Category: Eating Peace Training

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The dis-ease of pandemic thinking, pandemic eating…and how to stop

For decades (centuries?) humans have wondered and studied the answer to the question: where does eating stress begin and how do we stop it?
Pan-Demic means literally “pan” which is all-world, every-thing, every-where, across-all-things. “Demic” or dem means people.
All People. Everywhere.
Affected by a disease.
Several weeks ago, I received a list of research done during this pandemic around those suffering from disordered eating, and how much off-balance eating behaviors have spiked. In some, 70% worse than usual. For some, a return of old behavior with eating.
Although pandemic means a disease affecting human bodies in the physical world, it seems thoughts, too, can feel dis-eased and all-encompassing. Thoughts about sickness, isolation, worry, weight, self, the future. They become overwhelming.
Compulsion is especially like that.
It feels like we’ve been enchanted like in a fairy tale, or taken over like a zombie. Like we have no choice but to do our eating thing.
Must eat it. Now. Can’t stop. Chew, chew, chew, gobble. Hunt for next item. Get it while you can. Pretty soon we need to deal with this damage, but for now hurry and eat.
 
The mind is running wildly, careening around like a terrified animal almost, when on a binge.
Graze eating without being able to stop getting up and getting more, with pauses in between, is like a constant underlying anxiety running.
Then, the same mind full of frantic thoughts also starts to attack you.
Why did you just eat that? Can’t you remember the diet? What’s wrong with you, you stupid idiot?
 
The stream of thinking that feels so global and pandemic doesn’t care what the target of its commentary is….it is frantic, furious, terrified, angry, frustrated, stuck and it thinks frantic, furious, terrified, angry, frustrated, stuck thoughts.
More and more and more of them.
Eventually for this eating episode, you’re exhausted and you quit eating and fall into bed, or do your purging behaviors, and vow to yourself to quit this for the thousandth time.
So what is going on with this chaotic eating?
Something seems dreadfully wrong.
But what if what you were doing was trying to make something right?
 
What if a binge episode, or overeating, graze eating, moody eating, lonely eating was you trying to feel better, or prevent feeling worse?
As Byron Katie says; the alcohol, the drug, the ice cream, the buying spree are doing their job.
If we looked with compassion at this job the mind insists on giving these behaviors or substances, we simply see a misdirected, frightened mindset.
The pair of glasses we have on is dark, scratched, distorted, dis-eased. It’s pandemic. It feels like it becomes everything!
We perceive a pandemic–the mind is producing thoughts that all have the color of worry, fret, self-criticism, desperation, hunger, danger.
So what’s going on if my thinking is so freaked out?
Let’s just notice.
I’m out of touch with my body’s fullness or emptiness. Something else seems more important. Who cares about food being fuel!
I’m thinking something happening is a critical matter, and it’s disturbing as hell.
The thing is, the minute I say “this is not good” as I gaze upon the weight of my body, or those other people who might be looking at me, or my emotions, or the dangers of being alive….
….I naturally want to get back to “this IS good”.
Eating feels good. For a few bites at least. So I eat.
Of course, sooooo disappointing when the joy of the first bites fade so quickly.
Byron Katie suggests to see what you were thinking before you thought about eating off-balance, and investigate it, question it.
Could it be simply “I don’t like it! It’s scary!” is the thought before any eating (or compulsion) happens?
Even beginning to wonder about this can lead to fascinating awareness.
“I don’t like it! Urgent! Urgent!
“I have to do something about the thing I don’t like!”
Is it true?
Are you sure?
How do you react when you believe you don’t like it, and you have to do something about this thing you don’t like?
Are you sure you’re clear about what you do and do not like?
(I sure wasn’t–it seemed the food was good, but not really what I wanted. There just wasn’t any peace. I thought I loved to eat, but I also hated it).
Who would you be WITHOUT the belief you don’t like something, and you need to do something about the thing you don’t like?
WHAT?!!
Not do anything about it?
But.
Don’t I have to watch what I eat, follow the diet plan, worry, forecast the future, regret the past, weigh myself to check to see if I’m doing it right or wrong, suffer, use willpower, make myself conform?
I don’t have to do anything?
Hmmm. What an amazing idea. Just notice.
Turning the thought around: I’m OK with it (the thing I thought I hated). 
Could this be just as true?
Am I breathing? Am I still alive? Did I survive it?
Yes.
Turning the thought around again: I don’t like my thinking. Or, only my thinking doesn’t like “it” (anything we’re directing negative attention to). 
The inner me, the center of myself, the “I”, the witness, the life force I’m a part of, the mysterious, God, source….it is already OK with everything. Not against any feeling, person, incident, place, experience.
Mental energy can feel pandemic, encompassing all of what we are, fueling our behavior.
But it is not All of Us. It is not constant (even if it’s appeared very repetitive). It is not everything we are.
There is something here, without thought, beyond thought.
As Van Morrison says “let’s go into the mystery”. 
There, we are beyond compulsion, restriction, over-consumption, worrying, frantic eating, right vs wrong.
Touching base with that….we are free right now.
If you’re interested in the spiritual, spirited, mysterious journey of eating and learning to hold the experience as a messenger instead of an enemy, then we’re starting on Wednesdays this coming week.
June 24-August 12, 2020 9am-10:30am Pacific Time.
Read more about the Eating Peace Basics course and sign up here.
Let’s access the pan-demic of peace and turn our compulsions around.
If you want to calmly, gently, lovingly relax into peace with eating, food and body weight, it all begins in the mind and heart.
Not against it, but open to it. Welcoming it. In favor of it. Allowing it. Approving of it.
“If you act from fear, there’s no way you can receive love, because you’re trapped in a thought about what you have to do for love….but once you question your thoughts, you discover that you don’t have to do anything for love. It was all an innocent misunderstanding.” ~ Byron Katie in I Need Your Love, Is That True?
How do we stop stress eating? Question our thinking. Open to rest, instead of fear. Notice the peace here, now.
It may not be as “hard” as you think.
Much love,
Grace
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Question this thinking, change your eating….permanently

