Category: Eating Peace Videos

Most of us know the pain of body image angst.

The other day I had an interesting moment when someone said they’d be filming me from behind as I walked and ran.

Ummmm.

That doesn’t sound so good.

My thighs won’t look good. 

I look ugly, I look terrible, people will think x, people will reject me because of y, people will judge, they’ll know I eat x, they’ll think I do y, I’m reject-able because of this appearance.

It boils down to this body being wrong, off, unworthy, imperfect….

….and very, very, very important.

Who would we be without this terrifying story?

Who would we be without the stories and meaning we place upon “fat” or “thin” or “just right”?

Much love,

Grace

We’ve all had the thought “I want it”.

Accompanied by the belief “I don’t care if I’m full and if it will make me sick, I’m eating anyways”.

But is that what you really want?

Are you absolutely sure?

How do you react when you believe you want it (food, or anything, honestly)….

….AND notice whether or not you also have the belief “I should not eat it”. (Often these two beliefs come in a pair).

Notice if you are thirsty and you want water….do you battle within yourself about acquiring the water, or stopping when full? Usually not.

What else happens when you believe you want it (and you shouldn’t)?

Who would you be without the belief you want that food?

Especially when you keep eating it–interesting to acknowledge the first bite when you’re hungry is relaxing and pleasurable, but several bites in, the belief has naturally changed.

“You want it” when you are no longer hungry–is that really true?

Who would you be without this belief? You might notice you actually DO NOT BELIEVE this thought already!

You’re overriding your own truth.

You want something else, you want to stop, you don’t want to feel sick, you want to release anxiety….but you don’t want “it” (eating this item, in this moment).

Turn the thought around: I do NOT want it.

Is this truer?

I want my thoughts about it, not the actual eating of it.

What feels true about that?

Why would you want to tell yourself you want something that you don’t actually want? Is there something frightening about noticing you don’t want it? Do you think you might be left with other wants that can’t be resolved, or are too scary to be resolved, or require discomfort?

If questioning our mind is also known as meditation, then identifying our thoughts and asking four questions–especially when they are stressful–is a process of developing a deep, unconditional friendship with ourselves.

Opening up to looking at this mind, and seeing what it’s saying (and taking it to inquiry) is not so easy.

But noticing what takes you away from simply eating when hungry, and stopping when full….those are thoughts in the mind. Those are feelings that have followed thoughts.

The good news is, we can question them. We can actually meditate.

We can practice, just a little bit, each day.

We can notice what we feel is “too much” about life or “not enough” about life.

Go easy on yourself with this.

Identify one thought only at a time, when you feel like eating when not hungry or starving yourself when your body needs some food.

Just one thought (the one on top, as Byron Katie says) and question it using The Work.

1) Is it true?

2) Can I absolutely know it’s true?

3) How do I react when I believe this thought? (I get scared, lonely, angry, sad…and I eat)

4) Who would I be without this thought?

Can I find turnarounds? The complete opposite of the thought?

Bottom line: if you have stressful eating, then you are thinking in a stressful way, and feeling in stressful ways, and these beliefs are based on lies.

Lies make you eat too much, or not enough.

Question them, and the eating will shift.

I was tortured by eating. It felt like a nightmare.

The worst part?

The experience of a binge. Eating like a crazed person, then feeling sick, stuffed and horrible (and often forcing myself to vomit).

The origin of the word “binge” comes from nautical terms. It meant to soak a wooden vessel in water, so the wood would swell and the boat wouldn’t leak.

What if we were like that–believing we’ll “leak” with emotion, energy, fear, emptiness, hunger–unless we binge.

We think we’ll lose air, we’re frantic, we’re full of urges, we’ll sink to the bottom of the ocean…so we binge.

Eating Peace Process has begun, and we’re still in the Foundations Module. These foundations are practices and exercises that help us open up to our suffering with food and eating and our bodies, and find some other ways to be with What Is without violence or control or willpower.

