Food Is a Great Mirror for the Mind
Want to find some thoughts to question? Just look at your thoughts around food and eating.
On one side, there’s the addictive nature of many foods. Foods taste good. And the mind can get attached to anything that is “good” and start to use it as an escape.
But on the other hand, there’s the good of being healthy or, in many cases, thin. That word, “thin,” carries a load of baggage for many people. And the mind can become just as addicted to the idea of being thin, or healthy, as it can to the actual taste of food.
A Client Recently Discovered This
She noticed that the high she was addicted to was not so much the high of tasting food. More importantly for her, she found that she was addicted to the high of being thin and what that meant to her.
Being thin has been the glorious goal in her mind for years. When she gets in her desired weight range, she feels good, even when others tell her she is too thin. In fact, those negative comments from others, far from discouraging her, make her feel that she has truly arrived at her goal, and now has buffer room if she starts to gain weight again.
I Can Relate to That
For me, thinness does not attract me. It’s being healthy that hooks my mind. That too is an addiction. I’m attached to the idea of being healthy to such a degree that I will sometimes not eat enough, or not indulge in heavier foods, because I want all the food I eat to be properly digested.
That’s my perfectionist mind latching onto a perfectly good idea and taking it to an extreme. That’s when even healthy can become unhealthy.
It’s not about food. It’s about the mind. When the mind is balanced, food is not an issue.
So How To Do The Work On It?
There are many ways to do The Work on addictions and obsessions. One of the most effective ways is to keep doing The Work on all the other stresses in your life. As the other stresses become less stressful, the need to escape to addiction becomes less.
But you can also work on the thoughts and beliefs surrounding the addiction itself. For example, in my case, “My digestion can’t handle heavy food, is that true?” Or “I shouldn’t eat something until the last meal is fully digested, is that true?”
I can go down my whole list of rules for eating and question them. And it doesn’t mean my rules are wrong. I just want a balanced perspective. There are two sides to everything. And The Work is good at helping me find all sides.
I Can Even Question, “I Need to Be Healthy”
This is pure attachment. This is the driving force behind my behavior. Why do I need to be healthy? So that I can avoid disease. Why do I want to avoid disease? Because I don’t want to suffer.
So many underlying beliefs come out to be questioned. “If I eat healthily, I will avoid a disease, is that true? If I get a disease, I will suffer, is that true?” There are a lot of assumptions running. It’s good to question them all. Even the status-based thought that being healthy makes me better than others.
Without all those thoughts, I may still choose to eat wisely, but it wouldn’t be an obsession.
Same With Being Thin
If thinness is your obsession, why do you want to be thin? What do you think you would have? Write your beliefs down and question them. Just for the sake of balance. You can even question, “Thin is healthy, is it true?”
When my mind is balanced, I can handle anything: fatness, thinness, health, disease, you name it. It’s just life. When I’m not caught up in ideals, I’m free to live my life as I am right now without stress.
Have a great weekend,
Todd
“I don’t care if I smoke or if I don’t smoke; it’s not about a right or a wrong for me. I smoked heavily, even chain-smoked, for many years. Then, in 1986, after the experience in the halfway house, all at once it was over. When I went to Turkey in 1997, I hadn’t smoked a cigarette in eleven years. I got into a taxi, and the driver had some wild Turkish music playing on his radio very loud, and he was honking constantly (honking is what they do there, it’s the sound of God, and the two lanes are really six lanes merging, and everyone drives around honking at one another, and it’s all happening in a perfect flow), and he turned around and with a big smile offered me a cigarette. I didn’t think twice. I took it, and he lit a match for me. The music was going full blast, the horns were going full blast, and I sat in the backseat, smoking and loving each moment. It’s okay if I do smoke, I noticed, and it’s okay if I don’t, and I notice that I haven’t smoked since that one wonderful taxi ride.” Byron Katie, Loving What Is
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