How to Transform Your Relationship with Food [ The Right Way]

Are you an emotional eater?

Do you use food as a coping mechanism for the challenges you are facing?

What if you could transform your relationship with food and you were able to resign yourself to the fact that your life contains both miraculous and amazing moments of joy and at other times, deep periods of growth?

If you could truly accept that sometimes life is difficult, would you still need to push feelings of disappointment and doubt away with food?

creating an overweight condition...

If you are honest with yourself, you may come to see that you often eat as a way to avoid feeling bad. Obviously, the result is that after you overeat or create an overweight condition for yourself, you feel even worse.

However, your diversion tactic worked. 

Now, instead of focusing on, or even maintaining awareness of the original “problem” that was “eating away at you,” you can pinpoint your pain on something tangible, and that you can blame yourself for – being overweight.

Now, you can focus all of your precious life energy on trying desperately to solve the problem of your overweight condition.

You can obsess about food, calories, scale numbers, and points, and give your mind something to chew on and dwell on endlessly, with few solutions to be found.

But, if you want to transform your relationship with food:

This original inner wound may not be present for the reason you think it is, but rather it may go back to childhood when you felt hurt, rejected, or mistreated in some way.

When you can realize and accept that part of being alive is experiencing pain or feelings of insecurity and become willing to be with your experience, whatever that may look and feel like, and have compassion for yourself, you no longer need to numb yourself with foods that are poisonous to your system, or with too much food.

It can be very helpful to witness yourself when you are about to engage in compulsive or unproductive behavior and just step back and observe yourself, and notice what’s going on inside yourself. Are you feeling bored, anxious, or unhappy in some way?

becoming aware of your negative voice to transform your relationship with food

Is your inner voice telling you lies such as,

Just becoming aware of this negative, destructive voice can be so helpful, because it allows you to watch it without identifying with it.

You can breathe into the voice and help it to dissolve into something much larger than itself—like the same loving, healing, creative force that makes a small seed grow into a majestic, beautiful tree.

Your creative, all-knowing voice may inform you that:

I had the privilege of traveling to Lake Arrowhead, California four times a year, for five years to complete a Master’s Degree program at the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism. One of the things that struck me when I first went to the top of the mountain where Lake Arrowhead is located, was how dry the lake was.

I used to take walks around the lake, and felt the sadness of the region, seeing many boats and docks on dry land, far from the water’s edge...

This went on for two years, and I imagined how helpless the dock and boat owner must have felt about the situation...

There was NOTHING they could do to bring on rain—to make the lake full again...

After two years of this drought, on my 9th trip to Lake Arrowhead, during the winter months, rain poured down relentlessly for the entire week that I was there.

It rained so hard that week I couldn’t even go outside.

By the following April, to my delight, the lake was full once again. When I walked around the lake, every boat and every dock was surrounded by deep water. I could feel the deep joy and gratitude of the region, as the whole area came alive with people relishing in the blessing of this beautiful body of water.

acceptancing and being OK with the sadness...

That experience taught me, in a very profound way, the value of patience and the natural ebb and flow of nature and life. When the lake dried up, people were helpless to correct the situation.

There was no denying that it was a sad situation, and all anyone could do was accept the sadness of the way things were.

Often it’s the same for us in our lives. We have a difficult time, so we turn to food, generally unconsciously, to soothe ourselves. Very few of us were taught how to make friends with our grief.

We’ll do anything to cover it over, including building ourselves up, being aggressive, or withdrawing...

Very often we turn to food addiction as a way to mask the grief.

Lake Arrowhead was dry for at least two years.

During those times, it’s so important to be accepting of yourself, to give yourself love, not to turn your back on yourself . . . to be patient with yourself and to know that this is part of being alive.

During times of hardship, instead of acting out and making things worse for yourself, have faith to know that your difficult feelings will indeed pass and that new blessings are coming your way. 

Don’t blame yourself or others...

Do what you can on the physical level to create change, but then release the situation and focus on being kind to yourself and others.

There is an ancient Sufi saying: 

masking your painful feelings...

The amazing thing is that when we do finally say yes to the doubt or insecurity, and accept that it’s there while having the courage to look for the gift in it, it often transforms.

When you see this, you realize at a cellular level that you no longer have to mask your painful feelings by reaching for any addictive substance such as food.

This vast, infinite force is always available to lift you higher and help you to see that not only are you blessed, but you truly are a blessing on this earth and that everything is happening exactly as it’s supposed to.

You are safe!

You don’t have to sabotage yourself anymore.

Breathe deeply and let the new awareness come to you...