Stop Suffering About

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Overeating

What Should We Do With The Drive To Overeat?

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If you’re reading this then I’m sure you’ve felt it.

“DriveThe drive to eat something even when you’re not hungry. Or the drive to eat a larger portion than you need.

(Note: I’m using the example of overeating, because that’s my experience, but you can substitute over drinking or gambling or shopping too much for that word. A habit is a habit is a habit. They all come from the same place: thinking.)

It’s likely that you’ve done various things to deal with this feeling. Used different coping mechanisms or strategies. Maybe you’ve also had lots of feelings about it. I certainly have.

Some of the things that might happen as a result of that drive to overeat are:

  • feelings of shame
  • feelings of helplessness
  • beating ourselves up
  • going on a diet and white-knuckling it
  • giving in and feeling relief
  • and then feeling more shame or regret
  • wondering if anyone else feels this way
  • wondering how it is that your friends who are thin don’t seem to feel that same drive
  • hiding your eating from others

Thought

If you’ve been exploring the Inside-Out Understanding for a while, you may have caught on that one of the foundational principles is this: we live in the feeling of our thinking, not in the feeling of our experiences.

What that means is that everything we think and then feel about the drive to eat comes from within.

But without knowing that we’ve likely been caught for years battling the list of thoughts and feelings I’ve noted above, and others that I haven’t mentioned.

For example, I spent a number of years tackling the shame related to the drive to overeat and to being overweight. I read Brene Brown’s books and learned lots about self-compassion. I read Tara Brach’s book on radical self-acceptance.

But, as ever, trying to wrestle with those feelings of shame was like playing a game of whack-a-mole. I’d bop one feeling on the head, thinking I’d gotten rid of it or healed it, only to have another, or the same one, pop up again.

Set It Down

snow globe

What I’m learning from the 3 Principles is an entirely different approach. And it’s so contrary to my task-oriented fix-it approach that it’s taking a little getting used to.

But what I am experiencing is that when I set down my thoughts and attendant feelings about food, weight and overeating I begin to suffer less. My feelings and thoughts have less weight (sorry) now.

What I’m beginning to see is that we are by nature whole and healthy. I don’t have any irrevocable proof for that, other than a firm belief that we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And that the spiritual essence in each of us can never be damaged.

I do notice that when I stop fighting with my thoughts and feelings they settle down and fade away much more quickly that when I wrestle with them.

Dr. Amy Johnson uses the metaphor of a snow globe for this phenomenon. If the flakes in a snow globe are swirling around we don’t have to do anything to make the swirling stop, other than set the globe down. The snow will settle on its own.

I see our thoughts and feelings about overeating like the snow in that snow globe. When we try to make the feelings and thoughts go away, we’re unintentionally and innocently shaking up the globe even more. Then we have a bigger, faster snowstorm to deal with.

Little book of big change

I spent this past weekend with a friend. He’s six feet tall and weighs less than I do at my 5 feet 3 inches. And when we’re sharing a meal together I can see that he feels zero drive to overeat. It just doesn’t occur to him to want more food than his body needs. It’s baffling to me, someone who has a voice in her head when it comes to food screaming, “That’s not enough! More! You need more! This is a matter of life and death!”

I confess that it’s hard not to feel shame in that situation. And in fact, I did feel shame and many other uncomfortable thoughts and feelings this weekend.

But because I know where my thoughts are coming from, I let them be. I didn’t wrestle with them.

I’m still learning, still waiting for insight about how to change my eating habits and lose weight.

And in the meantime, what I do know to do is not worry about my drive to overeat. Like any thought or feeling, it’s temporary. And the more I see that, the more I expect the weight loss / food snowstorm in my particular snow globe will settle down.

Have you experimented with setting your thoughts and feelings about overeating down since you learned about this understanding? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

PS If you haven’t read it yet, I highly, highly recommend Dr. Amy Johnson’s book The Little Book of Big Change, which is all about changing habits like overeating.

Also if you’ve already read it, try reading it again. I read it for the first time two years ago. Now that I’ve learned more about the Principles I’m reading it again and it’s almost a brand-new book to me. I’m getting so much more out of it, because I can see more now about what she’s pointing to.

[Food images courtesy Kelly Jean and Unsplash. Snow globe image courtesy N and Unsplash.]

Why Diets Don’t Work, And Why This Is Good News

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Have you ever tried and failed to lose weight? Me too.

“whyIt wasn’t until very recently, though, that I understood why that was.

