Along the Path of Peaceful Eating, many a traveler has discovered true nourishment. If you wish to walk this path, some ways to begin include: paying respectful attention to your hunger, taking slow, healing, conscious breaths before eating and in-between bites, and asking yourself this most important question: "what am I really hungry for?" If you notice that the answer lies beyond the scope of a grocery store, a restaurant, or your own kitchen, you have just tapped into an incredible opportunity for personal growth, healing, and self-reflection.
"But I need to eat even though I am not hungry!"
Perhaps you do. Really. If this article resonates with your own personal anguish, then it is my belief that eating when you are not physically hungry has served a profound purpose in your life. In a culture in which we are continually bombarded with messages about diet, will power, shaming and moralistic words used to describe pleasurable foods, and millions of dollars spent annually on cosmetic surgery, it is difficult to chose a different view. And yet, I propose that your relationship with food and your body is not only about liking food, nor is it about willpower, rather it is about survival - a long standing belief deep in the cells of your being that certain experiences and their associated feelings are intolerable and unacceptable, and can and must be dulled, soothed, calmed, pacified, or just plain erased by food. And my guess is that for some time you were right. But at some point in the process of seeking to eliminate feelings, they are known to resurface in an altered form, ultimately causing more pain than had they been allowed to be present in the first place. So, the path of peaceful eating is a path that requires the cultivation of a practice of tolerance around the inner experience - feelings, while at the same time developing attention to the specifics of the relationship with food, through breath, attention, and numerous activities to increase awareness.
WHERE DO I START?
KNOW THYSELF: The first step on the path of peaceful eating is about self-awareness. Each category has an educational component (the didactic piece) and an activity component (the interactive piece) to learn more about how the overeating evolved as a coping mechanism, how it functions and serves still, and how to support and achieve the underlying goal of true self nurturance and nourishment. We start with self-knowledge.
1. Who Are You as an Eater?
- What are your earliest memories of:
- Food
- Eating
- Weight
- Weight Consciousness
- How did members of your family (and those who were part of your family or “like family” in your early life) deal with food?
- What do you remember about your first attempt to lose weight?
- 2nd attempt?
- 3rd attempt?
- How many attempts have you made?
- What is your pattern of weight gain and/or weight loss?
- What do you know about yourself and your weight gain/loss patterns with regard to:
- Stress
- Relationships
- Fear
- Anger
- Loss
- Life transitions
- Other factors…
2. Each Helping Helped – Each Serving Served
Your relationship with food developed for a reason – somehow and for significant reasons, overeating served a purpose, helped you cope, maybe helped you make sense of something incomprehensible to a child’s mind – helped distant you from something else which might’ve been too upsetting or confusing.
Somehow, someway, and for your individual reasons, EACH SERVING SERVED – EACH HELPING HELPED.
- How might food have served you over the years?
- Ages birth –5
- Ages 6-10
- Ages 11-14
- Ages 14-17
- Ages 18-22
- Ages 22-30
- Ages 30-40
- Ages 40-50
- Ages 50 to present
- Using the following words, explore (free associate) how food might have served you:
- Protection
- Comfort
- Friendship
- Love
- Compassion
- Connection
- Disconnection
- Avoidance
- (Make up your own words and write about them)
3. Choices/Chances/Changes
We all have fear. It's part of the human experience. Fear can protect us and fear can hinder us. Fear can motivate us and fear can stifle us. Fear can be a wise messenger and fear can be a lurking intrusion. How we hold fear has a direct impact on how we understand our choices in life, thus impacting the chances we take and the changes we make.
- How is your relationship with food NOW helping you to:
- Avoid making choices?
- Avoid taking chances?
- Avoid making changes?
- What do you say or think that you will do/be/have when food and weight are no longer an issue?
- How do you use food to comfort and soothe yourself NOW?
- What chances have you not taken due to your relationship with food?
- How has that served you?
- How has that limited you?
- What change do you want to make in your life TODAY that you have postponed due to food or weight?
4. Whammy! Double Whammy!!
The double whammy is when you beat yourself up for beating yourself up…or more specifically, when you’ve overeaten, binged, stuffed yourself, or somehow or other used food to cope, to soothe, to comfort – and then you get furious at yourself (you beat yourself up) for having sought comfort in the only way you were able at that time.
Not only doesn’t the double whammy feel good - it actually does the opposite of what it’s attempting to accomplish – by beating yourself up, you feel badly, hurt, sad, despairing, hopeless, etc… and how do YOU typically seek comfort when your down? If your answer is food, than a double whammy is likely to send you either crawling or sprinting in only one direction…MORE FOOD! So, the wound that you originally sought to comfort with food, has now been doubly wounded, thereby requiring an even stronger dose of comforting.
The double whammy concept is applicable to many aspects of self-reproach – the bottom line being: if I kick myself when I’m down, I’m more likely to stay down. If, however, I can use an incident such as a binge to learn about myself, then I can heal THROUGH my struggles rather than perpetuate them. Instead of berating yourself after a binge, try following these steps:
- Acknowledge and Identify your Feelings
- Journal about your Feelings, exploring the following questions:
- what precipitated the binge?
- what was I feeling/wanting/needing
- what felt intolerable that needed to be concealed by food?
- how else might I have met my needs?
- What can I try different next time?
- Breathe – cleansing, healing, connecting breath
- Take a Self-Soothing break (see exercise below):
- What are some ways, other than food, in which you can or do self-soothe, nurture, comfort? (try to list these ideas without judging them)
- How do you double whammy yourself?
- What other ways can you think of to interrupt a double whammy and bring a helping hand to yourself instead of re-wounding yourself?
* A note about double whammys: they can be stopped mid-whammy! A kind voice can interrupt a harsh voice and shift the direction of your thoughts and actions AT ANY TIME!
TRY IT NOW!!!
FUTURE CONTENTS:
5. Finding Fullness
6. Stuffed & Starving
7. Knowing your Best – Knowing your Worst
8. Dream it – Live it
9. Inner Critic – Inner Coach
10. Using Your Voice
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