why is my relationship with food so painful?

[Luna]

I'm not severely overweight or underweight. i weigh around 145 lbs and i am 5'5 but i feel grossly fat. at the same time no matter how much i try  I can never have a normal relationship with food. i am not an emotional eater, i dont eat when im sad or stressed out . however, I do not know why i can't just eat normal meals and have a normal relationship with food. every time i eat, every single thing i consume gives me anxiety and makes me hate myself. how i still do it. i can't stop eating sometimes but i can control it enough to where i dont become really obese. i am afraid i will lose that and become really really fat.. 

how do i sort this out? anyone has a similar experience? 

[aurum]

@Luna Eating can be a deep pattern for a lot of people.

What are you eating typically? And how often?

[flume]

An addiction is always a symptom of something that lies deeper. It's an attempt to avoid pain and thereby a response to human suffering.

It doesn't matter much whether you eat chips or cupcakes, smoke cigarettes or gamble. You're looking for a substitute "high" for feeling unwell, because we're typically not taught how to process emotions and trauma. From what I've seen so far working with people, trauma always underlies these compulsions and addictions. A person who's not psychologically damaged in some way doesn't get addicted.

You might want to reflect on the relationship with your mother growing up. Has she "nourished" you? In the broadest sense? So you learned that you're worthy of being fed and kept alive? Just throwing out guesses there, but in our younger years our mother is teaching us how to take care of ourselves. However she treats us, we'll treat ourselves later. Having a normal & healthy relationship with food is one of the most basic and primary needs we have.

So It's not a weakness or failure of will that you can't "get it right". No tweak in habits or gimmick will help you solve this permanently.

I personally struggled with overeating for years. My weight was fluctuating quite a lot and I was always afraid of getting too big. I'd make myself work out, go on diets, but nothing fundamentally changed. It's like I had this intense relationship with food, while for others, it was just a normal part of their day. I hated eating, and I loved it. But I just couldn't get to "normal".

Trauma work and deep therapy is the only thing that helped in the end. I understood & re-experienced all the things that went wrong when I was growing up and could finally leave these patterns of self-punishment behind.

It's obviously a process, but 95% of my struggle was listed through this kind of work. 

So start thinking in terms of:

• Which needs did I not get met as a child? (I made a video about this where I listed the most important needs in case you wanna check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt9rEJnBhH8&t=186s)
• At what times of the day am I overeating? What's going on in my life then? And how is it linked to my (still) unmet needs?
• What in my past is unresolved that needs addressing at some point?

[flume]

HereÄs a great, simple video that explains it very well 

Also, this video was eye opening for me a few years ago and got me to understand what really happened to me:

 

[mandyjw]

I tend to focus on how I look and how much I eat when I'm not enjoying life in general as much as I'd like. Make a list of things you enjoy doing/want to do, dreams, big and small, etc. Want to try bellydancing? Take a pole dancing glass with a girlfriend? Learn to play an instrument? Paint your bathroom a different color? Plan a trip? What do you want? 

After this move on to enjoying your food and how the food you eat makes you feel. Try a new recipe. Try a new healthy "super food". Try juicing if that sounds fun. I dunno. Go wild. Have fun. Eat how much you want three of four times a day if a schedule cuts down thoughts and doubts around food. Then appreciate the hell out of your food. 

I personally think heavier women are as gorgeous as skinny or average women. Who told us otherwise? Did you ever really look and ask yourself what you think? People have preferences and then they get overly vocal about them when societal expectations tends to "agree". There are no societal expectations, they died and went out of fashion long ago and no one noticed cause they were too busy trying to conform themselves with them.  Look at yourself in the mirror. Really look, utterly look with presence. Observe any thoughts that come up, but notice you cannot truly look and see in the present moment and also think something to be something. Your thoughts are a blind approximation, just like society, they died long ago and don't have any power but you didn't notice because you were too busy running from them. These thoughts are the true thief of beauty. They are parastical and you keep feeding them, they grow fatter and fatter and fatter. Who is fat and ugly? The thoughts. Not the "you" the thoughts claim to be about. Not the food you eat. Stop feeding THEM. 

 

[Leo Gura]

That's very easy: because your culture has made it too easy and acceptable to eat garbage.

If you change your diet to cut out all junk food and all processed food, you will effortlessly maintain a healthy weight and feel great about yourself. You will be able to eat as much as you want and never get fat.

The problem is that you must reject all cultural norms for what you can put in your mouth. So when your friends all stuff their face with pizza, you sit there calmly and don't join in. Because you value yourself too highly to do that to yourself. This requires a radical rewiring of your attitude towards food. But if you complete this rewiring, you will never be fat no matter how much you eat.

The only way to be fat is to eat processed food.

[gettoefl]

16 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That's very easy: because your culture has made it too easy and acceptable to eat garbage.

If you change your diet to cut out all junk food and all processed food, you will effortlessly maintain a healthy weight and feel great about yourself. You will be able to eat as much as you want and never get fat.

The problem is that you must reject all cultural norms for what you can put in your mouth. So when your friends all stuff their face with pizza, you sit there calmly and don't join in. Because you value yourself too highly to do that to yourself. This requires a radical rewiring of your attitude towards food. But if you complete this rewiring, you will never be fat no matter how much you eat.

The only way to be fat is to eat processed food.

perfect

in addition doing intermittent fasting is a game changer for a disciplined relationship to food

and it is easy to implement ... me i do the 16 8 version so my window is 9-5 ... breakfast 9 lunch 1 dinner 5 ... no meals outside this window

body works so much better, it is doing its thing two thirds of the day (16 hours), there is an active reddit devoted to this subject

[flowboy]

On 19/01/2022 at 10:28 PM, Luna said:

every single thing i consume gives me anxiety and makes me hate myself.

This is a very important clue - it's a disproportional reaction.

For example, when people without this issue eat food, they only feel mildly satisfied - not anxious.

This anxiety and sense of hating yourself means that eating is a trigger for you.

Triggers can be resolved by following them down to the root.

You can use my video to help you try it out:

It's a form of shadow work.

You can look up different styles of it. Don't let it overwhelm you.

Find a method that works for you.

You can make a lot of progress on this problem in only a couple of sessions.

Good luck