Wow, the very last Eating Peace LIVE Webinar this season of the new 2020 is today, Friday January 24th at noon Pacific Time. 
It’s just about completely full, no more room. If you’re interested in attending live, you can see if there’s a space still left right here.
(If you registered and can’t attend, please cancel so there’s a space for someone else).
Yesterday after last night’s webinar I received a beautiful note thanking me so so much for this work in eating peace.
This work is so important.
Lives get ruined because of LACK of eating peace and the repetitive trying to do it the same way over and over again: diet, exercise, control, force.
The only way I found inner peace with food and eating was the way I teach it: identifying and questioning thought patterns that fuel crazy eating.
Sound too simple?
It’s not.
The stress of eating wildly looks and sounds awful. We feel horrendous, nervous, like food and eating is dangerous and an area for being really really careful.
We think food makes us fat, wrong, ugly, greedy. We hate ourselves and our bodies.
We feel hopelessly ashamed, and still we sneak food.
If this has been YOU, then I hope you’ll join me in the Eating Peace Experience where our mission is ending eating battles for good.
Everyone who joins Eating Peace online is in for life. You join, and if you need to return to a future round of looking at compulsion even if it’s not necessarily food….you never pay again.
I am committed to growing, learning and transforming with you, one step and one day at a time.
The most inspiring things have occurred from offering this advanced work in transforming beliefs around food, eating, bodies, thin, fat, hunger, fullness, emotions, boredom, pleasure, dependency, fear, trauma, rejection and acceptance.
Eating troubles, quite honestly, wound up shaping my life into one of freedom, service, and a spiritual path I never imagined possible.
We’re finding a new freedom from eating torture and the need to control, and discovering calm and rest within when it comes to food.
Really, when it comes to our whole lives.
It doesn’t mean all emotions are all-peace all the time 24/7.
No.
I have doubt, worry, anxiety, sadness, grief, anger, irritation.
It’s called being human.
But these feelings have nothing to do with eating. Eating doesn’t occur to me as a way to resolve feelings, or calm myself down. It just doesn’t even come up. Eating doesn’t have to do with staying or getting thin. Eating doesn’t have to do with yet another way I can hate myself.
Eating off balance and feeling strong feelings including shame have been un-velcroed from each other.
The cravings, urges and compulsions have dissolved.
These past six days I worked with the group who came to Eating Peace Retreat to discover the way to end disordered eating, disordered thinking.
Light bulbs went off.
The shifts as we stepped through our days as we ate, thought, questioned, walked and even danced together were gorgeous to behold.
And now, a new group online gets to gather, share, and continue the healing movement of Eating Peace-Thinking Peace in our daily lives.
No matter who you are, no matter how crazy you’ve been with eating and food….I know you have the capacity to find peace with eating and your body.
It all starts with identifying the tricky, debilitating, difficult thoughts that drive off-balance eating.
Once we see, we can question them: “is that actually true?”
We can find out for ourselves, and stop doubting and freaking out.
I can’t wait to see you in Eating Peace Experience.
We begin on Monday! WOW! 
We’re looking at a paradigm shift from eating battles to eating peace.
What could be better than that, after all this suffering and agony?
Sign up for the full Eating Peace Experience here and let’s sail into this leap year 2020 together, and bring peace to broken hearts about our bodies, weight and ways of eating.
Join me HERE. Everyone who joins gets membership for life.

