How to Stop Eating for the Wrong Reasons
Posted 8/15/14 by Dr. Elin Ritchie MD
How to Stop Eating for the Wrong Reasons
Recently, I was meeting with a group of women in my office. We meet once a month to learn about weight loss. We have a lot of fun learning and sharing our lives and experiences. I always learn as much from them as they learn from me. Together we explore the journey to health and wholeness, inside and out.
We began this meeting going around the circle and taking a ‘weather report.’ If you haven’t done this before, it’s worth going over. Instead of reporting the outer circumstances of our lives, we share the inner condition we find ourselves in. Some people respond that they have “sunshine and warm weather,” others have “scattered clouds,” and occasionally one of us has a “cold front coming in with snow expected.” In this way we get in touch with our feelings without the ‘story’ and explanation of why we think we feel this way.
Have you ever noticed that talking about your problem, or the reason you’re upset doesn’t really help resolve the issue. Think back to the last time you were distressed about something. It could have been a comment from someone at work or at home, or a financial matter that did not go the way you wanted it to. If you were upset and said or did something from that place of upset, what result did it have? Did your action bring about a result you preferred? Most often if we act out of anger, sadness or fear, the result is not as effective as it could have been.
One of the first things our weight loss group did was learn how to recover from an upsetting situation as quickly as possible. I can’t say we all do this as well as we would like, just that we are learning more and more about how to transform our feelings into a more positive form. For many in the group the whole concept is completely the opposite of what they are used to doing.
For example, Sandy had particular difficulty at first with this whole concept. She shared that she rarely knows how she feels to begin with. She has spent most of her life stuffing her feelings, making sure they did not surface. She began to realize that part of why she is 30lbs overweight is because she stuffs her feelings with comfort foods. There were many nods around the group when she was able to talk about this.
Here’s how we first learned the ‘weather report’ exercise. I introduced the concept that feelings can be described metaphorically as types of weather. It was pretty easy to get the idea. Most people naturally feel better on a sunny day than they do on a cloudy day. We talked about all types of weather, the low pressure just before a rain or snow; gentle rain or mist vs. pounding rain of a lightening storm; beach weather or windy weather. We explored what types of feelings could be represented by the different patterns. Certainly, not everyone used the same types of weather for the same feelings, but that didn’t really matter. The main thing is to have a way to get in touch with the core of how you feel in any given moment.
The thing is, by verbally telling the story that led to a feeling, we are often blocking our body's experience. In other words, we go up into our heads to tell the story, and no longer feel the sensations in our body at all. The sensations in the body can be so uncomforatable or painful we want to avoid experiencing them. For example, if you have a big loss your chest may hurt or you might feel like you just got punched in the gut. We eat food to cover over these uncomfortable body sensations.
Ignoring the sensations in the body leaves emotional feelings festering beneath the surface, often leading to emotional over eating. Acknowledging uncomfortable body sensations associated with emotional feelings, can free us from eating the wrong things for the wrong reasons.
Love and Gratitude,
Dr. Elin Ritchie MD
