What are we really hungry for?
The Non-Diet Approach, April 27, 2002

Lose weight without dieting? HOW?!?!

By getting to the root of why you overeat in the first place! "Why Weight," written by Geneen Roth, is a non-diet book that contains exercises designed to help compulsive eaters learn how to stop using food as a substitute for handling difficult emotions or situations. You'll also learn how to enjoy eating and still lose weight naturally. This program offers reassuring guidelines on:

-- kicking the scale-watching habit forever
-- learning to say no
-- discovering other pleasures besides food
-- learning the difference between physical and emotional hunger
-- listening to and trusting your body's hunger and fullness signals

Each week at least one exercise will be posted and you are encouraged to share your answers, thoughts, etc..

Please share any insight, ideas, articles or other information that you may have.

Join us in Breaking Free from Compulsive Eating!

Exercise 61: The color of pain


Draw a picture of your pain.

What is the color of your pain?
What shape is your pain?
Is it bigger or smaller than you.


What else do you observe when you look at your drawing?


Exercise 62: Old Pain, Past Pain

When I was a child I was in pain about? [size= 2 ]this may include times when you felt ashamed, frustrated, confused, uncomfortable or upset. [/size]


Exercise 63: Fears about Pain

What do you think would happen if you let yourself feel your pain – instead of eating it away?

If I let myself experience my pain, I would:

to the top.....

Hi, LLB! I'm lurking but in a slump ... actually the pain topic really resonates with me at the moment, so I'll have a go.

Drawing a mental picture of my pain is difficult, as there are so many different kinds, colors, shapes and sizes. At the moment the effects of the fall I had in the spring are bothering me again and I can barely walk, even though I have an assignment ... so I'll address the pain in my legs (inexplicable, as it shouldn't be there). It is the shape of a rubber tire around the middle of my legs and it is the color red. It is smaller than me, but it nudges me towards another kind of pain, that of the old demon depression (shape: undefined, size: universal, color: blue and grey). Observing the drawing reminds me that I am overeating to erase all this pain ... like the "eraser" tool on a computer painting program, softly obliterating the reality of pain.

As a child I was in pain because of just about everything. It's best not to go there again. Childhood was all about pain and about eating ... firstly, not eating, secondly, eating, eating, eating. First thin, then fat. Food obliterates everything.

Hmmm. Oddly enough, I never seem to eat it all away. I am very logical and self-aware and cognizant of what is going on, so while I am eating it away, I'm also experiencing it. Overeating is just medication to dull things.

To some extent, I do believe the above is a valid use of food. I know doctors, nutritionists, etc., and many on this board don't agree with that, but for me, it's valid. The key is moderation, which is the key to a good life, IMO. Moderation, though, is not always the first option one turns to when the old tapes kick in, is it?

I'll be back! (Arnold voice)

Crone if only moderation was our first option....

Thanks for your post because you always make me think. A good thing. I especially like: I think I will make a poster of that !!!!

I have been working on my Dad's 80th Birthday party, which will be Sunday, so I haven't thought a whole lot about this exercise in the last few days.

I have pretty much everything in order for the party so maybe today or tomorrow I can add my 2 cents to this topic.

Exercise 61: The color of pain


Draw a picture of your pain.

What is the color of your pain?
My pain is one of those murky non-colors that is like the water gets when you're using water colors - brownish-blackish-greenish. Ugly-colored.

What shape is your pain?
] My pain is blobby and shifty, like fog.
Is it bigger or smaller than you..

My pain is smaller than me. It lives in my body, not in my legs or arms or head.

What else do you observe when you look at your drawing?
It's dense.
Exercise 62: Old Pain, Past Pain

When I was a child I was in pain about? [size= 2 ]this may include times when you felt ashamed, frustrated, confused, uncomfortable or upset. [/size]

There is some mystery in my childhood. I don't know what happened, but there was some terrible shift when I was about 8 years old. Up until that point I was quite happy. I remember talking to a friend when I was in grade three about how I felt like I could do anything in the world that I wanted to do and how wonderful the world was. By the next year, I felt as if I lived in the pit of **** and that there was no point to trying to do anything, as if I was a total failure already. The only thing that I can remember is hearing something about the possibility of someone blowing up the whole world and asking my mom about it and her saying that it could happen. And I said, we have to stop them and she told me that there was nothing we could do.

I don't know if that is what the deep trauma was then, but something profound obviously happened. I led my class in grade three and nearly failed in grade 4. I have struggled with depression throughout my life. I believe, to some extent at least, that the struggle is what keeps me from becoming clinically depressed sometimes and helps me to feel fine others.

I was ashamed of being poor, ashamed that my father was an alcoholic, ashamed to have needs because my mother was too busy to attend to them. I still am not good with tending to my needs and I think that is a large part of why I'm overweight. I give myself food instead of what I really need.

Exercise 63: Fears about Pain
What do you think would happen if you let yourself feel your pain – instead of eating it away?

If I let myself experience my pain, I would:

be able to deal with the things that bother me instead of just taking my attention away from them. I would be able to feel all my emotions, because if I block my pain i also block my joy.

Babette: I'm on the run (sort of, since I can't even walk at the moment) but wanted to mention that some of my chronic anxiety, I'm sure, stems from the widespread belief among my peers growing up that we were the last generation and would not live long because, well, a huge war was coming and the world would be blown up. I also absorbed the anxiety and fear of my mother for whom WWIII was just around the corner ... she having lived through WWII and that fear never left her. Early on she would tell me stories of how she feared running through fields with her babies while bombs fell. I used to have a recurring dream of a huge silver aircraft chasing me from the sky while I ran through fields and the aircraft hovered, lowered and then blackness! Wo! This may have been from mom and sci-fi movies combined.

Oh, well. Here I still am, though for many in the world, my nightmare has sadly come true.

But I do believe peace will come to us all someday.

Of course, all of this translates into going for the dulce de leche today, while I still can.

Exercise 61: The color of pain

Draw a picture of your pain.

What is the color of your pain?
blue
What shape is your pain?
No shape, it looks like when they show energy, like when they beemed people on Star Trek???
Is it bigger or smaller than you.
It extends from by body by 6 to 12 inches


Exercise 62: Old Pain, Past Pain

When I was a child I was in pain about? this may include times when you felt ashamed, frustrated, confused, uncomfortable or upset.

Probably the most would be shame. I was always different - my Mom worked (school teacher) and my Dad had unusual for here animals. Peacocks, pheasants, geese, ducks, emu - unusual variety's. I know people think it was cool but as a young child all I heard was that we were "unusual" and it didn't sound like a GOOD thing.

I also have always felt unwanted. My Mom was pregnant when they got married, NOT good back then. She was in a car accident and almost lost me. Breast fed me toxic milk and almost killed me, and when she got a Mother's ring it was my stone she lost.
My Mom's parents made me feel "not good enough" and the reason their daughter was married to a Norwegian they didn't like.

Anyway, after telling you this I have to tell you this. I collect silloettes. A few years ago when I was trying to work through this "unwanted" business I was at an antique show and saw a silloette with a calander on the back. The front was a male and female in front of a fireplace with a clock on it. When I flipped the silloette over to look at the calander it was showing April 1951 - the month and year I was born!!!! I, of course bought it, and when I got home took out my birth certificate. The clock on the mantel says 8:16 - I was born at 8:20!!!!!!!!!!! To me this validated my birth....


Exercise 63: Fears about Pain

What do you think would happen if you let yourself feel your pain – instead of eating it away?

It would overwhelm me.