eating – Lefkoe Eating Report

Research Validates Our Approach

A reader of my eBook on emotional eating, Susan Vendeland, just posted on my blog. Because she points out that a lot of current research validates my approach for eliminating overeating, I wanted to share it with you.

“Thank you for your generous sharing of your report. [http://emotionaleatingreport.com] I began teaching a college course this last semester, the Prevention of Obesity and Eating Disorders. We talked about emotional eating both as a personal problem linked to obesity and eating disorders and as a community health problem.

“I appreciate your insight into the genesis and healing of emotional eating and this is consistent with approaches taken by those who treat eating disorders including binge eating disorder. A report by the Hartman group, a market research firm in Seattle, addresses the cultural aspects of overeating in America and basically describes the widespread social acceptance of emotional eating as the driver for the ‘obesity epidemic.’

“In my course, we focus on emotional self-awareness, intuitive eating, awareness of weight discrimination and self and body acceptance to address out of control eating.

I listened to the video and appreciate what Donna [Bauer, http://emotionaleatingreport.com/blog/donna/] said about celebratory eating as well. Researchers at UCSF (Mary Dallman’s group) and others have provided evidence and a neuro-physiological explanatory model for comfort or stress eating so acceptance in the scientific community of this adverse habit is growing.

“Do you have plans to demonstrate the effectiveness of your treatment in a randomized controlled trial anytime soon?  [I am very interested in conducting such a study as soon as we find a university that wants to do such a study with us.]

“I would also like to tell you that I really appreciated the way you tried to encourage Donna to get in touch with how good she feels in multiple dimensions from gaining control of her eating (and the self-respect that accompanies that) rather than just the pleasure of losing weight and receiving myriad compliments.

“There are many people who emotionally eat but are not necessarily overweight. They may do large or even excessive amounts of exercise to compensate so weight loss should not be the goal, but rather energy, health, vitality, wellness, feeling in control, and knowing how to deal with the reality of our emotional selves. [Our goal is to help clients stop their emotional eating, which will ultimately reduce their weight, but our focus is not on weight loss as such. That is focusing on a symptom, not the cause.]

“Thanks again. You are doing very good work.”

For more details, please see my eBook, The Secret to Ending Overeating For Good, at http://emotionaleatingreport.com. You also can get answers to specific questions at my office, 415-884-0552.

You Don’t Need A Crutch

Emotional eating is the way we cope with negative feelings we don’t want to feel. By eating, even when we aren’t hungry, we get distracted from the feelings we don’t want to feel and experience a pleasurable feeling instead.

These negative feelings ultimately become conditioned and act as “triggers” that result in automatic, compulsive overeating.

When you use the Lefkoe De-conditioning Process to de-condition your many triggers, you realize that earlier in life you had (unconsciously) chosen eating as the best way to pleasurably distract yourself from your negative feelings (such as anxiety, feeling unlovable, depression, and boredom). It wasn’t that eating was necessarily the best way to cope with the negative feelings, it was just that you ate three times a day and noticed that, whenever you ate, you focused on the pleasure of eating instead of the negative feelings. That’s how eating got conditioned as an automatic response to the negative feelings.

You also realize that, in fact, there are many other things that might have worked to distract yourself from the negative feelings; you just hadn’t thought of them earlier in your life. Some activities that might have worked as a coping mechanism include a hot bath, exercise, a walk, talking to a friend, reading a book, or listening to music.

But using eating or any of these other activities to distract ourselves from our negative feelings implies that we are unable to cope with our negative feelings and that we need something to keep ourselves from facing them. In fact, although negative feelings can feel overwhelming, distracting ourselves with eating doesn’t really work. Not only doesn’t the distraction last for long, we end up feeling worse (guilty and bloated) after we stuff ourselves when we aren’t hungry. The negative consequences of other distracting activities aren’t quite as bad, but they still are only a temporary respite and the negative feelings are still there when we finish eating (or any other activity).

