Day 22: Food and eating, part 2

13102012

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize and admit that my relationship to food and eating is not stable.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself according to what I eat and how much I eat.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define myself as someone who “eats healthily”, limiting myself from ever expanding beyond my definition of “healthy”.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I can make amends for my past mistakes by punishing and limiting myself now in the present.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be ashamed of my past and try to cover it up by doing better in the present.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear becoming what I was in the past, not realizing if it were to happen it would be of my acceptance and allowance.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I fear I will become fat again I create myself stress and anxiety with the fear and bring about the desire to eat when stressed and/or anxious, thus ending up eating, gaining weight and completing the cycle.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the past has already passed and to feel shame about it is to not be HERE but to project myself into the past, and what actually is of any relevance is that which I am now, the choices I make now and what I live as through actions now.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize I am no longer the person I was in the past.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not listen to my body as it tells me I'm damaging it.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to go into doubt as I simultaneously try to listen to my body and not listen to my mind and end up not breathing and going into panic.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to perceive and believe that the messages my body gives me are conflicted, when in fact my body is very clear in what it says and I as the mind am the one creating the conflict.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not stop the experience of confusion by returning to breath and returning to my body in its entirety and instead let the experience accumulate into panic and despair.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize the difference between the desire to eat that is of the mind and the body's need for nutrition that is of the physical.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child and a teenager to ignore the education about nutrition I have been exposed to by saying “I'm not interested”, not realizing my body is my only vessel to exist in this physical reality and that its condition affects all of my experience, and that it is my responsibility and mine only to take care of it as my body is only mine to inhabit.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to experience satisfaction as I limit myself from eating through thinking that I've then succeeded in “self-discipline”, not realizing that letting go of the desire I've created within and as the mind does not happen by overriding the desire/fear with a more violent desire/fear, but that it only accumulates into more extensive self-abuse.

• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to justify self-abuse by believing it's a way to “train” myself to become a better and stronger person.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I have to “train” myself by means that are of an “unpleasant” nature in order to make progress, when in fact suffering is by no means necessary and will most often just stop my progress altogether.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize my self-abuse is not “training” but a way to punish myself; within this I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I am so “weak” and “unworthy” that I deserve punishment.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I'm “unworthy”, not allowing myself to realize and understand I am not only equal to every single human being but also one with every one of them.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to see my “weak” self as separate from my “strong” self (the one who gives out the punishment), not realizing I am not two people or two facets that are of opposite natures, but one and single being who cannot be “a strong punisher” and “a weak punished” at the same time. I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to both blame and be blamed, punish and be punished, not realizing that within this separation of self neither “facet” takes any responsibility nor are they able to as neither of them is fully me.
• I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to separate myself from myself through fear of self.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe the phrase “you have to suffer to achieve beauty” [in finnish “kauneuden vuoksi pitää kärsiä”] as it was taught to me by the people surrounding me as a child.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe beauty is something “more” that I have to work for, not realizing beauty is not something “more” but something “less”, a state where everything is let go of and only the essence as the true self remains.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe beauty is a visual trait, when in fact it is found in the free state of expression through all senses and sensations, not only what we sense through the vision.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that beauty is images.

I have a certain memory where I can trace my addiction to eating as escapism to have begun. It was after my sister had moved away and her old room became my own and I found her old stash of candy and started to read a series of books while eating the candy in secret in a storage room that was completely sound proof and where I couldn't here my mother calling me or see anything of the world outside. Around that time my life in school had become anxious and I experienced sorrow and stress due to my sister moving away. I had my own room for the very first time in my life, and through the newly found independence I begun to take control over my life by escaping into a place that was “mine” when I perceived myself to not be able to control the world outside of it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to eat too much by listening to my mind instead of my body.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize my desire to eat a lot is linked with the experience of stress, even though the habit of wanting to eat more when I'm stressed has been clearly noticeable during all of its existence. - I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to blame myself for not correcting this behavior before.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to escape the reality I perceived to be uncomfortable and stressful into leisure activities that included eating and/or snacking, such as reading a book, watching a movie/TV and spending time with friends, and developing the habit so that I could no longer do the activity without eating/snacking.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that as I created a desire towards the “leisure” activities where I could eat and escape my reality, I also created its polarity as a fear of non-leisure time where I could not escape my reality (stress/anxiety).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I can escape this reality through the enjoyment eating produces as chemicals in the brain, not realizing I never leave this reality until I die and that it cannot actually be escaped.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to search for the experience of “being in control” of my life by controlling what I eat when I've perceived myself “unable” to affect and/or change the things that were causing me anxiety/stress.