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Ready to continue with me on my mindful eating retreat journey? Ready or not, here we go --
EWYL-BE Chapter 1 – In Charge, Not In Control
Chapter 1 explores 4 eating patterns – instinctive eating, overeating, binge eating & restrictive eating – using the Mindful Eating Cycle, which is a tool (used throughout the book) for recognizing & understanding eating behavior. There are 6 questions in the mindful eating cycle –
Why? – Why do I want to eat? What is driving my eating cycle?
When? – When do I… want to eat/think about eating/decide to eat?
What? – What do I eat? What do I choose from the available options?
How? – How do I eat? How do I get the chosen food into my body?
How Much? – How much do I eat? How much fuel do I consume?
Where? – Where do I invest my energy? Where does the fuel I’ve consumed go?
In instinctive eating, you eat to nourish & fuel your body. You eat when you’re hungry, what you want, with intention & attention, until the hunger is satisfied and you use the fuel to live. Someone who eats instinctively seems to manage the choices effortlessly, like a baby or small child.
When overeating, the cycle driver is a desire for pleasure or distraction & is triggered by conscious or unconscious physical, environmental or emotional triggers. Since you’re eating for reasons other than hunger, the foods chosen are more likely convenient, tempting or comforting, and are usually eaten mindlessly, automatically, quickly & sometimes secretly. Since the eating is not because of hunger, how much you eat can depend on how much you have or are served, and the excess is stored as body fat.
The binge eating cycle is extreme overeating & more destructive physically, mentally, emotionally and/or spiritually. Once started, it often spins out of control. It is driven by unmet needs & provides temporary distraction, relief or escape from physical or emotional stress, or unpleasant thoughts, and is triggered as in overeating. Quite often, a binge follows a restrictive eating cycle. Binge foods are often “forbidden” foods offering comfort or pleasure, but a binge is not really about the food itself. The food is consumed in a frenzied or trance-like state, and often eaten alone & in secret. The amount of food consumed differentiates it from overeating, as the amount is definitely larger than most people would eat, resulting in a miserably full or stuffed feeling. After a binge, you feel sluggish & are limited as to what you can do as your body works to process the food. When reality sets in, you may feel overcome with emotion – hopelessness, guilt, shame and/or desperation (which may lead to restrictive eating & the continue the cycle).
Restrictive eating often follows overeating &/or binge eating cycles. Diet rules drive the cycle & determine when, what & how much you eat. If you significantly & consistently under-eat, your body may try to conserve fuel by lowering your metabolism or cause you to become even more interested in food, and particularly restricted food.
Hence the term yo-yo dieting, as you cycle through over- or binge eating, repenting & repeating, or the eat-repent-repeat cycle as the EWYL approach calls it. At the retreat, an actual yo-yo was used to demonstrate – its either one extreme or the other – you’re either dieting or overeating & you can’t stop in the middle. In the eat-repent-repeat cycle, when you eat what you want, you feel guilty; when you eat what you “should”, you feel deprived.
Comparatively, a pendulum swinging gently back & forth was used to show mindful eating. Mindfulness is simply deliberate awareness of the present moment. Instead of trying to stay in control, then subsequently losing control, mindfulness helps you pause so you are in charge. In discovering a balance in the middle as the pendulum swings, you gain the freedom to eat what you love, the awareness to eat what your body needs, the mindfulness to love what you eat & the desire to meet your needs in ways more satisfying than eating!
The EWYL-BE approach, uses a mindful eating cycle (taught through the remainder of the book), to resolve binge/over-eating & recurrent dieting, and restore an instinctive approach to manage eating. You become the expert (As I like to call it --the study of one) using your hunger cues to determine when, what, & how much you eat. You work to balance eating for nourishment with eating for enjoyment, to understand what other needs you’ve been trying to satisfy by eating & to meet those needs in positive and constructive ways.
Wanna continue on the journey with me?
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