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Enlightenment #5 (The Cause of Compulsive Eating)
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Feb 20, 2023
Just heard someone say the hardest part about weight loss was ... ‘My stomach compulsively making me to eat a ton of food ... even though I don’t want to’ And it’s true. Compulsive eating may feel like a disorder sometimes, like your stomach is the one in charge. This can be the hardest part about losing weight! But before we dive into the solution... let’s just real quick do a thought experiment: Do you see food in binary terms? Because in the Yoga of Weight Loss we try to learn to see all foods as equal. Not nutritionally equal, no. Obviously all foods are not nutritionally equal. But our emotional reaction to eating food needs to become equal. So whether you eat a donut or an avocado, there’s no guilt or shaming either way. When I lived as a monk (and later on during my 6 year stint as a yoga teacher) I really gotta understand the importance of nonjudgment. Because judging yourself after everything you eat will only worsen any compulsion.
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Today, we talk about the biggest enlightenment in weight loss enlightenment
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To be honest, I've been scared to even talk about this because it's a little overwhelming at first
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But this is the enlightenment. Like, when I first read about this and heard about this and when it worked for me
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when I first read about it and then I worked, I was like, holy crap. This is a way different way of seeing food
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And, you know, it's important to realize before we just dive into it, the steps we've kind of taken to understand why this view of reality, this enlightenment I'm about to share with you is possible
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So first you became aware of cravings, right? You noticed, oh my God, if I am in a craving state, then my willpower goes to hell
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if I'm upset and I'm hungry, then I cannot resist eating pizza or whatever. And then you kind of
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started becoming aware of how your hunger sounded, your hunger levels, when you got empty throughout
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the day or when you started overeating. What was it like to be moderately hungry or mildly hungry
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You started just noticing your hunger more, what the unique voice of your hunger was. And then we
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went on and learned two or three core concepts. First of all, we learned about the boomerang
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effect. So the hunger, the boomerang effect is when you're too busy, you're, you're, you're in
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work, you're, you're in, you don't have time to eat. So you press down your hunger, you suppress
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it. Or maybe you say to yourself, you're at some party. No, I can't have, you know, those hot dogs
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or whatever. I can't have those. So I'm hungry, but I suppress my hunger. I shouldn't have those
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whatever. You're hungry. You want something, but you say no. So that boomerang effect is when you
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throw out the boomerang, you say no to your hunger. It's going to come back a few hours later
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maybe a day later, maybe a week later. But when the hunger comes back, it goes back to lesson one
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When that hunger comes back, uncontrollable cravings, chaotic, binging, you lose self-control
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because you're eating so much. And you feel, you know, that's where we're at
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We're just noticing this right now. Noticing this vicious pattern. And then you also became aware of the flip side
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So instead of pressing your hunger down, you became aware of when you got emotionally triggered
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Hungry, angry, lonely, tired. What was your trigger? And what happens when you get triggered
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You get fearful. You get overwhelmed. and you eat. It's your body's way of trying to stay alive and also to calm yourself down
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So you became aware of your hunger first, and then you became aware of your hunger in a couple
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different situations when you press it down and then the boobarang comes back. And then you became
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aware of your hunger when it gets triggered, when it gets, when your hunger gets infused with fear
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and you eat more than you should. And now what we're going to do is I'm going to reveal the core
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enlightenment of this entire thing that we're going to do. And this is so revolutionary that
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it might take a few weeks, even a few sessions, a few conversations, a few more videos to really
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wrap your head around it. So I'm going to tell you what it is, but don't get overwhelmed because
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we're going to integrate it into your life piece by piece, gently and slowly, like this whole
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program is about. Um, so the enlightenment, the enlightenment is unconditional eating
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eating anything without conditionals, without conditions. So condition might be something like
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that has too much sugar. So you can't have it. This is, it's not the right time. So you can't
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have it. Um, it's not part of the diet. It's not healthy. It's not good enough. It's, uh, whatever
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I just ate a few hours ago, so I shouldn't have this. I can't
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Whatever. Unconditional eating is taking away all of that. And it is really eating unconditionally
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Eating whatever you want, whenever you want, without feeling guilty. This is a crazy thing that is so revolutionary
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And it is really important we understand this enlightenment. Like this is the foundational enlightenment of weight loss enlightenment
