I'm the first to admit I sometimes have an unconventional slant on things, but I also know that after decades of dealing with eating issues (i.e. sweets), things like will power, deprivation, diets, guilt, negative self-talk, et al DOES NOT WORK! So I have been on the search for what does.
I read Eckhart Tolle's "A New Earth" a couple of years ago, and it has been a guiding force to such a positive degree I cannot even express it. In fact, I think it's possibly one of the best athletic mental-training books you could ever read--that, and "The Power of Now." It can help you pull together a LOT of mental threads that lead to powerfully positive places in life and training. But I digress.
On Oprah's special webcast with Eckhart this week, they talked again about overeating, and eating things you shouldn't. (I posted about their previous eating discussion here.) Eckhart revealed how this kind of eating really is about the unconscious part of each of us that is always restless--seeking, seeking, and never satisfied. That energy can get transferred to the body, and it can manifest in overeating. The Mind wants it, but if you CONSCIOUSLY listen to the Body, it often doesn't.
They talked about how if you do eat the "bad stuff," make it very, very conscious. Feel it, sense it, enjoy it, but when the pleasure of it stops, just let it go. Stop. That's the body saying, "no more." It works.
I'm telling you, this shift in thinking has made HUGE, positive changes in my life feel relatively effortless. We are all works in progress, and I never really applied this mindfulness to my eating until this year, (AHA moment) and my relationship with food is now getting to where I know it needs to be. I'm doing better and better.