Much love,

Grace

 

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Do you believe it’s impossible for you to be normal with food? You might want to question that.

I was deeply moved to receive this note the other day after someone watched the recording of the Eating Peace Webinar. The last live session is Sunday, November 11th at 10:00 am Pacific Time. It will surely be slightly different–I change things each time I do it:

“Grace, I have to say that this was the best understanding articulated on this topic ever! Does Byron Katie know what you have accomplished here? Magnificent, important, Rhodes Scholar work…and most helpful. Thank you so much.”

This work of eating peace in some ways has been my entire life’s work, because like Geneen Roth has said, it has been my doorway into understanding my sense of presence and awareness, and fear and agony about being alive.

Exploring our compulsion(s) is truly at a deep level the work of consciousness, the personal mind that believes it must be in control (or feels out of control), the way our perceptions move us to action, and what’s happening when we eat (or do anything) off balance.

There are so many approaches to healing our ways with eating.

We know something’s wrong. We usually believe it’s us.

We’re simply “addicts” or we’re too emotional or we’re trying hard to cope or we’re lazy or we’re rebellious.

This work of Eating Peace is for me about evolving. It’s about watching, wondering, and becoming the one who is in balance and at home with oneself.

Quite some time ago, a friend suggested to me that the dawning awareness and the end of compulsive eating behavior that I’m so passionate about studying, is like the journey of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

I’ve been thinking about this as I prepare for the new group who will travel together soon in the Eating Peace Immersion program.

Dorothy lives in black-and-white (not color) as an orphan on a farm in Kansas and a tornado comes along (disordered eating, craving, desire) and sweeps her away to another country full of sparkles and learning and frightening encounters and flying monkeys.

Through her journey she’s understanding the depths of her nature, including compulsion.

So today, I wanted to share a very key belief that you may have running, that’s really important to question:

If you’re interested in learning more about this immersion journey we’re about to take together, where a group will travel online, live to share in accessing peace with food, visit this page here.
Love to have you join me. Registration closes at Noon Pacific Time on Tuesday, November 14th.
I Feel An Indescribable Peace
“What’s been happening for me since the EPP course ended is that my inner mentor has been coming forward more and is now ready to be fully in charge. I’ve realized that the compassionate advisor is my own inner mentor and she’s the one that shows up during the work for “who would you be without the thought”. It’s been powerful for me to see that this is ME and not an external character….I am a mentor to so many so of course my inner mentor is key to deepening my eating peace process. It’s so clear now. I feel an indescribable peace.” ~ Participant 2017-2018 
Much love,
Grace
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Eating Peace Immersion Webinars – dates have changed and I can’t wait to have you

sign up for the webinar to hold your seat by visiting here: http://bit.ly/eatwebinar2018

I’ve changed the times and dates for the 3 Eating Peace Live Webinars coming up called Breaking The Spell of Eating Battles.

