When You Didn’t Want To Eat That, Buuut…

I have a standing rule.

(This is a written rule, because the pen is the tool that we use in diet crushing to reveal the masterpiece that is already there.)

The rule is…

“Because my experience has been that eating when I’m not hungry is the only way that I have effectively supported my emotional well-being, I will remain committed to seeking and/or creating sufficient opportunities to eat when I’m not hungry.”  

I have this rule for three reasons.

The first reason I have this rule is because where there is a but for us, we act on the but of the rule, not on the rule.

We have a rule… “People must not smoke.”

People know what can happen if they smoke, but…

We have a rule… “People must not steal.”

People know what can happen if they steal, but…

I had a rule… “I must only eat when I’m not hungry.”

I knew what could happen when I ate when I wasn’t hungry, but…

The “but…” overrules the rule.

What comes before the but involves what we know.  What comes after the but involves how we feel.  And how we feel trumps what we know, every time.

If when you read my standing rule you thought, “but that’s not true”, or “but that doesn’t make any sense” or “but why would she want to do that”, well of course you’re absolutely right.  I felt the same things when I read it.

And then – you know –  I acted on those feelings that came up after the but.

When I made my repetitive action a well-intentioned rule (because our repetitive actions are our well- intentioned rules) I had trouble making sense of it.

What we have trouble making sense of, what we have trouble feeling the benefit of, we struggle to do.

I’m all for feeling like it’s a struggle to eat when I’m not hungry.

(That’s why if you were to see me standing in the kitchen eating spoonful after spoonful of cold pasta out of the serving bowl after I’ve just eaten dinner, and you heard me start to tell myself things that I *know* like “you know you’re not hungry, you know you don’t need anymore of this, you know you shouldn’t eat this, things have been going so well, you don’t even like this when it’s cold, stop stop STOP eating this, you know you’re going to regret this, you’re a diet crusher for God’s sake!!…”you will hear me interrupting with how I feel “but I have to eat all of this then more, I’m never going to be able to have it again, it’s important that I eat this so I can be filled up with happiness.”)

Umm… but…

The second reason I have this rule is because I while I used to feel like I was bingeing like crazy and dieting like mad,  it turned out I was bingeing and dieting because I was the exact opposite of crazy and mad.  

If we all agree that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, you have to know that the last thing you are, is crazy, if you’re dieting and bingeing.

You aren’t dieting again because you’re expecting different results.  You’re not bingeing again because you’re expecting different results.

You’re dieting, or bingeing, because you expect the same exact result, to feel better.

You don’t like to diet, but you anticipate feeling better when you do.

You don’t want to eat when you’re not hungry, but you anticipate feeling better when you do.

(And feeling trumps knowing, every time.)

When it comes to what you want to accomplish in your life, isn’t it important to feel like you’re not in the hands of a crazy person?

The third reason I have this rule is because what we resist persists.  (Carl Jung)

The more you’ve dieted, the more you’ve experienced this.  I encourage you to consider using the reality of this to your diet crushing advantage:

“I am committed to ignoring any desire I might feel to wait until I am physically hungry to eat.  I am committed to resisting any desire I might feel to stop when I am physically satisfied.”

(Because the person with the least interest has the most control (Willard Waller), if you felt like you didn’t want any part of that just from reading it, write it or something along the lines of it down, and enjoy the feeling of the interest draining out of you.)

Your masterpiece awaits your flourish.

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