Let's keep it short

One of the reasons I tended not to blog as often as I would like is that I made each entry a soul searching look into my clockworks. I don't want to get away from that as it helps me, and it seems to be what sings to the people who are reading it, but I also want to lighten up just a bit, too. So I picked today to blog, as my time is limited, and I can't keep this window open for too long.

Well, first of all, maybe it's not going to be that short afterall. Now that I think of it. I wanted to talk today about having faith and hope. Michaelangelo once wrote that the problem we humans face is not that we have hopes that are too high and we don't reach them, but that we have have hopes that are too low and we do. I'm going through a few things right now that would normally tend to trigger some very serious emotional eating. Normally I would have the low hopes and reach them (well as long as I don't eat ALL that I'm okay). Now I've set my hopes and standards higher. Last night I was going through some particularly dark thoughts but I wasn't turning to food. A lot of things came up that startled me - had I turned to food as I usually do I would have diverted those thoughts by eating then further diverted them by beating myself up because I ate too much. It was quite an experience to just sit quietly with the emotions and thoughts and see where they would go. A very new - and scary - experience. I went into the evening setting my hopes high that I wouldn't run to the kitchen past having dinner. I am happy to report that I met those hopes. Had I set them lower - I would have met those too.

And what is faith? Faith is the song the songbird sings before the dawn. I don't know where that comes from, but it is so perfect (I am sure I heard it in a Wayne Dyer lecture, I just can't put my finger on it). This has nothing to do with religion or anything like that. It's just having simple faith that the sun will come up, that one foot in front of the other will take you forward, or that the force that beats your heart beats mine. That step of faith also helps get through emotional eating. One of my favorite sayings is: If the problem isn't hunger, food won't fix it. I had to have faith last night that facing what was bothering me was the better road to take than drowning my sorrows in food. I also had to have faith that things will work out and no amount of eating will change the results, except, of course, make me fatter when I face it next time.

So I think that unearthing the concepts of hope and faith are wonderful tools to conquer emotionally charged eating. I am happy to report that around 3AM I realized that I was truly hungry, but somehow got myself to sleep without eating. I was ravenous at breakfast - and feeling much better too. Problems still there and I didn't have to add beating myself up to the list.

Keep the faith!
Samida