Food for Thought....

Well, as it turns out, brightening the day of everyone I interacted with was rather a big challenge - I did pretty well until about 2pm and then it all went horribly downhill. I got tired and cranky and wanted the world to leave me alone and seeing as that wasn't going to happen, I snuck out to the hot chocolate and dutch pancake stall which is currently set up out the front of the office for a nice chocolatey, pancakey, sugary dose of yummy-ness.


I often sneak out and reach for chocolate or some kind of food if my day gets a bit overwhelming, and I really don't think that's a terribly bad thing at all - I like chocolate, and I like me, so please don't think this next bit is me preaching about being skinny, or telling you to analyse everything you eat, but I came across an article by Geneen Roth that I'd like to share. Geneen works with compulsive eaters and has written the following about one of her 'students':

I had a student once who was so frightened of eating the foods on her most wanted list that she locked them all in her kitchen cabinets and asked her husband to hide the keys. Then she'd spend the middle of the nights while he was asleep ransacking his drawers, trying to figure out where he'd hidden the keys so that she could eat all the food she'd promised herself she wouldn't touch. 

Sound familiar? (Okay, maybe you haven't locked your food in a cabinet, but how about those times you are certain that the potato chips have suddenly developed vocal chords and are calling you from across the room?). 

If you find yourself bingeing and dieting, making proclamations about which foods you absolutely can't have in the house only to find yourself, in a moment of madness, running to the store and loading up on those exact foods (and telling the grocery clerk that they are for your daughter or that you are having a party), here's the million-dollar question: What are you wanting when you want those potato chips, that Chocolate Decadence cake? I can hear you saying: The potato chips of course! The chocolate without a doubt! 

Here is a dialogue I had with the above mentioned Cupcake Student:

Cupcake Student: I want cupcakes.

Me: What about the cupcakes do you want so much?  

Cupcake Student: I want the sweetness. I want the richness. I want the feeling of it in my mouth.

Me: When you have one in your mouth, how do you feel?

Cupcake Student: I feel calm, I feel loved, I feel like everything is good.

Me: So, it seems as if what you really want is to feel loved, calm, relaxed.

Cupcake Student: Uh-oh. Is this a trick? Did you just talk me out of wanting cupcakes?

Me: Nope. You can still choose to have them if you really want them. We're just trying to figure out what it is you really want when you say want cupcakes.

Cupcake Student: Well, okay then, I do want to feel loved, calm, relaxed.

Me: How about giving yourself permission -- just for a minute -- to want that? To want love?

Cupcake Student: But what if I know I can't have it? I just got divorced, my kids are living with my husband half-time, I'm not dating anyone. What's the point of wanting love when I can't have it?

And that is million dollar question number two: what is the point of wanting something I can't have? Why not spare myself the pain and turn to something I can have -- food -- instead? 

The point is that when you give yourself permission to want what you want instead of replacing it with a substitution, you make contact with your heart's desire. Believe it or not, feeling the desire itself is incredibly, immensely, deeply satisfying. It's the desire -- not its fulfillment -- that nourishes you because it's the language of your heart. When you listen to that language, you hear your self. You return your own true, deepest nature (which is, after all, what we thought that cupcake would do for us). 

 

Here was me thinking I just wanted to eat pancakes and drink hot chocolate....

Geneen's website is http://www.geneenroth.com/index.html