Rebellion is an ugly part of the human character. Tell a rebellious kid not to do something and sure enough, he will do it. We don’t like to be told what to do (or what not to do). When we tell ourselves, “I will not eat that cake,” another defiant voice answers, “You’re not telling me what to do.” Then the battle starts between the ears. Trenches are dug. The side of selfish indulgence stubbornly hangs on to the desire to eat cake. It hears some great propaganda messages like “I deserve it. One slice won’t hurt.” We start to feel deprived. Precious pleasure is being taken away and we feel hurt. Emptiness and pain well up, resolve weakens.
We want to run from the pain into the comfort of food. Anticipation is revved to full power with a single focus . . . cake. Emotions redline on adrenaline ready for the impulse to bite. The side of self-control is desperate: “don’t think about those delicious chocolate flavors.” But it’s too late. The battle is lost!
Pink Elephant Obsessions
Think of a huge floating pink elephant. Now that you have the image in your mind, stop thinking about it. Now, take a break from reading and for one minute, do not think of it. Think of anything else but that floating pink elephant.
Trying not to builds the desire, forcing you to think of nothing but pink elephants. Keep trying not to think of them, and you will become obsessed with pink elephants.
We create powerful obsessions with food by trying not to eat certain foods. The more we try, the worse it gets. Eventually, the only thing filling our minds will be the thought of that pizza and pop, or whatever we are trying not to eat.
You have trained your mind to think obsessively. As kids, we ate when hungry and stopped when satisfied. By adulthood, we deteriorated into pleasure-centered food addicts.
Distorted Thinking
Compulsive eaters are the first to admit that we are living in a mental mess. Life is a series of worries and frustrations. Our emotions are controlled by outside events. We fail by eating one cookie and confidence plummets. Feeling hopeless, we completely give up and throw off all sense of restraint. Then comes the feeling of failure:
“I am a failure.”
“Everything I do fails.”
“Life is the pits.”
“I shouldn’t, but…”
Psychology calls it abstinence violation effect, the psychological reaction to violating a vow of abstinence. Simply said, the effect is a feeling of failure. And for some, failure is devastating.
After failure comes guilt. Guilt never works, but we use it anyway. We beat ourselves with guilt in a feeble attempt to whip a tired, weary soul back to the battlefield. But the soul groans in defeat, “I have had enough. I don’t care about this stupid diet.”
Why is it so hard? Why is it so difficult to eat a little less? After all, we desperately want to eat right. It is our heart’s desire. We want to be thin, healthy, full of life, looking great and living life to its fullest. But instead we throw it away for 20 seconds of taste-bud pleasure.
Ubconscious
The brain weighs only a few pounds, but it is hundreds of times more powerful than the fastest computer. Within the brain’s deeply furrowed cortex lies a wellspring of memory, dreams, alertness and self-awareness. Neurons hum with activity — networking, processing, acting with lightning speed to interpret the messages from the sense organs. The temporal lobe, association cortex, corpus callosum, and the left and right hemisphere act like players in an orchestra to transform the constant influx of signals into a cohesive interpretation of the inner and outer world.
Even with today’s high-tech diagnostic tools, the brain is like an iceberg—hiding more than we can see. Below the surface are the workings of the brain hidden from the conscious. It’s called the subconscious. It does most of the work you take for granted.
Imagine trying to walk while figuring out what blend of digestive juices your pancreas needs to digest the pizza that you ate for lunch. Imagine sending millions of enzymes, one by one, into that sticky, half-digested pizza sludge looking for a nutrient. Meanwhile, your heart needs regulating and you’re getting a little confused in organizing the 100,000 chemical reactions the mind performs each hour to maintain homeostasis (balance). And you thought making your eyes rotate in two different directions is hard! If these reactions were not hidden from us, we could not function. Automatic functions let our brain focus on the most important things.
To develop any skill, we train our bodies to react, then refine that reaction so we gain control with ever-increasing complexity. A concert violinist plays with ease because he has developed a complex array of automatic reactions. It is much like writing a program for a computer.
Consider the brain a bio-computer and you, its haphazard programmer. You have been inputting data and setting up programs since childhood. Every smile, criticism, kind word and insult is a source of data. But much of that data was false. Through corrupted data, you may have come to believe that you are clumsy, useless, hopeless, fat, ugly, stupid, weak and cowardly. Those beliefs have determined your actions and powerfully affected your thinking process. Each distorted thought has entered the subconscious, stirring waves of emotion, shame, guilt, fear and rejection, each wave adding to the overwhelming feeling of worthlessness. A feeling that shouts, “you are a failure!”
It is easy to give up. You don’t have to try when you believe that you’re going to fail. But when you give up you feel helpless, empty, and want relief. The food industry is ready to profit from that emptiness.
The diet industry has spent millions on putting a Band-aid on a symptom. Our bodies are sick and overweight because our minds are filled with toxic thoughts that destroy self-worth, motivation and discipline.
We come to believe our problems with negative emotions are psychological. We may even seek medical cures. Minor results come, but most of the time we are discouraged.
If you have been controlled by food, thinking obsessively and battling through each diet, you will find freedom. It will take work, but there will be no waiting for results. Everything you will learn in the following pages will increase your self-control by assisting you in disciplining your thought life. This understanding will help you gain control over not only your diet, but many other areas of your life. You will become emotionally stable. Discipline will be seen in the little things. You will smile easily, share willingly, laugh readily, enjoy life, have enthusiasm, and most of all, you will have a sense of joy and a feeling in the quietness of your soul that says… “all is well.”
Sounds too good. Like a miracle? Give your body a few weeks on a light diet of fruits and vegetables and amazing things will happen. Cells regenerate, the skin softens and veins are cleansed. The lymph glands, liver and kidneys detoxify as you experience the awesome wonder of healing.
Just as the body can recover from disease, the mind can also recover. Fill your mind with encouragement. You have let your mind run its random course, only to find emotional pain that steals your self-control. It is time to recover your mind and let it be renewed.
