here’s what I found, if you are someone who’s experienced ANY kind of ongoing addictive pattern where you use SOMETHING to alter your mood, whether food, sex, shopping, smoking, drinking, facebooking, whatever…..
….This is all about your beliefs about you, and your conflicted feelings about safety, power, rest, love, sadness, satisfaction, hunger, fullness, independence, aloneness and who you really are.
What I have found by studying myself and other people is, the only way to get to the bottom of the compulsion for food when you are not actually hungry, or the compulsion to starve yourself when you are…
…is to catch that very moment–it speeds by so fast it’s like a flicker of something on a movie screen–before you feel like consuming or exercising or DOING something.
It’s whatever is there that says “I cannot stand being in this moment, I have to do SOMETHING, I don’t feel good.”
There are simple ways to begin to find out how to identify ghost hunger from real hunger, and to stop mistrusting yourself and treating yourself so meanly.
I’m going to dive in again with a group to not only investigate the mind, but also to investigate feelings….maybe even feel them.
It does take practice and it’s a process, not an instant fix.
One thing I learned about the teleclass was that 8 weeks is a great introduction, but it’s not enough time.
We’re going to meet for twice that time. For four months, I’m going to help you get clear about this Food Thing, and practice relaxation.
We’ll practice Being….and Doing Nothing….when it comes to this “problem” with food, this problem you may have had for almost all your life, give or take a day or two.
Here’s the good news:
The mind can be your friend to investigate food, eating, craving, compulsion, powerlessness, discouragement, emptiness, and fear.
If you would like to be on the early-bird list to learn about this new program for making friends with food, eating and your body…
…then click here.
If you have a friend or a family member or colleague who you think would like to be on the list for the upcoming news for Eat In Peace, please click here to forward this Grace Note to them: 
.
I can’t wait to work with everyone who signs up.
Freedom from thinking and feeling bad about food is possible for everyone.
Even you. Especially you.
“Imagine not being frightened by any feeling. Imagine knowing that nothing will destroy you. That you are beyond any feeling, any state. Bigger than. Vaster than. That there is no reason to use drugs because anything a drug could do would pale in comparison to knowing who you are.” ~ Geneen Roth
Much love, Grace