I always thought that I had no self control or willpower - but doing CD proves that I have it in bucketloads! So why do I do this to myself when i'm not on CD??
I need a shrink - and fast.
I was just reading through a load of e-newsletters that have been building up in my folder because i'm snowed in and am getting cabin fever and wanting to eat......
"There is a Native American folk tale that a grandfather is telling his grandson. The grandfather explains that he has two wolves inside of him. One wolf fills him with hope and reminds him how wonderful his life is, and the other fills him with doubt and convinces him that nothing is worth the effort. The grandson asks, concerned for his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The grandfather replies, "Whichever one I feed."
The two wolves inside of you are your positive motivations to lose weight versus your experience of powerlessness that leads to the uncontrollable urge to eat, and the overeating camp usually wins. Every time you overeat because you are feeling powerless, you reinforce your erroneous belief that you are powerless. You feed the wrong wolf.
No matter how hard you try to diet, no matter how sincere your promise to give up certain foods, you can't stop overeating for very long. When you do, you feel empty or anxious. Feelings of depression and boredom begin to creep in. As long as you remain unaware of the experience of powerlessness and how it's instantaneously transformed into the uncontrollable urge to eat, you can't change it.
Once you begin to look at the fact that overeating has served you in some way, you may be ready to see that the fact that you haven't been able to lose the weight you want has nothing to do with your willpower, and it isn't because you haven't found the right diet or the magic solution either. You haven't been able to lose the weight you want because eating has become an automatic soothing response to the stresses in your life.
The goal of change is for you to become mindful, conscious, observant and awake in order to find the pause between when you have one of the experiences of powerlessness and when you begin to overeat. It's only in that space that you can begin to change your emotional eating pattern. Because it happens so quickly, you are not even aware at this point that you are making a decision. But you are. You need to learn how to slow things down by looking at the gap between the experience of powerlessness and the uncontrollable urge to eat in great detail, giving you the opportunity to make a different decision and stop sabotaging your success.