maanantai 14. tammikuuta 2013

Days 114-115: Notes on hunger, cravings and eating


13-14012013

I'm now keeping track of eating-related points that I come across.

Day 1

Today I was at a situation where I was offered a lot of food by a many people. The food had to be eaten away or otherwise it would go to waste. I ate some of what was offered even though I was not hungry because I didn't want all of it to go to waste, and so I found myself uncomfortably stuffed with food.

  • Not wanting to waste food
  • Eating despite my actual physical state
  • Accepting all free food

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel guilty for wasting food.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear wasting food because of the self-blame I would cast upon myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I can somehow save the food we have already overproduced and excessively bought by eating it away and thus compromising my health because I don't actually need the food at the moment, not realizing I cannot solve the problem (overproduction and unequal distribution) by treating the symptoms (too much food on my hands).

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I cannot find a solution that is best for all if I compromise myself while searching for it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if what I try to do appears to help “everyone” but harms me, it is not a solution but a compromise.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to ignore, abandon and abuse myself by not listening to my physical when trying to help others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be directed by the mind to eat moved by fear instead of stopping and realizing that I cannot solve the situation of us having too much food by eating the food when I don't need it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to please the people who have cooked/bought/served the food by eating it so they wouldn't have to throw it away and feel bad about it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to protect others from the emotional reactions I have guessed and feared they might have if I didn't eat as much food as I could, not realizing it is not my responsibility to protect anyone from their own possible reactions.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear I will be judged as “impolite” if I don't eat the food I am offered because I have witnessed people turning their self-judgement (“is there something wrong with my food”) into judging others.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear hunger/poverty and thus create an excuse to eat whatever I get my hands on because all food that is given away for free is a precious resource that is scarce and valuable – a situation in which a majority of the people on this planet are at the moment, but as I look into my pockets/bank account/social network, I realize I am not one of those people who would actually have to fear hunger.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to accept all free food without stopping to listen to my body to see if I am actually in need of food and if I'm not then directing the food resource elsewhere where it might be more needed.

--

Another situation a couple of hours later: I was playing the piano at a theatre rehearsal and after an hour or so of rehearsing I thought “I am hungry” and I told my friend I am hungry. I believed I am hungry and need food. When the rehearsal ended I went into our dressing room and told some people there that I'm hungry. They pointed to me an open bag of chips. I didn't really want to eat any chips because I know what they consist of and do not want to digest them because they hold no nutritional value. I ate a couple of chips anyway. I then noticed I am not hungry at all, which made sense because I had just a few hours earlier found myself stuffed with food.

  • Weariness at rehearsal – stress point – mind-hunger created
  • Being directed by the mind to eat the chips
  • Not stopping to see if I'm actually hungry – believing my mind unquestioned – I always eat a lot at theatre

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create theater into an environment where I am allowed to eat all the time because there I am constantly under some kind of stress.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not question the fact that I am constantly under some kind of stress when I'm at the theatre and thus allow myself to utilize the coping mechanism of creating a comfortable safe zone through eating.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not stop to ask myself why I am feeling weary when I was feeling weary at the rehearsal and what I could do to move myself out of the weariness, and instead leave the weariness unaddressed and allow the discomfort to accumulate to such a point where my mind created an escape for me (eating) and told me I am hungry.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not stop to question the thought “I am hungry” to check if it's actually true.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to immediately believe the thought “I am hungry” unquestioned because I have defined the environment (theatre) as such where I am constantly “hungry” / allowed to eat.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel stressed about playing the piano at the rehearsal.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to resist playing the piano at the rehearsal because I had played it for the entire weekend already and was getting tired and making more mistakes.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to sabotage myself as I was playing the piano by creating a tiredness out of being bored to do the same task over and over again and thus playing more sloppily and making more mistakes.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a restlessness / impatience while I was not playing the piano and was waiting for my turn.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to anticipate the moment when I would play the piano and react with frustration every moment it did not happen and I had to wait, thus slowly accumulating restlessness and stress.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not be here in each and every moment, including the moments where I do not play piano and wait for my turn to play, and to live within those moments as well.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that I can stop and dissolve my impatience by returning to breath, letting go of the tensions in my body and sorting out whatever program is running in my mind.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel constantly “burdened” at the theatre.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel constantly busy at the theatre.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I need to be constantly doing things and moving at the theatre.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create unnecessary stress on myself by not relaxing while I perform my duties at the theatre, not focusing on what I am doing but being stressed about all the things that I haven't done yet and thus making it impossible for me to relax and be within the moment and do my best with the task at hand.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I need to appear “efficient” at the theatre.

--

A bit later a thought occurred concerning the fear of hunger. I thought about what I'm going to do during the rest of my day and wondered if I should eat right when I get home to avoid getting hungry when I'm later at a situation where finding food might be more difficult than when I'm at home.