This webinar will cover:

a) the #1 spell to break to end your eating agony

b) three stories to challenge and question

c) understanding control and lack of control–and the endless flip-flop between the two

First, I’ll share the big spell to break with self-inquiry, and how you’d actually do this. This #1 spell is a doozy of a false belief that so many of us repeatedly think and brings us to stay in shame and guilt. It brings so much suffering, and zero change.

Next, I’ll share three important stories you can identify that are personal to you, and questions to help you find them clearly.

These are stories you’ve experienced, and continue to tell, about three big areas where what we think often brings suffering:

1) body image – what does “thin” or “fat” or “just right” actually mean to you? We’ll dig into this in a way that doesn’t just make assumptions that any shape is right or wrong, and still be open to change

2) buffet terror – you’ll get to do the buffet imagination exercise and understand your fears about unlimited food

3) fear and comfort – fear is often laced through our ideas about eating, body shape, pleasure, other people, and even life in general. You’ll get to understand more about this powerful emotion and how it relates to eating compulsion.

Finally, part three and the last thing we’ll cover in this immersion webinar is learning how to get off the in-control vs out-of-control merry-go-round cycle without using force, determination, rules, or falling into complete despair or denial.

Wow, in this webinar there will be a whole lot. Please set aside 90 minutes and if it goes more quickly–huzzah! (Or is that boohoo?)

And here’s the thing, so I don’t bug you with too many emails for all of you on the general Eating Peace email list, if you have interest in participating live in any of these three eating peace masterclass webinars, be sure to sign up here. I won’t send a reminder or details to this general list.

You’ll enter your email and name for a smaller segmented list only for those who are interested specifically in attending the webinar. Your name and email will be kept private and when the webinars are all complete, the list will be deleted.

These webinars will be interactive and my deepest intention is that you leave with an awareness of the key spells to break in eating wars, and that you’ll know where to go from there.

Eating Peace Free Masterclass Webinar will be offered 3 different times (you choose what works best). Register here. It’s free for anyone.

At the very, very end of the masterclass, I’ll answer questions all about the upcoming Eating Peace Process Immersion Five Month Program that runs November 13, 2018-April 19, 2019. This is a program that focuses on transforming the very experience of eating, and your experience of having a body, by questioning our thoughts and turning them around.

At the very end of the Eating Peace webinar, I’ll explain the structure and details of the Eating Peace Process program, answer your questions, and even offer a special gift coupon for those of you eager to join, who attend the webinar live.

Eating Peace Process Program offers weekly lessons, plus live inquiry calls, for contemplation and learning and support the entire five months. The course is upgraded from previous years, but for those of you who already have enrolled in the program in the past, as always, you’re in for “life”–so no additional payment is needed to be in the program again.

Here are the complimentary webinar times below. Sign up to save your seat. I can’t wait to be with you live again.

All my love and appreciation for the learning, steps to freedom, and depth of transformation possible for people as we break the spells and find our true freedom when it comes to eating, food, and having bodies.

  • Tuesday, October 30th 4:00 pm PT
  • Thurs, November 1st 8:00 am PT
  • Sunday, November 11th 10 am PT
Save your seat here.

Much love,

Grace

P.S. If you were eagerly awaiting the webinar this very morning, sorry to disappoint. But come next week! It’ll be great to have you! If you’re already on the webinar list, I’ve got you. Can’t wait.

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Let’s do The Work on Eating, Food and Our Bodies….and Wake Up to Reality

Five months, fourteen lessons, two live calls per month (short break at end of January). Let’s honestly investigate our eating battles.

I’ve been so incredibly, profoundly moved by the people attending the Eating Peace complimentary Webinars this past week. There’s one more webinar. Today at 8 am Pacific Time. Join me HERE for the webinar. No opt-in necessary.

It’s almost the same information and slides for the webinar, and yet….a totally different offering every time. Can’t wait to see what will happen today.

I’ll share the seven primary beliefs or “stories” I find running in people (and myself) that caused disruptive eating, and no possibility of eating peace. You can question these seven stressful beliefs along with me through the webinar.

What a learning experience for me to offer this multiple times recently.