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Eating anything you want to at any time. Chocolate, donuts, hot dogs, Halloween candy, anything, anytime
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It's crazy to think about it. What happens for a lot of people that I've worked with and they first hear about this enlightenment, this core enlightenment, is a little bit of fear gets triggered
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the thought usually is well if I eat anything I'm going to overeat
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I'm going to eat way too much I'm going to be out of control
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and so it's really really important to remember that in this program
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we talk with our fears we integrate our fears we don't just
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we do not just do it we work with our emotional selves feeling safe
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feeling joyous about our path and really bringing our emotional selves along for the ride So if you feeling a little bit scared about maybe eating everything you want to I get it
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I get it. And we're going to slowly ease your fear and help you understand why unconditional eating is the path to freedom
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So we're going to start at a theoretical level first. Unconditional eating works because the premise is listening to your body, hunger
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and learning when you're full and when you're naturally hungry. Learning the nuances of your hunger, the cues, the fullness
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what it feels like to be emotionally full. These cues are way more important than some diet out there
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Remember, weight loss enlightenment is about going inwards. The answer is within you
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Remember the third enlightenment? The hunger is your inner guide to health
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I know I said that, but it's going to sink in more and more. Hunger is your inner guide to health
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So this inward-looking perspective on health is way different than the diet industry
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The diet industry gives you rules. They give you, they say, don't trust your hunger
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They say, trust us. Don't trust your hunger. Trust us. Here's our diet
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Follow the diet. Here's what you should eat. Here's what you shouldn't eat. here are the rules, bam, do it. And the diet industry is a trillion dollar industry. And
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remember, they're vicious. They want your money. They want your money. It's a business
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for them. They want your repeat business. They want you to lose weight, gain the weight
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back, and then they want you to blame yourself. They want you to feel guilty because when
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you're guilty, it's your fault. It's your fault. And so this is the core reason you experience
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fear when you start to think about, uh, eating anything. It's because the diet industry
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unfortunately, and maliciously has literally brainwashed people through, through a very young
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age and, um, you know, having people, maybe yourself, maybe yourself having, uh, they put
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this message. You cannot trust your hunger. You need to follow our rules and you should feel bad
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when you don't follow our rules. You should go guilty. And so over the years, over repeated diets
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this message has been enforced. And so deep down, you might have this belief that you can't trust
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your hunger. You cannot trust your hunger. You need to manage your hunger. You need to control
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your hunger. But the path of freedom is actually realizing the opposite, that hunger is the gateway
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It's a much more effective way to have sustainable and even joyful weight loss. That's where we're
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going for right now. Because the diet industry, they don't tell you that 95% of diets don't work
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95% that's crazy 95% of people gain the weight back and more they mess up their metabolism they
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lose their confidence this is scientifically proven again again and you know it you never
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hear that from the diet industry all these whole 30 programs all these different diets paleo south
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beach whatever they don't tell you that it's not going to work because i want your money um
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so we're we're understanding a different paradigm we're understanding that health comes from within
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Hunger comes from within. And here's the key. When I give myself unconditional trust in my hunger, then simultaneously I am giving myself the power to not eat
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This is really, really important. The power to not eat. Because what happens is if you're aware, and this is going to be one of this week's assignment
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It's starting to getting to know some of these inner belief systems that are at force here
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The real root of the issue right here. What happens is for a lot of people is when they have food, not all the time, but often, often, commonly
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there is a subtle belief that I will not get fed again
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So I need to eat a lot right now. That's at a primal subconscious level
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And we need to face this if we're to uproot this nasty cycle
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Because this nasty cycle, here's this nasty cycle. I'm going to suppress my hunger
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I'm going to ignore it. And then it's going to come back
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And I'm going to feel overwhelmed. I'm going to binge eat. And I'm going to feel really guilty
