Have you seen people who will always leave a bite or two of food on their plate? I learned to do this to break away from the notion that I have to “clean my plate.”
I no longer feel I have to do this all the time, but I do often still leave a little food on my plate when I realize the last few bites are not necessarily appealing, and I can reinforce the fact that I do not always have a clean plate by just leaving those bites. In this way, you begin to retrain the lower brain from thinking you have to clean your plate.
Acknowledge that the cookies in the kitchen are creating the feeling of desire and only the cookies in the kitchen can relieve the desire.
It is a constant loop.
The food item creates the desire and you must have it to overcome the desire.
Trying to not feel desire is going to make the desire stronger.
But how about you just experience the desire without giving into it?
How about if it is okay to just feel desire. Desire will eventually begin to diminish.
Be aware – giving into overeating may be a way to avoid looking at what is making you unhappy in your life. As long as you are giving into the desire to eat all the time, you don’t even have to acknowledge what it is in your life that needs to be changed. Change is scary and uncomfortable. Facing the fact that we even have things in our life that are making us unhappy is HUGE and yes, it can be really hard. But it is the choice you need to make – continue on in a life that is not happy by overeating your way through it; or step back and face the reality of your life and any changes you need to make for your own happiness.
When you stop overeating, other issues can become very apparent. Be ready for that. But that is the most rewarding task to take on. Not only will you stop overeating and get healthier, you can also begin to see what it is that has been distressing you for so long that you have not even been able to face it. And it might have a fairly easy resolution. That’s when we do the big face palm plant. It felt so horrible and seemed so unthinkable, but when I faced it and just asked for what I needed – poof. The giant dragon was a tiny lizard.
So maybe the overeating making you feel out of control has been serving you so you do not have to be in control of your life. In the process, you’ve programmed your animal brain for immediate gratification very well. When you find you don’t need overeating to make your life “happy” and you can begin to allow the desire to be there without giving in and eating more than you need, you get to just show up in your life and have fun because it is who you are.
Make a list of the reasons you think you overeat. Then just look at the reasons why you are eating too much or snacking. Are you trying to buffer your life? Decide ahead of time what you want to do and how you want to feel about eating. Get a head start on your animal brain – decide ahead of time you don’t want to eat to feeling full and sluggish. Decide ahead of time you just don’t want to snack. Start to unlearn the desire to keep eating.
Every time you hit a small level of desire to eat that you can consciously walk away from because you’ve decided you just don’t want to, you retrain the animal brain.
The desire to over eat becomes weaker and weaker.
The animal brain learns that just because there is a cookie present, you don’t necessarily need to eat it.
There is no strong desire response.
How good would that feel?
