Tag: dieting

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Eating Peace: Freedom is not rebellion or control….it’s peace

After a couple of years of eating, gaining weight, feeling horrible, feeling like my obsession with eating was growing bigger….

….I decided I just had to control myself, no matter what.

I went on a major diet. Hard core. No starvation, no overeating. Very clear, clear boundaries. Very rigid. Weighing, measuring, counting. timing the way I would eat.

My belief about myself was I could not be trusted to eat in a normal peaceful way, so I threw myself in prison with a serious food plan.

I was miserable.

I felt afraid all the time. I felt angry. I was withdrawn from connection with other people. I was thinking about food constantly, just the same way I had been thinking about food all the time when I binge-ate.

Did eating really have to mean my only two choices were being Totally In Control or Totally Out of Control?

There had to be another way.

The Rebel can sometimes be the one who helps you find that other way.

The rebel by definition is the one who rises, with arms (violence) against the ruler who is in control. Often in the story of humanity, the rebels are then overruled by the current regime. It’s all about war and who has the most power.

But we can learn from rebellion stories, and from our own inner rebels….if we listen to them.

Who would we be if we stopped attacking or running away from either one of these extremes; Dictator or Rebel?

What does the rebel have to say? Why do you feel angry?

If anger existed in this situation around food, eating, taking in fuel in the world, expressing your feelings, trusting yourself, trusting you’ll get what you need….

….what do you think anger wants to say?

The brilliant Karla McLaren (whose work I refer to in the Eating Peace Process–the immersion program I offer live once a year) writes and speaks of anger as the one in you who stands up with passion for freedom, choice, health (when it’s a clear, holy sort of anger).

Anger goes sideways a lot, I know.

How do we work with it, so it becomes our ally and friend?

First….write down what it has to say. No matter how “wrong” or immature, non-politically correct, rude, ridiculous, shameful, mean.

Write down what the voice of the Rebel has to say. Listen to it for once instead of attacking it, or going with it.

When you write down what that feeling and voice has to say, especially when it’s been so powerful in your life, you give it the respect of listening.

And then….what next?

Have I got four questions (plus finding turnarounds) for you! The Work of Byron Katie. A most amazing contemplation for your inner world that brings awareness, and awareness that comes directly from that rebellious angry childish part of you.

No need to find anything different, no need to lock yourself up or lock up your feelings or force yourself to change.

I used to be on a diet, because I actually approached the world the very same way: treat the world like a diet. Avoid certain things, weigh some things, measure some things, count some things.

Otherwise…..suffer.

That wasn’t freedom, though. Freedom to be an imperfect human without a plan. Freedom to be real, clear, and have strong feelings–without having to eat over it.

Much love,

Grace

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Eating Peace: Are you more afraid of hunger than you realize?

Have you ever really considered how you feel about hunger?

Noticing the conflict within of fighting hunger, being torn about it, having thoughts and beliefs about it, can offer incredible insights.

Maybe you feel determined to overcome your hunger, or conquer or override your hunger urges. This is usually a diet mentality approach. When I was on a diet, I was furiously controlling my hunger, or any signs of hunger. Doing anything I could to take up arms against hunger and learn tricks to manage hunger without giving into it….eating….took huge amounts of energy.

When I supposedly “won” over hunger, I felt good. I felt like I WAS good. I was being good.

When talking about hunger and eating, other people I knew who were interested in losing weight or not responding to their own hunger would call eating outside of the diet plan “cheating”. Like we’re playing some kind of strange game called Control Yourself Forever when it comes to food.

I felt like hunger was a “problem”.

For me, this meant also that submitting to hunger was a problem. Giving in to the urge to eat was like failing.

Others might feel like giving in to hunger is the only option, they’ll say “screw it!” and eat rebelliously. (I did this one, too).

But what if you really looked at what you’re believing and thinking about hunger that brings fear, sorrow, guilt, or violence into your mind?

I found, when I wrote down how and what I felt about hunger, very very honestly, I understood why I was so upset about it.

When you write it down, you can take what you write to inquiry using The Work of Byron Katie: the four questions and turnarounds that offer such wonderful insight into your exploration of your inner world.