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I'm going to blame myself. I'm going to lose more trust in my hunger. and then it's going to repeat over and over and over and over again
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We don't want that. Diet industry has repeatedly told you your hunger is not to be trusted
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And in your own experiences of perhaps overeating and feeling guilty, you might think you can't trust your hunger
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But we're going to change all that right now. Because what you going to start doing is really understanding when you start to when you sit down for a meal starting to become aware of whether or not you feel deprived
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Deprived. So this is where you're sitting down for a meal and subconsciously you think to yourself
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I don't know when I'll get my next meal, so I better have a lot of it now
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This usually goes back to childhood when you might have been fed irregularly or even more commonly the diet industry
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The diet industry wants you to restrict yourself. Let's say you're at a party and you want some food, but then the diet that you're on says
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No, don't have that food. It's not the right time. It's not enough calories, blah, blah, blah. Don't have it
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So you're hungry and basically you cut yourself off from your hunger
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And that tells your hunger, your inner kid, tells your inner animal that food is irregular
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When I'm hungry, I may not be fed. And now this belief, I may not be fed, the next time there's food in front of you, well, the animal in you that might not be fed, all of a sudden, it's scared
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It's in a scarcity mindset. so it eats uncontrollably. You can't control your animal
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This whole program, all these steps we're going through is integrating the animal with us
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integrating the inner child, working with the inner child, making it feel good
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making the animal in us peaceful. And so, you know, if you come from a history of dieting
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there's all these restrictions. And these restrictions, they've cut you off from your hunger
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And then your hunger thinks that no food is coming or it's unpredictable
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So it wants to keep you alive by overeating. So the first step of giving yourself gentle permission to unconditionally eat is to just start examining a couple of your belief systems
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The first one, noticing if you feel like food, like you might not get another meal
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I know that might sound crazy, right? Because there's all this food in America. There's all this food
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But it doesn't matter what you think. It doesn't matter what you know. It's what you feel in your gut
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When you have food, do you feel like this, like you might not get another meal sometime soon
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Do you feel that way? That's step number one. Notice if you feel like you might not get another meal
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Okay? Step number two is we got to talk about guilt. We got to talk about guilt here because the diet industry
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they've programmed you to feel guilty. So guilt happens when we have a rule that we don't follow
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It happens so much of the time. We ignore our hunger. Some time goes by, we're in a meeting
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we ignore our hunger. And then, or maybe we're on a diet and we say, no, we can't have that. So we
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ignore our hunger. That hunger plants a belief in us that food is scarce, unpredictable. And then
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time goes by and the boomerang, the boomerang comes back. All of a sudden pizza's in front of
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us. We're at a party. We're at a friend's house. We're out at lunch, whatever, uncontrollable
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eating. And then we feel really guilty afterwards. Really, really guilty, really guilty. And we need
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to talk about guilt because it's really a huge part of this whole puzzle. Um, first of all
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We will dive into guilt in a future session as well because it's really, really important
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But all we're doing right now is becoming aware of guilt. So guilt oftentimes occurs after you overeat
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You feel like, oh, man, I messed up there. Like I should have done better
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I should have done better. I failed. Now, another thing I want you to just pay attention to this week, not only when does guilt happen, maybe after eating or maybe after overeating, maybe after you have something you think you shouldn't have, like a chocolate or a candy or a piece of bread or whatever, just notice when you feel guilty, like you feel like you failed yourself
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and then maybe notice the voice in which your guilt talks to you
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in which you hear your voice. So not everyone has a voice, but a fair amount of people have a voice
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The voice is usually one of their parents. I know this woman who used to be a little heavier as a kid
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and one of her parents would say, you know, just work out for four hours
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Just every day, work out for four hours. Like, don't be lazy. You know, don't be fat
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Just work out for four hours like a little eight-year-old kid being told that
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So now every time she overeats or has something that makes her think that she failed, she has this voice criticizing her, demonizing her, saying, you're a failure
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You don't deserve this. You're lazy. and that voice then keeps her in a stressful mindset because that voice then tells her the