It actually is possible to just allow ourselves to experience our negative feelings and to realize that while we “have” these feelings, they are not who we are. We don’t have to use eating or any other distraction to deal with our negative feelings; we can just feel them and know they will pass.

If you really want to “handle” your negative feelings, the best way is not to pretend they don’t exist for a few minutes (which is the only respite eating gives you), but, instead, to eliminate the beliefs and conditionings that cause them. Every negative feeling you have is either the result of beliefs and conditionings, or the meaning you are giving current events. Events, as such, cannot make you feel anything.

Eating to feel good

If you eat to make yourself feel good, as opposed to eating to cover up negative feelings, there is a much better solution than eating, which only gives you a “high” for the few minutes you are eating.

Use the Who Am I Really? (WAIR?) Process, which enables you to experience yourself as the creator of your life, with anything possible and nothing missing. People who have used that Process report a feeling of bliss and unlimited possibilities that can easily be a substitute for eating. You can download an MP3 of that Process at http://recreateyourlife.com/free/who-am-i-really-mp3.php.

The only precondition for using the WAIR? Process is eliminating at least one belief using the Lefkoe Belief Process. You can do that free of charge at http://recreateyourlife.com.

For more details, please see my eBook, The Secret to Ending Overeating For Good, at http://emotionaleatingreport.com. You also can get answers to specific questions at my office, 415-884-0552.

It’s About Escape, Not Food

If you truly want to understand the nature of emotional eating, you should study Geneen Roth’s best-selling book, Women, Food and God. It is beautifully written and filled with really useful information.

“I tell them [people in my retreats]that if compulsive eating is anything, it’s a way we leave ourselves when life gets hard. When we don’t want to notice what is going on. Compulsive eating is a way we distance ourselves from the way things are when they are not how we want them to be. I tell them that ending the obsession with food is all about the capacity to stay in the present moment. To not leave themselves. I tell them that they don’t have to make a choice between losing weight and doing this. Weight loss is the easy part; anytime you truly listen to your hunger and fullness, you lost weight. But I also tell them that compulsive eating is basically a refusal to be fully alive. No matter what we weigh, those of us who are compulsive eaters have anorexia of the soul. We refuse to take in what sustains us. We live lives of deprivation. And when we can’t stand it any longer, we binge. The way we are able to accomplish all of this is by the simple act of bolting—of leaving ourselves—hundreds of times a day.”

Apart from the lovely way that Geneen says this, she is extremely perceptive when she says that compulsive/emotional eating is the refusal to face reality, the refusal to face anything uncomfortable or difficult. So emotional eating is a way to escape reality.

Again Geneen describes the real issue so well:

“Her [the compulsive eater] problem is not about the food she consumes. Her problem, though it eventually would become excess weight, is not weight. It’s that she doesn’t know—no one ever taught her—how to “face” (as she calls it) her “deficiency.” The emptiness. The dissatisfaction.”

I’ve found over 20 distinct triggers that cause emotional eating. But what they all have in common is something uncomfortable that we don’t want to face. Emotional eaters chose eating as a way to numb themselves to that discomfort. But as Geneen clearly points out, the real issue is not the eating, it’s our unwillingness to live in the moment and face the uncomfortable.

Solving this problem is three-fold:

First, you need to de-condition eating, so it isn’t what you automatically use to go unconscious, in order to numb yourself to the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings you don’t want to face. Once you’ve done that, you will no longer eat automatically whenever you have uncomfortable feelings you want to escape.

Second, you need to eliminate the beliefs and conditionings that cause the thoughts and feelings that are so scary to you.

Third, you need to discover that you have thoughts and feelings, but they are not who you are. (The “Who Am I Really?” Process will help you with this.) That realization will make it easier to allow yourself to experience and just “be with” your negative thoughts and feelings, without needing to do anything to escape them.

For more details, please see my eBook, The Secret to Ending Overeating For Good, at http://emotionaleatingreport.com. You also can get answers to specific questions at my office, 415-884-0552.