I love what someone asked in one of first our private group calls yesterday: how do I stop in the middle of a binge?!

In Foundations I offer several “calming down” exercises like tapping, or shaking, or writing unedited for five minutes.

I suggest meditation on a daily basis, and invite everyone to begin to practice meditating, whether you’ve done it before or not. Start with five minutes.

All these foundational activities, which include wondering about ourselves in new ways by answering questions and journaling….are all great and everything….

....but how do we stop in the middle of a binge?

Holy smokes.

That could be the hardest place to “stop” of any place in the cycle of this compulsion. Right in the middle of the height of the energy.

First of all, even though it can seem practically impossible, it’s helpful to question the belief: I can’t stop, this is too much, it’s too difficult to pause.

Is that true?

Who would you be without that thought?

I have found a few more ideas that have worked well for me, too.

The good news is, the more you practice pausing, stopping, waiting….the easier it gets. The mind literally un-hooks itself from the cycle called “BINGE!”

If you find stopping practically impossible, then simply feel what it’s like to be WILLING to stop in the middle of a binge.

Give yourself loving kindness–no one binge eats who is happy, peaceful or feeling at ease in life. Binge eating is a response to upset and urges to survive.

Being gentle and caring with yourself can be one of the most important steps to take at all–that you’re eating for good reasons, and you’re willing to find out why and to stop, since it isn’t ultimately working for you.

“All of the sudden, one day you wake up and you say ‘I’m done’….What you already know starts to wake up. What you already know.” ~ Adyashanti

It means so much to me to receive all the comments and emails about the help given from this webinar to those who are suffering with either a wee bit of food and eating trouble, or a big lot of eating pain.

I shared some of my story on the webinar….but it was brutal.

Almost daily, I experienced agony around eating. I hardly ever had a normal, peaceful meal. I hunted for food, I overate, then under-ate. I binged then purged.

I really needed help. It was a nightmare.

In my history I saw almost twenty therapists if you count them all, I went into a six-week in-patient program for people with disordered eating, I did Course in Miracles, Twelve Steps, Living Binge Free, and quite a few programs for self-improvement like est, TM, a 9-month program called People House and even got a master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Science to understand the mind and emotions better.

It was a group therapy program that helped most of all.

That was where I found freedom from the more extreme behavior….and then The Work of Byron Katie.

Those two components were what saved my life, literally, from having my head in the toilet forcing myself to vomit, or constantly dieting, or feeling fear in the presence of good foods, or feeling disgust in the presence of mirrors.

Group work and self-inquiry. What a powerful combination.

My mind felt like a very bad neighborhood, and like I just could not find my way out.

My thinking was violent, fearful, dramatic and desperate when it came to my views of the body I lived in, eating, and ultimately relating to the world with a need to eat.

Ugh, that was rough, to say the least.

Now, I’m dedicated to continually looking at mind, thinking, beliefs and how they pile together to form fear and an urge to grab, worry or isolate.

In today’s video I share more about how these both worked, and why.

And meanwhile, if this sounds like an adventure you’d like to take with me and our eating peace group right now….I’d love to have you join me. Our first live call is Thursday, but live calls are only a part of the program.

This program is the only one I offer where there is content material pre-recorded, personal exercises, journaling, meditating, watching video lessons and webinars, and inviting you to follow on your own and do it in a way that works for you.

Most of the work I do with people is live: solo, retreat, and meetings where we all do The Work of Byron Katie. I consider myself having little to teach, but that the true work is about identifying your stressful thoughts, and then applying the four questions and finding turnarounds.

However, in this work, with such desperation, angst, and anger (like I had myself) I began in 2015 to put together offerings around eating and mindset to help people find a second of peace, then another second, then another.

So many people who contacted me to work on eating issues said “I don’t know what I’m thinking!!!! Please help!!! I just FEEL HORRIBLE!!!!”

So I started developing a program they could follow that would help get relaxed enough in the first place to settle into self-inquiry and not panic about the food or weight.

