Are you Trying to Escape ‘What Is’ With Food?

When I was in the depths of my sugar addiction, overeating and yo-yo dieting, most of the time I didn’t like what I was feeling, so I would eat or diet to alter what I was feeling. But this just re-enforced the fear and perception that I needed to diet to ‘gain’ some control over my food and weight. Feeding the whole problem cycle (pun intended). To fully break myself of this pattern, I instead had to commit to learning to tolerate discomfort, aka. feelings ~ ALL feelings regardless of whether they were biochemical, physical (such as physical pain) or emotional. I needed to be able to hang out with my experience and not have to alter that experience with food and dieting. So how did I learn to create resilience with feelings. I did the following steps: 1. When the urge to overeat or eat out of alignment with what my body craved, I paused, connected to my body, and allowed what I was feeling to emerge. I also described those feelings as sensation words and would sometimes write them down to stay objective. For example: I feel…sad, depressed, hopeless, helpless, stuck, pathetic, angry. The sensations underneath these feelings are…shortness of breath, constriction in the chest, tension in the jaw, numbness in legs, pain in hips. 2. I called on support. I would visual a mentor and ask them for guidance and strength and simply feel and relax into their support. 3. I would write down all the judgements I had about what I experiencing and would ask myself if I was willing to let these judgements go. Because it wasn’t the feelings that I was struggling with the most, it was how I judged these feelings ~ that something bad was going to happen if I kept feeling this way. And the ironic thing was, the more I judged what I was going through, the worse the feelings felt. And the more urge I had to eat to escape. Typical judgements could be…. I don’t like this feeling and sensation, it sucks, it has me feel out of control, how am I suppose to function and pay the bills if I am feeling this way, am I ever going to get my life together, I’m so pathetic, I feel so abnormal, when am I going to start feeling good for a change, etc. etc. 4. I had gratitude. Sometimes I had to fake it and just speak the words, even if I didn’t believe. It got me into the habit however. The funny thing is, the more and more I practiced these steps the more and more I was drawn effortlessly to those foods that are healthy and alive. My whole life, I thought I had to use will-power and control to manage my food. Now I see, that I actually had to let go of my control and let go of all the ways I wanted to ‘fix’ and change what I was going through. And it was through trusting and letting go that enabled a greater sense of empowerment and awareness to surface with my food choices. Are you a yo-yo dieter and/or overeater? If so, are you like I was, trying to escape ‘what is’ with food?