Today I’m sharing thoughts about being hungry, and how to question them. If you do this, you may find a lightness about the flow of eating you never imagined possible.

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Eating Peace: Questioning this can change everything

Webinar Immersion Free Class: Ten Barriers That Block Self-Inquiry, and How To Dissolve Them. Join me today from Noon-2:00 pm for a powerful course, live. Bring your pen and paper and an open mind. This will really help you with compulsion and self-critical issues, and going deeper in The Work of Byron Katie. At the end, I’ll be sharing information about Year of Inquiry that begins in September.

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Body image plays a big role in our eating and food patterns.

Not everything, but it sure had a big influence on me.

In fact, my own negative body image basically got eating off balance started in the first place.

I went on a diet at age 14, with my mom.

Later on, with increasing urges to suppress feelings and emotional experiences I didn’t like so much, food became more than just something to restrict in order to get the good body.

It was comfort, soothing, grounding, and calmed nerves, expressed anger, exhausted me, and put me to sleep (or kept me awake).

But that body image feeling so very serious, that started off a huge chunk of the stress that affected my experience of eating in the first place.

I love looking at body image very deeply now.

I still notice the stressful thoughts chirping in the background, but they are so much less serious.

I share one very powerful question here today, for looking at body images concerns….and how to work with the question to get to the heart of your thinking about the body and your looks:

What do you think it means…about you, about others, about the world?

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The Secret Surprise In Giving Up Security With Money (or Food)

I am thrilled to say that a completely updated, exciting and light-bulb blasting 8 week money telecourse is fresh off the press. Over time with teaching the class so often, we’ve zoned in on some powerful ways to dig into the beliefs under the surface when it comes to money….

…the underlying ones you can’t always get to unless you take a little time out to look. 

Money, and all it means, can bring massive tension. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, or somewhere in between. 

The beliefs sit below as a foundation. Sometimes festering. Bringing about anxiety, suspicion, insecurity, concern, judgment about other people, worry about the future, wanting to avoid things from the past ever repeating again. 

We’ll start soon, on Wednesdays. Most likely on April 16th at 5:15 pm Pacific Time. Hit reply if you’re interested and I’ll be sure to include you on updates. 

Speaking of Underlying Beliefs (my favorite!)….

….this weekend a few inquirers will be doing some excavating in the realm of food and eating. (If you’re interested, we’re swimming in this topic on Saturday in person at Goldilocks Cottage in Seattle, my home). 

Horrible Food, Wonderful Food. Too Much, Not Enough.

I used to call the workshop about food and eating, and my telecourse that covers the same material, “too much, not enough” because it seemed like I could never hit the “just right” mark. 

Like there was this point, somewhere in the universe, where all would be well, comfortable, guilt-free, happy, and totally and completely contented when in came to feeding myself….

….but that point was never reached. 

It was like being on a merry-go-round that was a mile wide, trying to reach the golden brass ring when the ponies came round to one side. 

I would reach, reach, wait, get ready to grab that brass ring…but fail. 

And then, because the merry-go-round was soooo big and enormous, it would take days to get back again to that one place where the circle meets brass ring and the dangling prize could be grabbed at. 

But never actually owned, never done, never there. 

Ack, what trouble. 

That impossible psychizophrenic flip-flop around food was torturous. Highs and then lows. In control, out of control. Losing weight, gaining weight. Bingeing, starving. Gorging, refusing everything. 

I just wanted some peace!

(Funny how food and money have some similarities….ahem. Wanting more, feeling undeserving, anorexic in our thinking, fat in our beliefs, desperate, starving, insecure…)

So I would muster up my plan and gather resources, like I was fighting a battle (I believed I was) and then other more important reasons to drop my plan would arise. And instead of looking at the power of those new beliefs….I would attack myself. 

You can stop that cycle. 

But it takes some Work.