People have had many questions! How do I do this work? Should I sign up for this Eating Peace Immersion? What’s right for me? How do I inquire and use The Work in my life for eating issues beyond this webinar?

So many good questions.

I’m getting ready to launch into a 5 month program and honestly, haven’t been clear on the depth and length of the Eating Peace Process. So I want to share about what it is, how to sign up, what to expect, how to get involved.

I also want to share with you what you can do if you do NOT sign up for the Eating Peace Process. Because of course, not everyone can, and healing is possible for anyone and everyone–you don’t actually ultimately need a program.

Freedom is….free.

So read on to find out what you can do if you really want to move past these eating wars at a root level.

For those of you interested in Eating Peace Process Immersion:

I’ve said that Eating Peace Process runs from November through January…and yet, what we’ll be doing is sharing live inquiry calls and direct coaching in this work through the end of April 2018.

What IS offered from November through January are the recorded lessons and educational presentations on this whole system of eating peace. They’ll all still be available for watching through April, so they don’t go away, it’s just that no NEW presentations appear. The amount of presentations included in the Eating Peace Process over the first 10 weeks of Eating Peace Process are plenty.

I’ve gathered information through interviewing people, watching my own process of healing happen, and applying The Work of Byron Katie to these very stressful eating experiences. Gathering this information has taken several years. Or maybe thirty, LOL.

I’ve organized, condensed, and included what I thought was necessary for understanding when it comes to eating, and our perceptions of having a body that appears to gain and lose weight, or a mind that does the same–thoughts, feelings, wars, despair, frustration.

I wanted to include everything stressful that ever crossed anyone’s mind when it comes to eating or weight or compulsive seeking. I wound up with four distinct modules, and a handful of lessons for the program within each one.

The Eating Peace Process has four modules: Mind, Feelings, Body and Living It. Inside each module are 4 or 5 lessons. These lessons are from 45 – 80 minutes each, all offered via webinar, so you watch and listen, and do the exercises, all on your own time. It’s a lot of information and communication, yes. And, I found my mind was so filled with chatter, noise, screaming, self-criticism….it could have filled volumes to address the chaos. This guided information has been powerful. You can pause the lesson anywhere, rewind, or complete the exercise suggested. You get to do them on your own time.

There are literally 14 weeks of lessons: 14 topics of importance that seem like important puzzles of the eating peace process, at least for me every one counted. Each topic addresses significant factors I found I needed to look at and investigate with my mind when it came to eating or compulsive behavior, to find freedom and peace.

I had soooooo many uncomfortable and stressful beliefs that needed to be questioned. (We all do, right?)

These are the common factors, the global viewpoints that feel painful but keep eating battles in place, like “I need to look good” or “eating brings me comfort” or “I’ll never figure this out” or “I can’t handle this situation/feeling” or “this is urgent” or “my body looking the way it does means_____”.

We have past situations that were painful when it came to eating and food. Sometimes all the way back in childhood, sometimes from last week. We have entire family systems that include beliefs passed on from previous generations, all of them leading to emotional eating disruption.

All I know is….eating almost killed me. Or so it seemed. My world was filled with thoughts about eating, food, my body and all that was wrong with the entire experience. It was despairing, and awful.

Not everyone has such a dramatic story as I did. Some people are constantly plagued by the desire to lose 20 pounds, others are binge-eating and purging, others are starving themselves for days followed by uncontrollable eating. I was hospitalized, in therapy for years, and desperate when it came to food. I couldn’t find a thing peaceful about any of it.

And then, something shifted. And then shifted again.

The most important thing about seeking eating peace is that it is possible to find it.

People think it isn’t.

The discouragement is so intense, so deep, so on-going, people think they will never find a sense of peace when it comes to food and need to stay on a diet forever.

You may be one of these people.

I thought I was one of those people.

But I KNOW peace is possible for you, for me, for anyone who suffers from out-of-control behavior with eating, food, bingeing, thinking.

It’s not exactly easy and not necessarily a quick fix–which is why we will be meeting for five months for those of you enrolling in the Eating Peace Process. It is possible to stop the insanity through questioning your mind. And yet, how interesting there are no guarantees. No promises.