I’d long thought I lacked the necessary willpower or stick-to-it-iveness. Maybe I was just lazy or stupid. Turns out, the cause for my failure – and possibly yours – was none of those things.

In Dr. Amy Johnson’s book, The Little Book of Big Change, she has a chapter dedicated to how our habits are actually a sign of our mental health. When I first read that I was confounded. She explains that we are all innately resilient, whole and well.

At our essence is peace and well-being, no matter what is going on outside ourselves. But if we don’t feel that well-being, if it is obscured by clouded thinking and a misunderstanding about where our experience of life comes from, then we’ll do whatever we can to feel better.

“If you don’t see a better option – a better way to feel good – you’re going to do what you can.” 

Dr. Amy Johnson

If it looks like eating a comfort food is going to help us get a small taste (pun intended) of the peace that is our essence, then we’re going to do that. This is the role of every type of addiction – food, alcohol, drugs, shopping, etc.  With our habit or addiction, we are actually trying to remind ourselves of who we truly are.

Our nature, as spiritual beings having a human experience, is whole, complete, and peaceful. We’ll do anything to connect with that essence, including overeating or drinking too much.

This is why diets don’t work

Little book of big change

When we diet without being aware of this, we’re simply cutting ourselves off from the source that we believe comforts and nurtures us, connecting us to the closest feeling we can manufacture that reminds us of our pure essence. This is why so many people stop one habit only to pick up another. For example, we might stop smoking but then start eating to excess. 

If an electronic device, for example your cell phone, is running out of battery power, you naturally plug it in to charge it. That’s what we’re doing when we overeat, except instead of connecting to electricity, we’re connecting to a false source of energy. (Sorry, this metaphor is a little messy.) 

Diets try to convince us that we shouldn’t need to connect to that source of energy. But instinctively we know this isn’t true so we cheat on the diet or we stick to it for a while, but then go back to overeating. 

The fact that diets don’t work shows us that they’re the wrong tool for the job. If dieting was the answer, it would work, 100% of the time, across the board for everyone. The diet industry would disappear because it wouldn’t be needed any longer. But the fact that so many of us struggle with diets points us to the truth that they’re not the right answer to the question that is being asked. 

Overeating, or any habit / addiction, is not a failure on the part of the person doing that habit. It’s actually a neon sign pointing to the fact that each of knows that peace and wholeness are who we are.

Searching for answers

I long knew that diets weren’t the answer, and I had various explanations for why that was the case, though none of them rang completely true until I came across the 3 Principles. I knew from my own personal experience that I was comforting myself with food, so I tried to find other ways to do that, or ways to not need to be comforted so much. 

waterfall

Nothing I tried worked and looking back I can see it was because I didn’t understand the nature of thought and how our experience comes from the inside-out, not the other way around. When we see this, and our minds naturally start to quiet down, we are more often able to connect to the peace that is our true nature. When that happens the need to do our habit effortlessly drops away.

It is possible, of course, to succeed at dieting and some people are able to make it last. Sadly those people are the exception, not the rule, and the rest of us end up feeling like it must be ourselves that are the problem.

I was reminded of the truth of this talking to Greg Suchy in episode 2 of the Stop Suffering About podcast. Greg’s habit was alcohol. He’d gotten sober and was going to AA meetings, but mentioned during our conversation that he was miserable between meetings. It was only when he discovered the 3 Principles and began to see the inside-out nature of thought, that he was able to connect to joy and peace once again.

This is a huge topic and one a simple blog post won’t be able to address completely. But here’s why I wanted to bring it up.

I’ve recently drawn a line in the sand with myself. I’ve tried every outside-in way to lose weight and failed at all of them. Some more than once. I refuse to do that any longer.

Thankfully, I recently had the experience of a 30-year habit falling away effortlessly and totally unexpectedly, simply because I’ve begun to explore the nature of thought and where the human experience comes from. That experience seems to have shown me that I’m on the right track. I’ve been searching for answers about overeating for 30 years and finally, I think I’m getting close.

I’ll keep sharing here and on the podcast. 

Let’s see what’s really possible when we stop applying the wrong tool (dieting) to the job of connecting to our true, peaceful nature.

Has your understanding of your habits changed since you started to explore the 3 Principles? Please leave your thoughts below and join the conversation.

[Donuts image courtesy Sharon McCutcheon and Unsplash. Waterfall photo courtesy Daniel Hjalmarsson and Unsplash.]