I Won’t Change Unless I Loathe Myself

This week I’ve talked with three wonderful people of very different ages and walks of life, all of whom wanted to do a session around their food, eating and body image troubles.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve had one year of unhappy eating, or a lifetime of unhappy eating…it’s painful, and that word “painful” doesn’t really sum it up.

I remember my battle with food. It was violent, crushing, despairing. I wanted to kill myself rather than live with such agony about what was “right” or “wrong” or “good” or “bad” about food.

One angel that I found to help me was author Geneen Roth. She had experienced similar violence and despair in this basic necessity of life: eating. She had been an 80 pound anorexic and a very heavy compulsive over-eater.

To the “normal” eater, being compulsive about food and eating can look extremely strange. Heck, it even looks strange to those of us with so-called abnormal relationships with food.

One of my favorite beliefs to question, way back when I first read Geneen’s book on recovering from emotional eating in the 1980s, was that I needed to control what I ate.

She wrote that if she continued to believe that she needed to control her weight, control her eating, control the content of her food…that she would, in fact, kill herself.

She said “Give up dieting. Period.”

I knew what she was saying was right for me. Because I hated with a passion all the diets anyway. I hated the fear and anxiety, the hunger, the attempt at perfection, and I hated weighing myself. I hated caring so much about what I weighed.

I knew that being thin did not offer happiness. I held onto that for a couple of years, almost anorexic, running cross-country competitively in college (briefly). I KNEW that forcing or controlling the food I ate was not joy. Over-eating was not joy, under-eating was not joy.

Recently I was remembering with a very good friend a time within the last decade when I threw myself more passionately into exercise, dance, biking, moving. My clothes got loose. I got compliments from people.

It was a kind of giddy, changing time. Divorce, rapid change, awareness, opening mind. I could eat snacks all day long and never cook and do whatever I wanted. I got extra light and airy.

But anything out of balance does not last. That body was not perfectly at peace at that time. It didn’t breathe deeply. And the energy shifted and slowly my clothes fit just right again. Who knows what the weight difference was, I don’t really know.

This kind of freedom to be whatever I am in the moment was unheard of in my past. Oh no. Always Something Wrong. Always Something To Improve. Always Thinner Is Better.

But I got a little whiff of freedom when reading Geneen Roth so many years ago. I knew this whole entire eating business was deeper than I thought.

I knew I could question “there is something WRONG with me” because I go on these frantic binges.

With a binge, I would believe: I loathe myself, I am worthless, I am immature, I am ridiculous, I am sick, I am pointless, I’m a freak.

I imagined that if I really believed I was OK, then I would keep binge-eating like a maniac out of control forever. All that self-hate was necessary for me to CHANGE.

If I didn’t hate myself, I wouldn’t even TRY to change, right?

Love myself? Impossible!

“Not wanting to change what is becomes a state of mind that is literally unimaginable. There’s no sacrifice in it, no deprivation–quite the opposite, in fact. It means to gain everything, the everything that is already yours, and the effect is peace. People who use The Work at home as a practice tell me that they find their own freedom. There is such joy in that, such peace, and it’s a story that can’t be told.”~Byron Katie

Can you imagine NOT wanting to change anything about food? Just let it be there?

Can you imagine closing your eyes and asking yourself, as if you are a little beautiful gorgeous precious being, if you are hungry or not, and exactly what you feel like eating?

Can you imagine waiting, taking a deep breath, slowing everything down, and giving up the idea that you better control yourself, or else?

Can you imagine not being surrounded by rules about food, or thinness, or fatness, and just seeing what is actually true for you only?

“The infinite is not somewhere else waiting for us to become worthy”. ~Tony Parsons

If you want to come explore your beliefs that you’ve repeated to yourself about foods, eating, your weight, thinness, and fatness, hunger and fullness….then join the teleclass Horrible Food Wonderful Food that starts next Friday Jan. 18th at noon Pacific time. 8 weeks (no class 2/22).

I Haven’t Enjoyed A Meal For Twenty Years, Until Now:  Dear Grace, I had nice Thai food yesterday and caught myself thinking afterwards: I REALLY enjoyed this meal. Nothing more, nothing less. I can’t recall any time in the past 20 years when I had a thought like that. Thank you.~LP, teleclass participant 

Love, Grace