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FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2010
FEED THE MIND INSIGHTS INSTEAD OF FOOD
It is so painful to watch people struggle in their attempts to break the emotional eating habit. I wish I had a quick and easy solution like a pill or a mantra, or a simple just –do- this formula and everything will be okay. Everyone who suffers from this kind of addiction to food as relief or reward works hard to break it, but almost always fails no matter how hard they try because they are having the wrong conversation with themselves. They are talking to themselves about food, calories, programs, will power and self loathing when they binge or fail to lose weight. What they should be talking to themselves about is the problems in living they are avoiding or denying when they use food to close down their mind.
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The theme of these recent blog session is feeding your mind with food. That means you use food to interrupt your mental conversations with yourself because you are avoiding something, That means you will always eat too much because there is always something to worry about. If you would simply eat an apple a day’s worth of calories more than you need, you will gain twelve pounds a year.
That’s why all diets will eventually fail.
The question is how can I help you get from the wrong but familiar repetitive non-productive conversation you are having with yourself about your weight to the correct and productive conversation you must have with yourself in order to break the emotional eating mindset?
The answer is insight. Insight sounds vague, but it is the most powerful tool the mind has to work with. You have first hand knowledge of the power of insight. You’ve undoubtedly had flashes of insight that have shifted your attitude, changed your behavior and opened up new pathways as you go through the life cycle. Insights are what help us understand and interpret reality in a more accurate way. When we have the insight that we have misunderstood our spouse on an important matter, we can apologize and make some reparations for our error and avoid repeating it in the future. The meaning of what our spouse did or did not do is changed because of that insight when we recognize that he or she wasn’t thinking what we thought they were thinking.
The insights about weight control you need are those that help you correct the profound misunderstanding that inhabits your mind that food is not really food but a form of medication to be used to soothe and shut down the thinking mind.
If you follow my line of thinking, then we've established that the cure for weight control is a psychological cure, and the medicine we use for a psychological problem is insight. If we feed the mind the right insight instead of food, we can help you switch from the wrong conversation you are having with yourself to the right one. Then you can get off the yo-yo dieting merry go round and really take control.
In my last several blog postings I have struggled with this question of what are the right insights and how should they be sequences for the best result. There is an insight pathway from food controls me ( the starting point of all emotional eating); to the cure, food is only use food, to be enjoyed and used for essential healthy sustenance.
There are ten specific insights that have to be learned in sequence in order to reach that goal. Instead of repeating those ten here, click here.
These are the insights that are sprinkled throughout the Shrink Yourself program and my book Shrink Yourself. I think that the new clarity about this pathway will be immediately useful to you. I encourage you to identify where you are on this pathway.
Let me know if this helps as much as I think it will.
POSTED BY !DR. GOULD! | 3:00:10 PM
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The Shrink Yourself Blog
The Shrink Yourself Blog, hosted by Michelle Fiordaliso, clinical director of Shrink Yourself, gives you expert info on emotional eating.
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