As it turns out, that first program I offered to a lovely group of 14 people. Then, after receiving fantastic feedback, I rewrote it, and I offered it again….then I offered it again after rewriting it again, and then repeated the overhaul yet again and offered it again.

No Eating Peace Process has ever been the same. I keep taking what works, and leaving out what doesn’t.

Eating Peace Process is something I hope you can follow on your own step by step, and also find answers to your questions by being in a group of people who share the same thinking, who have suffered from these thoughts.

These are people who are devoted to finding the truth for themselves through the process of inquiry, slowing down, awareness.

Eating Peace is not a program about dieting or food plans. You can be on any food plan or way-of-eating you want.

This work is about the internal disruption that results in our reaching for food, or resisting food, or hating our bodies.

People who are perfectly normal in weight or even thin, people with athletic bodies, people with twenty pounds to lose, people with a whole lot of weight to lose….all benefit from this mindful work.

It’s about our bodies, but it’s NOT about our bodies. We must start with where we are and what we have, with this body we’re in, and this mind we’re using….

….and begin to treat it with kindness.

In eating peace process, we start with Foundational work to help us commit to a return to kindness, even if it doesn’t feel natural or normal for us.

It is our true nature to be accepting, joyful with food, compassionate with other people and ultimately with ourselves.

How do I know?

Because of how “right” and easy it feels when I’m there.

If you’d like to join me on a group program of sharing, inquiry, learning, and awareness….I’d love to have you in Eating Peace starting this week.

Read about it and sign up here. Everyone who joins has lifetime access. You can join any future live session, you will have updates and new lessons as they get developed and added.

This is a process in motion….always blossoming with what is now and what is next.

Like life.

“We human beings can be addicted to anything. Anything to distract from present pain, discomfort, dissatisfaction, the notion that something is incomplete. There’s a sense of lack, a sense of something’s missing. That’s where it begins. Then our lives become a search for what’s missing…The basic disillusion is that something [food, eating, exercising, getting thin] will complete me and make me whole. It will take away the pain of being human.” ~ Jeff Foster

If you’ve had this experience about food, eating, compulsive eating, emotional eating, a body that isn’t right, cravings that are wrong….

….and you’d like to explore it on a deep internal level (not a technical fix, like a diet)….

….then I’d love to have you join me in the Eating Peace Process. A journey in understanding, and no longer waiting for happiness in the future and such unhappiness with food, eating and your body as it is right now, but instead to explore mind and questioning all the difficult oppositional thoughts we have about eating.

Joy of Inquiry on Eating

“I feel like I could do the work on the exercises and images that came up for the rest of my life. I actually watched it in two sittings, stopping between writing the turn-arounds to the actions that undermine peaceful eating and investigating the worst things. Thank you, thank you.” ~ EPP Participant 2017

A Combo of Gratitude and Fear

“In intending to watch the videos, even now I have the familiar feeling of being sooo scared. I feel tears coming to my eyes. I am so grateful for your work…which has put into words what I am, and what I have experienced. Tears of gratitude for your open and honest sharing.”

The Why Behind Eating

Much love,

If you’ve spent some time, perhaps years of your life, wanting that other thin body….

….or years of your life wanting this heavy body to go away….

….have you ever considered you might not want the thin body?

Have you ever thought you actually might like, in some inner corner of your being, the body you already have?

What’s so great about thinness? Are you sure it’s all that great? Have you ever heard of “bad” things happening to thin people, or around thin people?

Have you ever believed those thin people are in danger, or need to be extra careful (like not only with their diets, but with relationships of certain kinds, or something else)? Have you ever thought those with the perfect thin body are missing something, or left out?

Have you ever believed heavy people are happier for some specific reasons? Or safer? Or more comfortable in certain ways?

It can be really interesting to discover what you really think that underlies your thoughts and beliefs about body shapes that scare you, alarm you, worry you, disturb you in any way whatsoever.

Who would we be without these interesting stories?