Healing the true cause of your issues with food and weight

This article was published in a shortened version in the North Shore Magazine, August/September 2007

Body weight and diet have been the favourite topics in our society for many years. Most magazines want to sell us miraculous diets or some other devices to improve our body and our looks. Dieting is a billion dollar industry, and it is ever growing. Why? Because it does not address the problem, and so does not find a solution except for temporal results. It is a symptom of deeper suffering, which gets hardly ever looked at.

In this article, I am speaking to individuals who are using food compulsively to a point it becomes suffering, individuals who are overweight, those who believe they are fat and those who are afraid of getting fat.

I was an expert in suffering from an eating disorder for over twenty years, and have been fully healed for about fifteen years. I had tried every method under the sun to become slim (when I was already skinny but did not believe it)…I know the hell of compulsion and the feelings related to it. I would have never dreamt I could ever free myself from this. The fact that I could promises that there is help for all of you.

Overeating: let’s start with the compulsion to eat too much and to eat when we are not hungry. This is an addiction in the same right as any other substance addiction. It is characterized among others by loss of control, compulsion and the continuation of its use despite negative consequences.

As with any addiction, the problem is not in the substance. It is not the food which causes your addiction, it is your mind. Overeating serves to numb feelings and negative thoughts which may otherwise intrude into your awareness and cause you to feel anxious and overwhelmed. Thus, a part of you wants to overeat in order to avoid worse pain. This is crucial information for you to know, so that you don’t think that if you change foods or go on a diet you will end up solving the problem of overeating; you won’t. In other words, overeating is a symptom of suffering, it is not the cause of suffering.

The problem is not in the food or in the body, the problem is in the mind. Some think they eat because of boredom, or because they enjoy it, but the bottom line is that a part of us wants to use food to numb ourselves because it is scared to be overwhelmed with feelings of aloneness, helplessness, anger or any other feelings. Next time you want to overeat, try to remove yourself from the food, and allow yourself instead to feel what wants to emerge from inside. Relax and ask what you are feeling. If you feel overwhelmed by it, here is a simple and powerful method: Lie down, put one hand on your forehead just above the eyebrows, and the other hand at the base of your skull for a few minutes. This helps heal the overwhelm of emotional distress and calms you down. To recognize such repressed feelings and let them go will help you gradually free yourself from the prison of compulsion.

With myself and my clients I can testify that when we do let go of negative beliefs about ourselves, and as a consequence of others, we see our world with different, more loving eyes, and we don’t need to numb ourselves anymore. The problem and therefore the symptom fall away.

Now let’s look at weight issues. They may or may not be related to your way of eating. I experience regularly in my practice that people start to lose weight when we find their unconscious motivations to keep an excess of weight, even if they eat normally. Let’s look at some of the very common unconscious needs to keep on body weight: Many people are scared that if they were slimmer, they would be sexually attractive to others and then not know how to deal with it. They may be afraid of becoming unfaithful, or of being sexually abused (again). They may use the pretext of being too fat to not have to cope with career and other life issues. We may also believe that we are unhappy because of our body, when in truth we are unhappy because we hate ourselves! We are very skilled at creating one problem in order to “protect” us from an even worse one. And of course this is all done unconsciously, hidden from our awareness.

Here are some suggestions how to delve deeper into your mind: Based on this knowledge, related to both weight- and eating issues, you may complete this sentence: “I’d rather overeat than feel…”, in order to find out what you want to avoid at all cost. Or complete the sentence: “I’d rather be heavy than having (being, etc) …”.You may also ask yourself a few questions, such as: “What am I so scared of? How would my life be without this problem? Whom do I want to punish and blame with this issue?” Feel what comes up for you. Whatever that may be, stay with it and let yourself feel these feelings. You may receive helpful insights which then allow you to make new choices. Also, you may want to go a step further and remember that all negative beliefs about yourself and others are untrue, because we are Spirit, whole and innocent. Our true nature is love and peace, and these negative beliefs only serve to keep us away from this realization. When we feel bad, we can always change our mind and choose to remember what we truly are. Find out for yourself!

 Marlise Witschi, M.Psych.