Although many people, including me, have achieved remarkable recovery with the help of a Twelve-Step support group, I know that some of you are not drawn to that approach. And that's perfectly okay. This book introduces you to a range of wonderfully effective self-help tools, such as Inner Child work, creative visualizations, journaling, and various energy techniques that together can help you rewire your brain to stop craving food.
In my own work as a teacher and psychotherapist, I use some approaches that fall under the umbrella of energy psychology. Based in Eastern medicine, energy psychology is sometimes described as needleless acupuncture. It is a relatively new term to describe various modalities or approaches that use the body's energy systems to create change for the individual. Many energy psychology techniques employ repeating an affirmation while tapping or touching acupressure points to release unpleasant emotions or to eliminate cravings. These techniques are highly effective at diminishing anxiety and other uncomfortable feelings that send many of us directly to the cookie jar. In fact, without also working on the body's energy system, thinking and reason alone rarely work.
Using This Book
I recommend keeping a computer or notebook nearby while you read. Though you're of course free to mark up the margins as much as you like, this book isn't meant to be a workbook, so there's not much blank space. You can download the workbook for free, however, and have space to do your own writing. Go to www.stopeatingyourheartout.com/Workbook2.
The bulk of this book is devoted to my twenty-one-day program for releasing you from your emotional dependence on food, but first I want to tell you my own story. You'll find that in chapter 1. Each subsequent chapter (except the last) covers three days, with a new tool introduced each day to add to your own toolbox. You might choose to do an assignment in a day, or you might want to take a whole week to do one. That's entirely up to you. Of course, if you take more than a day, the process outlined here will take more than twenty-one days. But once you have completed all the assignments, you will have all the tools you need to recover from emotional eating. These are tools that you can use over and over again or just once. However you need them to work, they will. The final chapter of the program, Conscious Living, discusses ways to keep using the contents of your personal toolbox as you continue to forge your new life, free from emotional eating.
For many years, I thought I was terminally unique. But the more I shared myself, the more I realized that others had the same thoughts, the same actions, and the same beliefs I did. If you are anything like I was, you've been waiting a long time to conquer your battle with food and self-hatred. You're not alone. Begin this next phase of your journey by turning the pages and encountering many new techniques. Please try them all, and then pick and choose the ones you find most useful to create your own individualized toolbox. In so doing, you will alleviate the compulsive overeating as you transform yourself and your relationship to food. In the words of English novelist and critic Aldous Huxley, “There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.”
Chapter 1
My Story: The Making and Breaking of a Compulsive Overeater
We must go beyond our history to arrive at our destiny.
—ALAN COHEN, DARE TO BE YOURSELF
“SEE THOSE FAT PEOPLE OVER there?” my father asked as we drove down the street, his finger pointing at a group of overweight people.
“Yes, Daddy,” I replied.
“You don't ever want to look like that!” he admonished.
I was an impressionable eight-year-old girl. It was the 1950s, a time when looking good mattered most. World War II had ended the previous decade, and with no external war to contend with, many families like ours focused on social appearance and physical attractiveness. Airlines had stewardesses, not flight attendants, who were obligated to conform to specific weight, height, and age requirements. They had to look good to keep their jobs. This was the time of Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best—those happy TV families with the pearl-wearing housewives decked out in heels, even at breakfast. I was part of a looking-good family in a looking-good culture, most of us holding the belief that in order to be accepted, we must look acceptable. And, having weight issues ever since I was a little kid, I felt like the ugly duckling of the family.
Children like to please their parents; the praise it evokes feels good. I made my parents very happy by being an amiable and obedient child. And, as a charter member of the Clean Plate Club, I was commended at mealtime for eating and finishing all the food in front of me—beginning when I was a baby in a highchair. The conditioning had begun.
Always eager to do what was expected of me, I was mortified when, as a three-year-old, I misunderstood my parents and felt humiliation for the first time: My mother walked into the living room and saw my feet thrust into the playpen, which also contained my baby sister. When my mother asked what I was doing, I calmly replied that she had said I could touch only the baby's feet, so I was letting my sister touch mine. It made perfect sense to me, but hearing the thunderous roar of laughter spewing forth from the adults as she immediately recounted the story, I was mortified. At the tender age of three, I made a decision to never make a mistake again—the shame was too great and I felt crushed.
I set out to be “the best little girl in the world”—to be perfect and do everything right. Inside I felt very alone—a feeling heightened by my father traveling a lot for business and my mother being emotionally unavailable. It wasn't long before I discovered that stuffing myself with food was a great way to take the edge off the emptiness inside.
When I was six, my brother was born, and the hoopla surrounding the birth of a male said to me that boys matter and girls don't. I felt negated for being “just a girl.” The hole inside me continued to grow, and I bolted through meals in an attempt to fill the void. I was losing the ability to feel physical hunger—I ate to feel full and to numb out. I ate large portions whenever possible. I ate with gusto, and I wanted to feel stuffed.
Although never diagnosed, I exhibited many of the symptoms of childhood depression. I had very little energy; many times on my walk home from school I had to push myself to take the next step and then the next. I felt depressed about my weight and disgrace around it. Life was not fun; it was an ordeal to be lived through. No, life was an ordeal to be smiled through. Smile, no matter what I am feeling. Smile, no matter what is happening. Smile, to keep my inner pain a secret.
As I grew older, I became more and more quiet and isolated. A voracious reader, I kept to myself most of the time with my nose in a book. In the presence of others, I did whatever I was expected to do—filling the role of the good student, the good helper, the good daughter, and the good sister. I put on my I am wonderful mask, wore a smile on my face, and suppressed my feelings. Even though I often acted like the hero of the family, I usually felt like the invisible lost child. I needed extra food to pull this off.
I first realized my dissatisfaction with my body during my preteen years. When I was seated, a roll of fat protruded around my belly. One day my father grabbed it and said in a teasing voice, “What's this?” I felt humiliated. I had something on my body that wasn't accepted, and I couldn't hide the fat. My body image issues had begun.
I knew I needed to lose weight, and the next morning I wrote in my diary: “Today I am starting my diet.” The following day I wrote: “Yesterday I had a chocolate-chip cookie. Today I am really starting my diet.” Then the next day I scribbled: “Yesterday I had some candy. Today I am really, really starting my diet!”
Each day I would pledge to start again. For me, in those days, dieting meant I wouldn't have any sweets, and it was a struggle to not eat sugar. Visiting a friend's house, I'd often sneak into