I shared my story about how I transitioned from eating compulsively to feeling full. I realized at the end that I needed to bring out the salient points, but I didn’t want to continue with the post, so here goes.

I didn’t get this from a book or any particular program, so I’m writing in retrospect how I stopped eating compulsively. It’s like asking your grandmother for the recipe to your favorite dish. She probably doesn’t have one because she does it by feel, but she’ll try her best to reconstruct one for you

Be Extremely Gentle and Patient with Yourself

Be prepared to treat yourself as you would an adorable 6 month old who’s teething. You may get irritable and fussy. You might even slip up, but you know that you are still a wonderful person and you are worth it.

If you’ve been overeating for some time, it’s not just because you love food. Notice, I said “just”. You love food, AND you are using it for something. When you decide to stop using it, and you haven’t substituted it with something else, you will find out very quickly what you’ve been avoiding.

Allow yourself the space to deal with whatever that stuff is. Be gentle and patient. If you overeat at a meal, stop yourself the moment you realize what you’re doing and ask yourself what it’s about. Beating yourself up is not a part of this regimen. Every meal is an opportunity to learn more about your body and your emotions.

Before Taking the First Sip or Bite Ask Yourself If You Are Hungry

Your mind has a lot to do with this, but sooner or later you have to pick up a fork or spoon and bring it to your mouth. It’s scary. I know. You want to do it “right”. It’s really simple.

Am I hungry?

Get used to those three words. Sounds obvious and rudimentary, but you are learning a whole new way of relating to food. If the answer is yes, by all means sate your hunger and eat something. However, if the answer is no, don’t.

In the beginning, it’s that simple. Yes or no.

At some point, you might deign to ask yourself why you want to eat if you’re not hungry. More than likely, you’re not willing to face that question. Eventually, though, your emotions will corner you. You won’t be numb and they’ll start to taunt you. You’ll have no choice but to face why you want to eat when you aren’t hungry. More on that in a moment.

Eat Mindfully

In the beginning, give up eating in front of the television, or to a good book, or even with an old friend. Sit with your meal and savor it. You’ll be recalibrating what your mind thinks “full” is. You’ll be surprised how much sooner you stop eating when that’s all you’re doing.

Try this just one time. Put your fork down between mouthfuls. Do not begin to prepare for the next mouthful until you have completely swallowed the first one. Take a breath in between mouthfuls before you begin to prepare the next one. It feels extremely tedious, but if you do it just one time you will get a good sense of exactly how you’ve been eating and the kind of experience you can have if you really pay attention.

Create a Supportive Environment

Some weight loss programs advocate preparing your environment by cleaning out your pantry and your refrigerator. That’s great advice for rational people. Clearly, they never met someone that would drive to 3 groceries at one o’clock in the morning in search of a quart of Java Chip ice cream knowing that earlier that day said tub was thrown out.

But I digress.

The supportive environment that I’m talking about is to help you to deal with all that stuff that is buried in those pounds. The stuff that you would otherwise cover up with food, but gosh darn it, you have to deal with it now.

For me the supportive environment consisted of a regimen of walking, writing, and meditating. Walking gave me an active way to work off steam in a socially accepted way. I started out walking as exercise, but I soon learned to take a walk every time I felt intense anger in a situation where I couldn’t express it. It helped me to burn off the emotion, without burying it. While I walked, I would have conversations with myself about whatever was bothering me. I would walk until I found a place of peace.

While walking was reactive, writing and meditating was proactive. You would think that only a sadist would go digging up demons, but I didn’t want them jumping out of the woodwork. (After all, there are only so many breaks you could take during the day.) Writing helped me to uncover the stuff that was lurking beneath the surface. Meditation was the soothing balm, not a cover up, but a catalyst for healing.

Later on, I learned to flip through the numbers on my cell phone until I found someone supportive. Anything to help me to work through my emotions and not stuff them down.

A special note here that you don’t want to replace one addiction with another, or one escape mechanism with another. For example, you could stop eating when you’re not hungry, but find yourself working yourself into exhaustion. The idea here is to create an environment where it’s safe to deal with your stuff, not find alternate ways to avoid it.

Give Yourself Permission to Feel Your Emotions

It may not be appropriate to feel angry with the world, but this is a matter of survival. You will begin to feel again and when you do, it won’t necessarily be all those good-two-shoes feelings. You might feel like you just want to rage. Go ahead and feel it. You might feel like you are in the depths of despair. Go ahead and feel it. You might feel like you are sailing on cloud nine. Great! Go ahead and feel it.

Please note that feeling your emotions and acting on them is not the same thing. Just because you FEEL enraged does not mean that you need to ACT enraged. Giving yourself permission to FEEL enraged means that you let it roll through you. You acknowledge it and you let it run its course internally. Sometimes, you might feel like you’ll internally combust if that happens. In those cases, rely on the supportive environment you have created.

Love Yourself Just The Way You Are

This is as hard as it gets.

Remember in Bridget Jones’s Diary when Bridget tells her friends that the guy likes her just the way she is, and they say, “Just the way you are?” Then she says yes.

You need to do that for yourself.

You may not like the way you look in pictures, but so what. It’s temporary. You know that you are a caring, generous, kind, loving, smart, cheeky, funny person. You are marvelous and spectacular, and a great addition to this planet. Give yourself the gift of acknowledging it.

Enjoy the Journey

It’s been over a year since I have been practicing eating only when hungry and until full. I’ve lost 26 lbs, not 52 or 104. It is a process, sometimes very painful. If you want to lose 75 lbs for your wedding in 6 months, this isn’t the way to go. If you want a new way to relate to food, and express your Self, you’ve got a shot.

