Mind over Munching!

Author: Gary Ratson

January 22, 2010

Can you remember the last time you read anything new about weight loss?  Diets and obesity related illness have got to be the most written about topics in daily papers and magazines.  But if a true solution was really known, the endless barrage of weight loss products and marketing would dwindle.

Unhealthy excess weight is a complex human problem that like addiction, crime, and divorce has no easy answers and deemed incurable by many experts.  That is, of course, because the solutions are directed to the surface symptoms.  The war on drugs, cancer, and fat are fear-based theories that use force, litigation, and shame for any temporary respite. Imagine targeting over-eating with the heart rather that the head, love rather than shame, and the truth within your own experience rather than changing scientific facts.

Dieting requires will power, discipline, and resistance that generally leads to misery based on denial, anger and self-loathing.  Consider coming from a place of understanding, compassion and self-acceptance with willingness and awareness to make profound life change practical, personalized, and even enjoyable,

Hunger and craving both manifest as physical sensations that automatically stimulate eating to satisfy and ease the feelings.  We become programmed from childhood through our family, culture, and the media to interpret and act on our hungry feelings in different ways.  Then our beliefs about our body, our past experience, and incomplete medical bits and pieces largely drive our lifestyle choices and eating behaviour.  It is this mind-body conditioning toward reflex eating that manifests physically as undesirable weight. We become enslaved to our subconscious habits.

Changing past conditioning and increasing awareness are the keys to all complex human problems.  Imagine making adult eating decisions and choices rather than gobbling mindlessly because of swinging moods or blood sugar.  By directing your attention within, by willingly confronting the urge to eat, it is possible for longstanding eating habits to dissolve.  Any shift in behaviour or of the body requires first a shift within consciousness.

The next time hunger or cravings arise take time to sit quietly before reacting.  Get a sense of the hungry sensation, where it is, what it feels like, and the severity.  Simply observe, go directly into the actual physical experience and keep yourself from labelling it, resisting it, or thinking of what it means.  Silently sit with it without any mental or physical reaction.  Maybe for the first time, allow yourself to recognize the sensations that have been driving your behaviour.

Become the master rather than the effect of your body-mind by agreeing to willingly face the full brunt of the snacking sensations.  Accept a little temporary discomfort in order to get to the bottom of a lifetime habit.  Know that this compelling feeling of wanting, needing, and desiring will eventually run its course.  Therefore invite more of it into your awareness.  Welcome it as an opportunity to put your entire past eating behaviour on the table.  Have an attitude of curiosity and control.

This exercise has no talking about diets, no rationalizing your cravings, or making excuses.  It is about listening to your body, surrendering perceptions and beliefs, and letting go endless fads and theories.  It is about rising above your animal nature, surrendering the primitive reflexes that have been controlling your life.  It is about breaking the cycle of reactive eating that multiplies the strength of the behaviour.  You won’t starve.  You will find that hunger pangs in your body actually decrease as the reflex eating is weakened within your mind.

Eventually, the appetite center in the brain readjusts, the physiology regains balance, and food cravings change.  Now you are in a position of making common sense choices and using reasonable nutritional advice without inner child choosing for you.

It might take 20 minutes or more the first time.  Each time afterward the time decreases until you can dissolve your ravishing hunger while standing in line at the buffet within seconds.  This new freedom and control brings new enjoyment of food that comes from eating rather than from hunger.  Mom’s advice to eat slowly and wait a moment before taking a second helping is realized in simultaneously training yourself to recognize the taste of food and feeling satisfied.  This intimate self control over major life behaviour brings confidence, happiness, and self love.

All self healing is about self love.  Surrendering past your relationship with food changes your relationship with yourself.  Know that all variety of crazy ideas were absorbed into your innocent mind without your adult consent.  Now by concentrating on old habits in the light of balanced and stable awareness you see what was otherwise blind.  Bringing the power of present moment to bear literally releases the mind from the past.  Courage, willingness, and love are always stronger than deprivation, denial, and resentment.  Enjoy!

the_souldoc@hotmail.com  Gary Ratson is the author of The Meaning of Health - The Experience of a Lifetime http://www.trafford.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000150916

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