Day 115: Feel refreshed

I was feeling a bit sick today, so I ended up taking the day off, and doing a bit of sleeping, reading and contemplating.

I've picked up a book that I read years ago when I was in the UK, called "Fear of Food" it is a non-diet book and has some good stuff in it.

Some quotes that rang a bell with me:
"Compulsive eating and weight difficulties are linked with a diversityof emotional and psychological states as well as geneticpredisposition, learned behaviours about food and eating and theactual physical aspects of metabolism and the type of food eaten. Evenself knowledge is not the answer. You have been collecting everythingyou need to know for years, but knowing "why" doesn't change anythingeither. You need to take that self understanding and create anemotional/physical change. You need to integrate the mind and thebody. This is a whole body process. You need to work with your body asa friend and not as some problem that keeps hanging around."

"You can alter your eating behaviour in a variety of ways, but if younever address the reason that it got out of balance to begin with, youare doomed to fall back into the trap. You need to look at your wholelife, not just your eating or your body. Instead of asking yourself'How do I stop being out of control with food?', ask yourself, 'Whatis it that I want from food?' We treat our bodies like problems, as if they were an enemy followingus around. We actas if we are not part of our bodies and often livefrom the neck up. We imagine that everything can be accomplishedthrough the mind. We avoid looking at our bodies or feeling them to bepart of us in any positive way."

"I know many overweight and eating-disordered people who only consult a mirror to put on their makeup or style their hair. They think thatif they ignore their body, somehow they don't have to worry about it.They think that ignoring it will lesson their emotional turmoil. In this way, we are constantly fighting against ourselves. How can youexpect your body to co-operate if you hate it"

"But our real problem is with low self esteem and dissociation"

"you need to accept your body as part of yourself and see that it istrying to tell you something by being overweight"

"Most overeating is done unconsciously. We don't pay attention to whatwe are doing because it's just too painful. We are people who already have low self-esteem and extremely high expectations. Watching ourselves eat compulsively only adds to the disgust that we feel. Butwe need to wake up to what we are doing. We cannot continue to gothrough life asleep. We must make eating a choice and not a coincidence."

I am working through the book and will post again with some other gems.