“We go to the refrigerator even though we’ve just eaten, or we pick up the cigarette we said we’d never smoke again and on and on. It’s alcoholism. It’s a drug addiction, mind addiction. When I found this work, or it found me on the floor, that day later I picked up a cigarette to smoke it…and it looked insane, and I began to laugh and I couldn’t do it. What happened was, I was seeing. What happened was, I did The Work and smoking quit me.” ~ Byron Katie

Instead of trying so wildly hard to get it, find it, see it, believe differently, change…what if you gave up? What if you stopped altogether, and you metaphorically sat down, or lay down on the floor, and waited?

What if you identified exactly what you really were thinking, even if it’s embarrassing, immature, stupid or weird, and you allowed it to be there, wrote it down, and then questioned it. 

You don’t have to drop any thoughts. You don’t have to give up your beliefs, if you don’t want to. 

In fact, you probably can’t, even if you DID want to.

As the 12 steps go….step number one: I am powerless over my *thinking* and my life has become unmanageable. 

It’s true! Have you ever tried to control your thinking?! 

Just becoming aware that trouble with food or money has to do with troubled thinking will take you down a more efficient road. You don’t need that treatment plan, that diet, that budget. 

But you do need to see how attached you are to your thoughts, and be patient enough to slow down and look.

You don’t have to take my teleclass on Money or Eating Peace to start. You can do this right now, today. 

Write down all the painful things about life, the people in your world, what having too much or not having enough money or food mean for you….

….you’ll be on the road to freedom. 

“Even those who have had deep spiritual experiences and awakenings beyond the mind will in most cases continue to cling to superstitious ideas and beliefs in an unconscious effort to grasp for the security of the known, the accepted, or the expected. It is this grasping for security in all its inward and outward forms which limits the perspective of enlightenment and maintains an inwardly divided condition which is the cause of all suffering and confusion.” ~ Adyashanti

Uh, yeah. What he said about inwardly divided! 

I know that feeling! Stuck, twisted, groping, afraid.

Stop now, and stop trying to believe what you really don’t believe (yet) and stop trying to STOP believing what you really DO believe. It’s kinda bossy to yourself. 

Plus it keeps that division thing going….endlessly and forever. 

You can be whole again. Start right now.

Begin by writing down what you actually think, even if you’re not positive it’s even true, that hurts or feels frightening. Don’t try to find security in any of it. 

Then, you’ve got thoughts right in front of you for inquiry. You know what to do from there. 

The Work.

Much love, Grace

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Food Nightmares? Free Guide To Peaceful Eating

As you probably know, one of my most difficult relationships was with food, eating and body image in my teen years and all of my 20s and into my 30s.

Really….it was my relationship with my own mind that was rough. I was brutal!

I thought being mean would incite change.

I didn’t realize that love and compassion for myself, without attempting to change, would bring so much MORE change than anything I had tried.

If you are someone who would like to be on a separate email list for announcements and programs for people wanting to investigate their relationship with food….

…then I have a gift for you.

Click on this link HERE, and you can download a free E-Guide I’ve written to help people get started with using self-inquiry and internal questioning to understand and heal their painful behaviors with food.

When you get the guide, you’ll be added to the email list for Peaceful Eating that’s separate from daily Grace Notes.

You may have had bulimic episodes, or been anorexic, or you may have had great tension and sadness, weight gain and loss, and anger with the state of your relationship with food.

Anyone on this list will receive occasional updates on upcoming new programs or opportunities.

There are two teleclasses in January—one a new one for investigating bulimia and the binge/purge cycle using self-inquiry—one for examining the relationship to food…and also the first weekend in April 2014 in Seattle the Horrible Food Wonderful Food weekend!

If this is not an area of tension for you, then please forward this to anyone you think might benefit.

“When you’re operating on uninvestigated theories of what’s going on and you aren’t even aware of it, you’re in what I call “the dream.” Often the dream becomes troubling; sometimes it even turns into a nightmare. At times like these, you may want to test the truth of your theories by doing The Work on them. The Work always leaves you with less of your uncomfortable story. Who would you be without it? How much of your world is made up of unexamined stories? You’ll never know until you inquire.” ~ Byron Katie

If you or anyone you know is interested in dissolving your nightmare with food, eating, weight and you want to receive updates on this topic, click HERE.