Which brings me to what’s possible for those of you who can’t or won’t sign up for the program starting this next week–here’s your solution: Question Your Thinking.

Identify your thoughts, especially in the moments you start to eat. Write them down. Stop them on paper.

Answer these questions honestly, without editing yourself. Keep a journal: Why are you eating? What’s going on? What are you afraid of? What are you worried about in your life? What do you think the act of eating will provide? What will it give you? What would you have, if you had the thinner body you dream of? What are you seeking? What else do you want, besides food? What’s missing in this moment? What isn’t satisfying for you right now?

If you sat with any of these questions, and perhaps got a supportive friend to sit with you to explore your answers, then you might be shocked at what you can discover, what you become aware of, what you realize.

This is self-realization through the path of eating. (Ha ha, I know this sounds a bit mad–some people find God or Peace through the oddest means….like food).

Eating wars were really my path to self-realization.

Someone wrote to me recently who I don’t know and he asked “have you ever suffered?”

The place that came to mind, as I contemplated his interesting question, was with eating. So many incidents of eating that led to torture, sickness, self-hatred, even suicidal thinking and not wanting to be alive.

What I realize though, is my mind was filled with tortured, sick, hateful, dead thoughts. My mind was suffering, not the whole of me.

The good news?

I could question those thoughts, and turn them around. You can too.

Who would you be without your stressful stories?

If you want to join with others to investigate in-depth the compulsion to overeat, undereat, focus on the body, think about food….then join me for this winter-to-spring journey to understanding eating peace.

We begin with the first live call on November 14th, and the last live call is April 26th. You can choose Tuesdays, or Thursdays, for the live calls–and they are all recorded–so you don’t absolutely HAVE to attend live. You can attend both if you really want to. No one turned away on any call.

This program includes 14 lessons in exploring and studying eating woes and agony, and the important topics I’ve found that help heal them. You’ll be doing your work, and sharing in your process with others and with me.

To find out more and to sign up for Eating Peace Process this year, click HERE. If you have more questions and want to see what it’s like to share a presentation from me (which is similar to what’s inside the Eating Peace Process program) then come to the complimentary webinar today or listen to it later via recording (the same link will work as the recording about 30 minutes after the live session is completed today).

If you have any specific questions you’d like answered, feel free to hit reply to this email and ask me.

Thank you for joining me in such a powerful, important, deep journey to find home, peace and rest when it comes to eating, food and our bodies.

“There are sincere men and women who want to be free of suffering. I was one of those without realizing it. I tested what would happen if I didn’t respond to the thoughts of ‘I want’, ‘I need’, I shouldn’t’, ‘I should’…None of these thoughts could stand up to inquiry. You could discover this even if you tested it for just twenty-four hours with one meal…the I-know mind would say ‘this isn’t enough nourishment; I’m still hungry; I’m too weak; I’ll get sick; I’ll die.’ But when you allow each thought to be met with ‘is it true?’ life will show itself to you.” ~ Byron Katie

I often believed my thoughts that said I would die without more food, I have to eat, I shouldn’t eat this, I should eat that, I need to weigh x, I need to be thinner, I want to keep eating, I’m unable to stop, I can’t be happy unless….and on and on and on.

 

Who would we be without these stories?

 

Free. At peace. Slowly but surely….enlightening ourselves to what’s true, what’s possible. Returning to innocence when it comes to eating.

 

No longer hungry for what isn’t, but instead comfortable and willing to be (and maybe even loving) what is.

 

I’d love you to join me in Eating Peace if it’s right for you. I’ll close enrollment to the program by noon on November 14th, so we can begin our live calls and move from there.

 

Can’t wait to be with all of you who are drawn to this process during the winter, holiday season when people often eat even MORE than usual. Let’s see if we can eat study peace in the midst of feasting traditions…shall we?

 

Yes, we’ll meet the morning of Thanksgiving in the USA for our usual 8 am call. What a great day to begin with inquiry and wondering if what we’re thinking is actually true!

 

Maybe it’s not.

 

Much love,

Grace

Webinar link is HERE.

Eating Peace Process Program Info is HERE.