I was waiting on my hairdresser yesterday when the cover of Redbook magazine caught my eye. Trust me – that is unusual for me! The cover was advertising an article inside about the real reasons that women have trouble losing weight. I flipped over to the article curious to see if my observations (the need for more rest and sleep) would be included. Instead, I was treated to more insights that I had never considered.
The article is about Geneen Roth’s book Women Food and God. According to the article, the author had been binging and dieting for 17 years and was just “done” with the cycle. She says that she stopped dieting, started listening to what her body wanted to eat, and settled into her “natural” weight. You can read the Redbook article here.
The author touched upon an area of compulsive overeating that I had never considered but that really hit home for me. Her first point is to “realize that the size of your body isn’t just about food.” She says that you have to look at the big picture and recognize that your relationship with food is expressing “all the self-defeating beliefs you have about yourself and your life.” She says that you cannot separate out the way you eat from the way you live. Wow!
Then, she provides a couple of examples. She says that the person who eats “on the run” and will not take time out to sit and enjoy a meal is expressing a belief that everything else in life is more important than you are. If you do this, you need to be asking yourself how you want to be spending your time. All of this ties in with my need to set aside time to rest and relax. I used to eat on the run, and now I do set aside a “lunch break” every day that I thoroughly enjoy.
Her other example was feeling guilty for eating one cookie. The author asks, “If you feel guilty for eating one cookie, for instance, what does that say about the pleasure you deprive yourself of in daily life?” This article has given me a lot to think about, and I might just have to order that book.
The article includes four other points:
2. Understand that weight loss isn’t everything — but it is something.
3. Go ahead and feel bad.
4. Believe that you deserve happiness.
5. Eat when you are hungry.
Her point in #3 about feeling badly is something I have been working on for years through therapy. I ate as a child to “stuff down” the painful emotions, and I have gotten much better about just allowing myself to “feel bad” for a little while. The pain always passes. I am still a work in progress with the other three points. It is point #1 that I really want to focus upon.
Again, here is the link to the article on overcoming food addiction.
Photo credit: Amazon.com
Blooming Lotus 
I would comment but I am eating lunch watching The Daily Show and playing Free Cell.
I came across a recommendation for that book some weeks ago and I thinks its spot on. When I recall it correctly there was also statement about how not to deprive your body but instead trust it. Which I found to be very true and unsurprisingly had a huge issue with.The mere concept of trusting your body was something I had never heard of or thought was possible. I have had severe eating disorder for 10 years plus and am now at the point where I enjoy my daily (!) deliberate(!!) chocolate treat (my greatest “enemy” for decades), have no eating problems whatsoever ( which I still sometimes cannnot believe cos my eating disorder felt like my life) and the size my body has naturally, which is a sustainable size 6 meaning there is not much weight-fluctuation and I can eat what I want as long as its balanced and comes with chocolate every day:)
What helped me greatly in overcoming those binge attacks was doing the total opposite to what I was used to do: I allowed myself to have those. I refused to no longer judge myself for having it. I accepted that I had an eating -disorder by owning it. I went like: awesome, this is MY eating-disorder , and its mine only. Period. It was like integrating an alter part:) And once I was able to acknowledge its life-saving function it had for me and all the payoffs it started losing its grip on me. It also freed up ressources to face the hidden emotions. Its like with any challenge we are faced: surrender to it, then own it and then understanding sets in. and then you only need to apply your newly acquired constructive problem-solving skills… haha easy as and took me three years;) and I think that book would have helped me a great deal…
and its just came to my mind the way that one reader wrote a letter to her body, during my therapy I was required to write a letter to my eating disorder treating it as a friend. It went like: Dear ….(whatever eating-disorder it is),
I would like to thank you for….
ie. always being there for me, for always protecting me…etc
It totally helped me change my perspective cos then I was able to see how much I got out off that “relationship” with my eating disorder and why it had been such a faithful companion to me. And step by step I was able to see my needs behind it and learned to fulfill those needs in a more constructive way.
and Thanx to Michael: your comment:hilarious lol and off for some chocolate treat myself;)
Just saying hello.
mia
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