Respect and Protect Your Body

Still not back to square one. For the last few days I've been eating carbs (macaroni and cheese plus chocolates). I feel really frustrated because I am intelligent enough to realize that I am the one doing the eating but not knowing how to curb this behavior.

I have noticed that what I call a craving or compulsion to eat something I believe I should not eat, seems to have an actual "place" in the space I occupy. My cravings seem to always start with a particular feeling and they have a recognizable form -- if thoughts can be viewed as having "form."

They always seem to happen in the same sequence and accompany the idea that this is OK to do. It is like the idea of the forbidden food comes along with permission to go get it and eat it. My focus and sensibility narrows down to that and that alone.

In my search for help with this I got out my old copy of "Diabetes Solution" by Dr. Richard Bernstein, whom I consider to be the greatest authority on diabetes, and looked up the section on how to deal with cravings.

He offers the suggestion to find a doctor who is also a hypnotherapist and have one session to learn to use self hypnosis. I've had many bad reactions to hypnosis and am reluctant to try it but I really thought the three "suggestions" he offers to memorize and meditate upon are quite good:

1. For my body, overeating is a poison
2. I need my body to live
3. I owe my body this respect and protection

He also says that you need to look at them at least once every hour, every day to really ingrain them into your subconscious in such a way that they begin to curb your behavior. He says if you do it less than 10 times a day it won't work. To help me do that I printed those words out on a business card sheet and placed the little cards around the house so that everywhere I went I would see it and be reminded to think about them and drink them in often.

As I did that I also thought about "gluttony" in the Bible. Gluttony is another word for excessive or even riotous eating. It is closely compared with drunkenness, rebellion, and laziness which will shame a person's family, in the Bible, too. I never really thought that excessive eating was a sin, as such, but maybe that is why I always feel guilty when I do it. I know it is not the right thing to do but I do it anyway.

I'd like to change that to: "I know that excessive eating is not the right thing to do, so I don't do it." So I made that a card to meditate upon, also.

I plan on excessively looking at, reading, and thinking about the messages on these two cards often throughout the day. I feel like I am imbedding new thoughts and beliefs to subvert and replace the old ones. These are better thoughts than the ones I was using before.

So that is where I am right now.

I am beginning to address the addiction behavior at the simplest most powerful level I know -- my thoughts.

Dear Lord, please help me to overcome gluttony

Be back soon,

Marcia