  • Fear of hunger – memory of older brother
  • Difficult to find food? No it isn't – not in the first world.
  • “I don't want to bother others with my hunger” - shame point – don't want to be a bother – asking for food is seen as shameful

There's a memory from my childhood (I was somewhere between 6-10 years old) where I came home late from a dance rehearsal on a weekday night and I had school the following morning. At one point these Mondays were always long days for me as I went from one hobby to another straight after school and usually my mother prepared some food for for me to eat on the go. This one day she had forgotten to bring me food. When I got home late that evening my parents weren't home and I was really hungry after not having eaten since the lunch in school. I was looking into the fridge to see if we had any food when my older brother (at his teens) noticed what I was doing and told me it's too late for me to eat food and that I should be going to sleep already. I tried to discuss with him to tell him I hadn't eaten all day and that I was really hungry, but he would not listen, forbid me from eating and told me to go to bed. I went to bed crying and with my stomach aching from hunger, bitter and angry, blaming him for my pain. I relate this memory with the fear of hunger – the sensation of hunger (as far as I've experienced it) has been very uncomfortable to me, and I have created a need to ensure my survival and make sure I have enough food so that I won't run out of it and have to face hunger. I have feared I might be denied access to food if I for example ran out of money / if my family disowned me / if I lost my job etc – a fear of survival – a fear of death.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to participate in the physical pain of hunger and thus make it seem bigger, and then as it has seemed bigger I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe that I will not survive the hunger – that it will kill me.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that to a certain extent hunger is not dangerous and will not kill me, and that as a temporary discomfort which I know I will overcome it is bearable and something I can breathe through.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to get so frightened at being denied access to food that I went with the fear and the physical discomfort and created a panic loop and ignored the fact that I am going to get food the next thing in the morning and that I can simply relax and wait for the misunderstanding to be solved.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to be so blinded by the fear of not getting food (fear of death) that I have not realized that this is a misunderstanding that can be solved.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to interpret my hunger to be “big” and thus give the hunger all control over my actions and to allow the sense of hunger to override all reason and common sense.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to believe I would be allowed to die of hunger as I did not understand that a person can survive hunger (the sense of discomfort) for a certain period of time.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself as a child to feel abandoned when I was denied access to food by my older brother and my parents weren't there for me to go to.

Day 2

Today I noticed I was running out of food supplies and went to the grocery store after a long acting rehearsal. I was really hungry and tired as I was on my way to the store and thought that I could buy some candy from the store. I then stopped as I saw the thought was absurd and based on no real need, as I was simply responding to my tiredness by thinking I'll reward myself with sweets after a long day of work. There the candy would serve as another comfort point that I would use to create a comfortable relaxation zone for myself. I then realized that I can gift that relaxation to myself without anything external simply by letting go of tensions by breathing and forgiving myself for their origins.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to buy sweets to compensate for the discomfort I am experiencing as tiredness, not realizing the counter-effect to tiredness I get from the sweets as momentary euphoria is temporary and will not last as it is not a solution to the tiredness (even though the associated relaxation is) but a distraction from it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not be able to relax without sweets/snacks/food as I have associated relaxation with eating, not realizing that all that is actually required for relaxation is breathing.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a need towards the sweets/snacks/food because I have believed them to be essential in releasing myself from stress, thus sabotaging myself from relaxing within all those moments leading up to the moment where I get to eat and allow myself to relax, not realizing I could relax myself on the very moment I notice myself being stressed and that I could thus prevent the backchat that leads to the belief that I need to eat to relax.

I commit myself to breathe and release the tensions in my body whenever I am stressed to prevent these mind-solutions from being created and acted upon.

I commit myself to gift myself relaxation within every breath as I see, realize and understand that rigidness in no way supports and assists me.

When and as I notice a muscle tension in my body, I stop, I breathe and I realize the tension is a result of some kind of stress. I then check myself with self-honesty for the actual reasons of the stress. I forgive myself for whatever I find and if the tension persists after breathing and self-forgiving I further open the discovered points in writing.

--

When I got to the grocery store I thought that instead of buying the candy I'll just buy plenty of fruit and other enjoyable foodstuff, and that I can eat fruit or honey when I crave for sweets. I then realized this is just replacing one addiction with another: by replacing the object of my cravings with a substitute does not remove the craving itself which is a psychological issue. Even if I'd eat all the healthiest stuff in the world but do it through addiction and compulsion, the original problem of stress-related eating would still be there.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe an addiction can be solved by changing the object of the addiction, not realizing the source of the addiction that lies within me does not change.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try to bring about a solution by thinking of the physical results only – what nutrients my body receives – and see the swapping of an unhealthy food to a healthy food to be a solution, here ignoring the psychological results where my addiction keeps on eating me away and building me to live as addiction and cravings and to be directed by the mind unquestioned – these psychological traits concerning all other aspects of my life than food as well.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to support myself to be directed by the mind and live as addiction as I have swapped the object of my addiction to another without addressing the addiction itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not realize that if I do not consider myself as a whole – as a psycho-physical-social being – I will not bring about a solution that is best for all as I ignore the entire reality of myself.

I commit myself to consider myself as a psycho-physical-social being when searching for solutions and making decisions concerning myself.

I commit myself to realize that an addiction does not change from the outside in but from the inside out – with this I mean that I cannot change the psychological issue by limiting my diet to only certain kinds of food but that I can change what I eat by walking through the psychological issue.

--

And so I was faced with the question: where do I draw the line, then? What the hell can I eat? Is everything forbidden? No, nothing is forbidden. I am free to eat whatever I get my hands on as long as I make an aware choice to eat what I eat and carry responsibility for it. The actual issue lies with my stress eating which stops me from being aware of what I eat as I then act directed by the mind. So I am free to eat whatever, and I am free to make commitments to eat and not eat certain things, and in order to be able to make commitments and change my habits I need to become aware of how and why I move myself to eat.

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