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cycle repeats itself that voice says you need to control your hunger even more you need to control your hunger even more It puts more restriction on hunger Your hunger then starts to more restriction on your hunger
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So you say, no hunger, you're bad. You're bad for being hungry. The hunger then thinks food
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is unpredictable, scarce. They might not get it. So the emotional self then eats again and you feel
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guilty again. So we're going to talk about guilt a lot, but for now we just want to become aware
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of guilt. So you got two things. Notice guilt. When does it come up? What foods do you feel
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guilty after you eat it? Um, or what do you feel guilt after overeating? Do you feel guilt after
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um, anything? When does guilt come up? What voice is it in? And then we also have the, um
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The feeling of scarcity and deprivation. Like even though you might have a ton of food around you, when you eat a meal, when do you feel like scarce
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Like you might not get another meal, so you've got to eat it all right now
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We also want to continue to build our awareness about when we get disconnected from our hunger
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We want to continue noticing what real hunger feels like when you're starving, what moderate hunger feels like when you're sort of hungry, what mild hunger feels like when you're not so hungry and you're just a little hungry, and what feels like when you're satisfied
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We also want to know what it feels like when you're over full, when you're too full, when you're bloated
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And we also are going to keep noticing these emotional triggers. What happens when instead of pressing down hunger, I get triggered emotionally and I start eating
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Maybe I'm lonely, depressed, angry, tired, hungry. What happens? What's my trigger
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Am I tired when I overeat, when I use food to cope with my emotions
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What's going on here? We're diving into this emotional thing right here
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And we are starting to wrap our heads around this big paradigm of unconditional eating, eating anything you want, anytime, anywhere
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And that might sound overwhelming at first. We are just going to take this one step at a time, allow you to start trusting your hunger again
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That's the whole, like you have to embrace the answers within you
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This is one of the biggest enlightenments. Hunger is your inner guide to health
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It might not seem like it. You might not believe me right now, but you will
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We're going to first tackle these limiting beliefs, the fear of scarcity
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Because here's the thing. When you give yourself unconditional permission to taste your food, enjoy your food, to have as much food as you want, you start working with your hunger
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if you allow yourself to just drop all these rules about when and how much and what calories
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and just trust your hunger, what's going to happen then is you will trust your hunger enough to not
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eat. This is huge. I cannot describe to you how huge this is. Unconditional permission to eat
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gives you the power to not eat. Give yourself permission, emotional permission. Give yourself
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emotional permission to eat food, whatever you want. And even though it might feel a little weird
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maybe you eat a little more bread, a little more pizza, maybe it feels a little bit weird
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but you'll notice then you get the freedom to not eat. You'll be at a restaurant and be like, no
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I don't need to eat that because I know that I will have food later on because I'm giving myself
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emotional freedom. So it's really important to wrap yourselves, your head around this
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Just for now, though, notice the body cues of if you're in a scarcity mindset when you start to eat, notice the voice of guilt
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And remember, this is a slow, gradual practice. Slow and gradual and joyful
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I know this might not seem very joyful right now. We're talking about stress, anxiety, hungry, angry, lonely, tired, emotional eating
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We're talking about ignoring hunger and then having uncontrollable cravings and feeling guilty
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And ultimately what we're doing, though, is we're starting to learn about us, our animal hunger, our hunger
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This is it, the energy of hunger. When we can learn to listen to our hunger, then naturally our hunger will start guiding us into healthier choices
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naturally. Something that you actually want to do. And something that where if you don't force it
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if you allow yourself to improve slowly, 1% better each day, a little more aware of your hunger
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a little more aware of when you're stressed out, a little bit more aware of when you're
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disconnected to your food, a little bit more aware of fullness and how protein fills you up
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These little things. If you have this mindset of little improvements that feel good
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that feel good to my hunger, you're going to start seeing a massive transformation
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because your hunger is going to guide you to the right foods at the right time
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without any diet. That's the enlightenment
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