If your food could talk, what is it saying to you? Is that before you eat it or after? Is there a difference?
If you could talk to your food, what do you hear yourself saying to it? Before you consume it? After?
What does your food feel like inside of you? Where is it? In your mouth? Stomach? Heart?
Consider for a moment that you have all your own answers right there inside of you. Why are you overeating?
—I had lots of answers to this question that implicated me in many negative ways. I overate because I was tired, lonely, stressed, angry, self-loathing, bored, scared, or feeling guilty for having over-eaten. I also overate because I was fat or felt that I looked fat, and I overate because I had a feeling in my belly that I thought was hunger. Often times it was only gas. Always the solution was the same, however. EAT!
All I thought about was food and my weight. Now I don’t think about food as much as I used to, I rarely worry about it, and I delight in my high level of health. I eat whatever I want when I want. I rarely want now what I wanted 17 years ago. It took me nearly 10 months to fill myself with those things and then “I got it.” My head and my heart got the message. I can have those things whenever I want them. No one is ever going to take them away from me (I am never going to take them away from me.) Their power diminished. I had given those foods power by depriving myself of them. Now I could have them whenever I wanted them and their power was gone.
After I had stopped dieting for a year, I went for weeks at a time without eating pasta or chocolate because I didn’t want them. Didn’t even think of them. I developed trust in myself, not trust to stay away from “dangerous” foods as before, but trust that I would eat that which would satisfy me whenever I needed to. Old “trigger foods” no longer have any bang.
I know now that the problem got so big, as did I, because I dieted so much. There are physical and emotional laws that will restore every ounce you lose (plus interest) if you have lost it by dieting, by deprivation, or by someone else’s schedule or plan. Now it’s my schedule, my plan, my choice. I evolved through my process of not dieting.
I attended Geneen Roth’s workshop because her postcard described my life, the years and years of dieting, losing and gaining weight, the obsession. I could never have guessed what she would say at that workshop. It never occurred to me that dieting was the problem. I never heard of “NOT dieting.” What a novel idea. What a logical solution. What a challenging concept.
I had no metabolism and I vowed to stop dieting and start eating. I committed to myself that I would consciously eat, consciously gain weight, and consciously love myself, thick or thin, the entire time. I tried believing this process was my answer and I believed it would work, no matter how long it took. By my standards, it took a long time but I was so darn happy eating it didn’t matter. I was finding satisfaction.
I plunged into eating every single thing that I had denied myself of during years and years of deprivation dieting. I carried food, food that I loved or food that I had deprived myself of, everywhere I went. I still carry my signature blue cooler everywhere I go. It’s filled with an assortment of things I like because I just never know exactly where I’ll be or when I’ll be hungry. Over the years, the assortment has changed as the food I love has changed. I do not eat things I do not like. The list of things I do NOT like has grown over these last 17 years.
I followed Geneen Roth’s guidelines and ate only when I was hungry. I had to figure out what the heck that felt like. I had to find out what being hungry felt like inside my belly, my heart, and my mind. I had to embrace hunger as a messenger of information. I had to embrace hunger, not fear it. Also, I had to embrace the feeling of not being hungry when I wasn’t hungry. I had to learn how that feels, how to “endure” the feeling, how NOT to eat if I was not physically hungry.
I had to uncover my own hunger, my physical hunger and my emotional hunger. I had to discover what would feed my hunger. Somewhere along the process I experienced a disconnect. I was able to disconnect emotional hunger from physical hunger. I began to NOT EAT when under pressure. I began to lose weight when under stress.
I ate to my heart’s content for approx 10 months until, all on its own, something clicked. My heart really believed that my head would never take away it’s food again. I really believed that I would never, ever go on another diet again. That was a huge AHA! And I have never, ever gone on a diet again.
For a time in 2000, I altered my food choices to explore if it would help me kick a systemic yeast infection. It was an interesting time and it was truly survivable because I was at choice. I chose to explore for a short period of time a limited selection of food choices. It was about solving physical discomfort and regaining health. It was not about losing weight. I had stopped dieting in 1990 so I had 10 years under my belt, so to speak. Yes, some old fears surfaced. Is this a diet? Will I feel deprived? Will I go out of control? No, no and no. I ate what I wanted to eat within my yeast-free parameters and I felt very satisfied. I found new foods to satisfy me. I needed something sweet so I started what would become a long love affair with organic almond butter. I buy it 8 or 10 jars at a time and I eat it out of the jar with a tablespoon. I require no vehicle to carry almond butter into me, no bread, no fruit, no celery. It tastes good, it feels good, and I am satisfied by it.
By anyone’s standards, I am a thin person (yes, that’s really me it turns out.) By most people’s standards, I eat a lot of food. You wouldn’t believe it. I don’t weigh it, measure it, count it, log it, or even remember it. Most food doesn’t impress me anymore. I have become so much more discriminating. Example: at a little office party for a co-worker, I realized I absolutely hate store-bought birthday cake. I abhor the cake, it’s flavorless, fake, and I can’t stand the cheap, corn-syrup frosting. Also, I dislike the feeling of extreme fatigue it gives me later. I’d deal with the fatigue if I liked it or wanted to eat it but it’s my choice. Weird, I can’t stand grocery store cake or even most restaurant versions! It’s usually defrosted, full of corn syrup and fake flavorings and it does not satisfy me.
I do not consume any “diet” products. I do not use artificial sweetener of any kind and I do not eat “low-fat” products as such. I use real butter, real sugar and many “original” foods, not chemical inventions called food.
More at another time…