It’s not one and done. It’s ever evolving, but it’s fun. You’ll discover a person that you might want to have over for a cup of coffee

In Spirit,
Nneka

In the summer of my 14th year, I started a very bad habit. It was the last time I would visit my parents in New York where they lived. I would not see them for another 2 years. I somehow knew this at a cellular level.

On the day before I was scheduled to leave that summer, my mother had to go away to work so she would not be around to see us off. The morning of that day she must have said goodbye and my dad took us around for our requisite goodbye’s to everyone. I don’t remember much of that day besides the quantities of food I ate.

It started off in the morning at Blimpie’s with a breakfast sandwich. We went shopping for some last minute school supplies, and I had a couple New York franks while my brother enjoyed a slice. We went by a family friend where I had a full Sunday Trinidadian meal; rice and peas, callaloo (spinach and okra in a soup), stew chicken, roast pork, baked chicken, macaroni pie. Then we went to McDonald’s, and finally topped things off at Haagen Dazs.

All day long, every time I felt like crying I said I was hungry, and I ate. That day I learned to stuff my feelings with food.

Since that day, I tried several times to lose weight or curb my eating to no avail. I remember when I moved to Raleigh, eating a quart of ice cream every evening. I put on 50 lbs in 5 months, after losing 50 lbs in the year before. I was home sick and lonely, but rather than face the feelings, I just ate them.

Last year, when I started writing for this blog, I made a silent commitment to myself to be as authentic as I possibly could. By this time, I was aware that I had been stuffing my feelings thanks to a stint in Overeaters Anonymous. So, as part of my commitment, I said that I would only eat when hungry and until full.

It was the best that I could do, as I felt that I tried everything. I always wanted to go gung-ho and shave off every pound fast. I didn’t want to face anything that the weight was covering, but my commitment to only eat when hungry and until full forced me to uncover deep seated fears and emotions buried beneath at least 26 lbs of fat.

At first, it was just a matter of mechanics. Before I put anything in my mouth, I would ask myself, “Am I really hungry?” If the answer was yes, I would eat. If no, I wouldn’t. No further exploration needed. That was really easy for a long time. However, after about a month of not having my drug of choice available I started to get jittery and anxious. In the past, when I started lowering my calorie count, I would sleep off my problems as an alternative, or flip out irrationally. However, I reasoned that if I slept I would just be substituting one drug for another so I started to dig deeper.

If I realized that I wanted to eat, but wasn’t hungry, I dared to ask myself, “Why do you want to eat? What’s the deal here?” Feelings began erupting. Mostly I was tremendously pissed. So I dug deeper, “why are you so pissed?” Here I am, all Zen-like and blissful in my outer life, the perfect persona of poise, harboring so much anger and discontent. The anger ranged from the simplest things like not being able to find a pen when I needed one, to the state of my life. I was just pissed.

So I started walking, a more socially appropriate form of deflection to be sure, but deflection just the same. On my walks, though, I had these conversations with myself about my anger. By the end of a 40 minute walk, I had usually come to a place of calm on the subject of the anger. In addition to walking, I was writing and meditating as part of the Life Transformation Program. In short, I gave myself several avenues to deal with all the anger that was erupting.

Finally, one day, I think it was in late October, as I was entrenched in the Season of Gratitude, the anger relented. I can’t really say when exactly it happened, or how or why it happened, but I began to see very clearly what was happening inside, and I began to feel emotions outside of anger. I realized that I felt extremely lonely and alone.

By this point the urge to eat at any point other than hunger evaporated completely. In fact, sometimes I would feel the opposite. I would begin to feel agitated about something inconsequential and ask myself what the deal was to find out that my blood sugar was running low and I needed fuel.

Eating until full on the other hand, was more nuanced. I could convince myself of anything.

It helped that I was only eating when hungry, but once I started, if I wasn’t paying attention, I could finish whatever was in front of me. So I started eating salad for one meal a day. Yes, salad. Why salad? Because I hate salad. If I was hungry, not ravenous, I would sit in front of the best salad I could make filled with spinach and mushrooms and beans and bell peppers. I’ve never had an urge to eat one morsel beyond what was absolutely necessary for salad, and so I learned what it felt like to be full. I paid attention to the sensations in my body. The important thing was to become aware again, and do some brain rewiring, on what full was.

I learned that pasta made me feel really bloated within one cup, but an hour later I was empty. I learned that beans filled me up and kept me sated for hours after. I learned to honor my body when it was screaming steak, and not try to fill it up with sugar when it wanted protein. I learned how to order a portion that would fill me, not stuff me. I started to breath when I was halfway through whatever was in front of me and ask, “Am I full now?” I started to really savor food.

Along this journey, an amazing thing happened, I began to feel full. Not full of food, but full of life. Sounds corny, but I am now in touch with my feelings. I can tell when something is annoying me, and when I’m just annoyed for no reason. I can be sad and feel it. I cry, not completely freely, but I think I cried more in the last 6 months of my life than in the last 6 years. I also feel immense joy. I feel enfolded in love. I feel inspired, and peaceful, and free, and really, really FULL!

For the sake of authenticity, I want you all to know that I went from 271 lbs in November to 245 lbs today, so I still have a ways to go. Next year, I want to get more in touch with my body and make movement a part of my life. My environment can easily facilitate that now.

One parting story. Last night I wanted Italian food. I don’t know why. I haven’t had pasta in about 3 months because of that bloated feeling. Nonetheless, I was heading to a popular Italian chain, and on the way I was saying to myself that I really didn’t want all that food. I just wanted some pasta and the sauce. I realized that there was a better Italian place closer to my house that served normal portions, so I turned the car around. That, to me, is worth tons more than 26 lbs lost (although, I’m elated about that too )!

In Spirit,
Nneka