Tag: the work of Byron Katie on weight

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A key turning point in my healing journey of eating peace

Eating Peace Basics 101 Online Live Course will run June 24th – August 12th with live Wednesday calls (all recorded) from 9am-10:30am Pacific Time (which is Noon ET or 6pm Europe).
In this course I’ll share 8 key foundational stories–one every week–that are key to investigating so we can dissolve the eating wars we’ve been fighting.
To identify our thinking inside these common stories, and then question the beliefs running for us, is such a huge relief. Read more about the course here.
Also it feels important and worth mentioning that I’m offering an online retreat starting tomorrow at 4:30pm PT to question the beliefs that cause suffering. We’ll be unraveling our painful thinking using The Work of Byron Katie from June 2-7.
While this retreat is not specifically for eating issues, this work is one of the most valuable tools I use to dissolve compulsive behavior.
If you’ve been here awhile reading Eating Peace notes, you know this already. The Work is the way out of the mind and into our freedom with food, with bodies, with everything.
I’ll be sharing the facilitation of this retreat in The Work with the dear and skilled Tom Compton. To read the schedule and options visit here. If you attend only mornings or only evenings, we welcome you for half-time IF you have some experience with The Work.
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Someone asked me recently to share one of my turning points in healing my crazed eating.
There are several key moments when something shifted from that moment forward (all unplanned, but powerful parts of my journey) and these turning points all are related to stories I discovered were false.
Eight of these stories are actually ones I am including in Eating Peace Basics 101.
But one of these stories is a break-down of my beliefs about being honest about what was happening on the inside of me.
It was about how I perceived connection with other people: dangerous, risky, frightened of their rejection, frightened of their judgment.
I didn’t want to be abandoned or rejected, and I did everything to make sure to prevent those things from happening.
Trouble is, I constantly rejected and abandoned myself, and in my focus on avoiding these experiences, the dark cloud of them all floated around me all the time.
I ate, purged, I starved myself, I freaked out about eating and focused on food incessantly.
Here’s what happened. It wasn’t pretty. But reality was much friendlier–a thousand times friendlier–than my thoughts about it:

If you feel isolated the way I did, you may find connection in Online Retreat with me and Tom C, or the Eating Peace Basics course coming up. I’d be honored to have you in either one. It’s my heart’s joy to share the peace with others and it keeps me on my own journey of waking up to What Is.
Much love,
Grace
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Eating Peace Posts – Are You Sure You’re Ugly Or Overweight?

While I’ve been in silent retreat this week, I notice my body is the vehicle for getting into the meditation hall, lying down on the bed at night, making a cup of tea, moving into the kitchen for a meal.

My body takes me here, there, through life.

I used to attack the image of my body with such a vengeance, it was like having a disgusting, foul, cruel enemy with me all the time.

What I didn’t realize was that it was my thinking that was the meanest…..not my body.

And actually, it wasn’t inherently cruel, it was only frightened.

My thinking believed I should look a certain way, present a picture of health or beauty, or else it would mean I was sub-standard somehow, not good enough, horrible, gross.

I never thought through very far why I got that message, where I got that message, what happened that took me from childhood innocence of not caring or noticing the body….

….into imagining it was something to be shunned, something ugly, something constantly needing improvement and criticized.

Why so important? What’s going on?

Such a deep, desperate fear that people will be repulsed and abandon me…or something. I never thought about it. I never questioned my beliefs about beauty.

They were totally bizarre and crazy!

People who perceive themselves as having eating troubles will often think that without the mean, vicious thoughts, they wouldn’t care and they’d eat more, exercise less, care less, and get worse than they already are.

They wouldn’t be motivated to change their eating.

But I have found the opposite to be true. The complete opposite.

If hating your body and your looks doesn’t lead you to change, why not try loving it the way it is instead?

You’ve got nothing to lose, right?

CLICK HERE to watch Byron Katie facilitating The Work with a woman who hates her body and sees it as ugly, flabby and wrong.

Catch yourself being unloving to the image you see in the mirror.

Notice when you are unloving with yourself if you’re stuffing food into your mouth. Be gentle with yourself and accept your cravings. Ask yourself like the kindest grandma you ever met what’s going on, is there anything you need right now?

Practice being madly in love with you, your body, your condition just the way it is.

Kiss you arm right now! Do it!

See what I mean?

Love is inside you, living and breathing and tender and vibrant. It can heal anything. Including a difficult relationship with food.

In fact, it may be the only thing that does.

You are beautiful!

Much Love,  Grace