Much love, Grace

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The Scale And Your Worth

The Horrible Food Wonderful Food teleclass is underway right now. One dear participant mentioned something to me that I have heard many times before.

I sometimes suggest that people give up their bathroom scales….you know, the ones that calculate body weight. She said, “I could never give up my scale, I have to weigh myself twice a day.”

Measuring things can be incredibly powerful. Documenting, looking, examining, surveying, gathering data. These are invaluable for studying information, analyzing. Especially when you are totally uncertain about how something works.

It’s so amazing to have ways to track something over time that may not be entirely conscious. Like lets say a scientist is studying a brand new species of insect. She could open her computer and write down every hour what is happening, as she watches through a camera the insect’s behaviors in its habitat.

But if the scientist has gathered information for a year, and has tracked the whole lifecycle of the insects several times….but then can’t stop documenting that insect’s behavior…it could be a little weird, right?

The problem with the scale situation is of course not the scale, but the lack of deep inner trust around eating and weight. The belief for me was “I do not understand my weight fluctuation, therefore, I must measure it constantly….otherwise, I might grow heavier and not even realize it!!!”

I used to feel extremely anxious if I didn’t have access to a scale. And then, I felt extremely anxious if I DID have access to a scale.

The thought I had way back when I had a scale was that if I saw the number was too high, it would alarm me and push me towards weight-loss strategies. If I saw the number was low, then I could feel happy and proud for being a “good” weight.

I believed I needed a measuring device, that I couldn’t feel deeply what was right for me on the inside.

Last week when I was at the hospital in the surgery pavilion, before I was sent to change my clothes into the hospital gown and before the kind nurse put in the IV into the back of my hand, they had me go to the scale.

I watched the electronic bright red numbers speeding by and balancing out to the exact ounce. I remembered the way I used to feel in this waiting half-second “Oh I hope it’s going to land on a good weight and give me good news!”

It was about the exact same number I’ve been mostly for my adult life, but for a flash I thought “isn’t that amazing”.

Still the same. Without trying for it, wanting it, setting it as a goal, or caring about it. Amazing, because I once thought I needed to run this whole food, eating, weight situation!

I remembered when I used to want the scale to say that number, when I had an eating disorder and my weight fluctuated up and down a bit.

I used to strive for that number, wish for that number. Just tell me what to eat so I can always have that number.

Then I threw away my scale, because I used it too often and for the wrong reasons: to feel good or feel bad. I let the scale tell me what kind of person I was. I didn’t want that from a piece of metal that measured weight. I wanted to be good no matter what.

Is it true that the amount you weigh means you are good, or bad? Worthy or unworthy? Lovable or Not Lovable? Attractive or Unattractive?

Long ago, I found the answer was “NO”. Even though I had been acting like it was “YES”.

Who was I when I believed that my weight had something to do with my character, my lovableness, my worthiness, my power, my strength, my attractiveness?

Horribly obsessed with weight. Angry. Hungry. Overeating. Undereating. Calculating, planning and trying to control food.

Jumping on the scale every day, and at the gym, and in other places where scales were sitting around.

Who was I without the thoughts that without a scale, I can’t be trusted, that my weight MEANS good/bad, lovable/repulsive, worthy/unattractive?

Open to another way. Open to not knowing. Relaxing, resting at a most deep level, slowing down. Not planning.

Taking a deep breath. Eating and noticing the flavors, the beauty, the texture.

Practicing feeling Joy, Quiet and Peace in the presence of food, or mirrors, or scales.

Living the turnaround. Turning towards the light, the inner light.  

“Enlightenment is to be totally Un-Self-Concious, Un-Ego-Conscious. It’s to be free of self-reflection. Isn’t it the biggest bain on humanity to be always reflecting on oneself? ‘How am I doing, I like it, I hate it, this is hard, my life’s difficult’. Constant reflection…..I’ve never met anybody who was addicted to anything who was ever able to get beyond it until they really saw and came to grips with ‘this is not working’.” ~ Adyashanti

Much love, Grace

P.S. 8 week teleclass on food/eating starts again on January 15, and the Year of Inquiry for the Addictive Mind YOI starts on January 10th.