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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