The Heal Overeating support program continues to unfold this spring. Part of my effort includes periodic posts here in an audio format, sharing with you my research and results as they happen.
Topics include David Kessler’s “The End of Overeating”, challenges for highly sensitive people, the social acceptability of soothing with food, shopping with kids (!), and how to establish buffers from overstimulating experiences in daily life without turning to food.
Audio blog: 22 March 2010. 14:17 minutes.
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Karly,
I really appreciate your advice about getting into yoga. Doing yoga brings me out of my head(which tells me to eat) and into my body (which, as an overeater, is most likely not hungry). I overeat both when I am overstimulated and under-stimulated. When I’m bored or relaxed I find it sometimes harder to eat just what my body needs. I’m always at war with myself over how much I can eat. I’m never quite sure until it’s too late and I feel sick. How can I learn to limit myself in a healthy way?
Hi Justine,
I hear your frustration. And yet I also hear your self-awareness – you seem to be really in tune to your habits. That’s a fabulous place to start.
When you’re able to see the patterns, start writing down how you feel. What feelings are underneath the boredom? What feelings are underneath the overstimulation? If you didn’t turn to food, what would you have to face, confront or feel? That question is the root one for me.
If this feels murky, one thing that really helped me was writing down my feelings before eating – getting them out of my head and down on paper. Then I could make the connections between how I was feeling and my reactions with food.
Then the work (for me) is holding those feelings with kindness and compassion and showing them care. This is not easy – they are often feelings I don’t want to have or feelings I feel like I shouldn’t have. That’s where kindness comes in – tenderly caring for my feelings. I literally put my hand on my heart and say, “I care about this fear, or loneliness, or anxiety, or boredom” – whatever the feeling is. That care and compassion melts my armor. It enables me to sit with my feeling and stop resisting it – or judging it. And if I continue to judge it, then I try and show compassion towards my judging.
This compassion softens me and opens me up. It’s what enables me to feel soothed and comforted and access my deeper wisdom about knowing what to do – which hopefully doesn’t involve a plate of food.
We go deeply into these questions in the Heal Overeating: Untangled course that you can find here: http://www.firstourselves.com/overeating-support/
XO, Karly
Having woken up at 5.30am and recognising that I need to seek some support around my over eating which is pervading all aspects of my life, I took time to listen to your thoughts. I can see just how many transitions I am dealing with every day that I just did not recognise. I’ve been thinking I need to be big(emotionally) to cope. I will reflect on your comments and try to integrate some of your advice today.
Hi Jory,
I appreciate your heartfelt comment and honesty. Transitions are so challenging. I always thoughts I needed to be “tougher,” more resilient, more emotional strong to heal my addiction to food and my depression. And yet what I found is that I didn’t need to be tougher – I needed to be softer. I needed to give myself more care and support instead of denying myself support and then beating myself up because I was struggling. Thank you for bringing this up, as it was healing for me to reflect on this truth this afternoon. Warmly, Karly
What a great resource!
Just listened to a few of your audio blogs (love Hafiz and Rumi too, what little I’ve read of them), and wanted to say again how grateful I am for what you do. First Ourselves is by far the best help I’ve ever gotten in dealing with my food issues (not only because it deals with the real issues underneath, but it also …digs deeper and wider than I’ve ever gone on my own), and I’m so grateful for all the support you send out on a regular basis. Thank you and God bless you!
Hi Katie,
I appreciate your gratitude and your kind comments. It is comments from women like you that keep me going – it is food for my soul.
Since you mentioned Rumi, I’d like to share the Rumi quote that is percolating in my life right now:
“Your task it not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Trying to have the perfect body, thinking of myself as irreparably flawed for having eating disorders, denying my needs (and joy) and then turning to food, hating my body when it’s saddled with extra pounds – these are just some of the ways I have created barriers against love….
Much love to you, Karly
Ah, Karly you are so articulate and always help me shift just when I need it. I really connected with the idea of recognizing the difficult transitions and my relationship with food in those transitions. For me, vacations, trips, when the children go to bed, having guests, eating out – these all are transitions for me and challenge me to stick to my health goals. Reflecting on these times as transitions and figuring out a way to continue to take care of myself when a transition presents itself – this is my work. Thank you for these insights, mama!
Raelee,
Your comment makes me think about your own work with parents and children (check out Raelee at http://www.noblemother.com – what a powerful parenting coach!) As you recognize, too many transitions in one day is overstimulating to children. Too many transitions in one day is overstimulating to adults, too. This is a huge key for me in healing my overeating. I often use food to navigate transitions, instead of soothing myself. More importantly, I’ve been learning how to honor this limit in my life by creating fewer transitions so that I’m not using food to do this. This is much harder, because I don’t like limits – even though the consequence of not doing this is overeating. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, Raelee!