Most Overeating Is Emotional Eating

Although the term “emotional eating” is still not in common usage, more and more people are realizing that overeating is almost always the result of eating for emotional reasons, as distinct from eating when hungry.

If you ask Google to notify you about every blog post or article published on the Internet on “emotional eating,” you will discover there are several everyday.

One such recent blog post had some excellent material on how to know if you are eating emotionally. I’d like to quote some excerpts from that post here and provide you with a link so you can read the rest of the post.

“Emotional eating can be said to occur when we eat to satisfy a desire other than physical hunger. Emotional eating usually takes place when a person is depressed or angry, stressed or vulnerable. It can be triggered in response to some distressing news, an argument with a loved one or simply boredom. There are any numbers of reasons that can send us heading straight for the cookie jar.

“You may go to a movie and although it is only an hour or so since you ate a meal you sit and eat a large carton of popcorn, then a coke or perhaps an ice cream. Perhaps you do the same sort of thing most evenings at home in front of the TV, just steadily munching away at various foods although you are not really hungry at all.

How do I know when I am emotionally eating?

“You can tell emotional hunger because it usually comes on very quickly whereas physical hunger will build up gradually.

“Emotional hunger needs to be immediately satisfied and with whatever food you are craving, physical hunger will wait.

“Emotional hunger usually brings with it a desire for certain foods. You may have a burning desire to eat chocolate or cakes or ice cream, maybe only pizza will satisfy your craving. With physical hunger you are more adaptable with what you eat.

“You may not be able to stop overeating. The emotion that has caused you to begin eating may not be satisfied and you are unable to stop eating junk food.

“After emotional eating it is likely that there will be feelings of guilt, this does not occur with physical hunger.”

You can find the full post at http://www.howcanistopeating.com/eating-disorders-–-stop-emotional-eating.

Unfortunately, despite the useful information about emotional eating, this post—like most other articles and books written on the subject—does not provide a workable solution. I am convinced based on my experience with a number of clients who had this problem, that emotional eating is the result of two distinct processes:

First, eating has been conditioned to occur whenever certain triggers or the desire for specific rewards are present and,

Second, beliefs that have been formed about eating, food, and weight.

When you eliminate all the conditionings and beliefs, emotional eating will stop.

For more details, please see my eBook, The Secret to Ending Your Overeating For Good, at http://emotionaleatingreport.com.

I Am Someone With A Weight Problem

Many people with an emotional eating problem can’t even imagine themselves not obsessing about food and eating all the time. It has become a part of their identity.

As Geneen Roth put it in her book, Women, Food and God, as long as you have an eating problem, “you always have something to do. As long as you are striving and pushing and trying hard to do something that can never be done, you know who you are: someone with a weight problem who is working hard to be slim. You don’t have to feel lost or helpless because you have a goal and that goal can never be reached.”

I suspect that if you consciously identify yourself as someone with a weight problem long enough, you will ultimately create an unconscious sense of yourself as someone with a weight problem regardless of how much you actually weigh.

Check it out for yourself. Close your eyes and look inside and ask yourself: What is my sense of myself?

Some people will have positive sense: I’m someone who is okay with myself; I’m fine just the way I am. Others might have a negative sense: I’m someone who doesn’t feel good about myself. There’s something basically wrong with me. And others might have a sense of themselves as: I am someone with a weight problem. I will never be okay until I reach a weight where I really look good.

Eating when we are not hungry is an attempt to not experience the “bad” person we mistakenly think we are. These negative feelings about ourselves are more than we think we can handle. So in an attempt to go unconscious and not experience those feelings, we eat.

In fact we are not the terrible person many of us think we are. Those negative feelings are nothing more than the feelings that come from negative beliefs about yourself, beliefs that have never been really the truth. Beliefs like I’m not good enough. I’m not important. I’m not worthy or deserving. I’m not loveable.

These beliefs were formed as a result of the meaning we gave to childhood interactions with our parents. If the beliefs were eliminated, the negative sense of we have of ourselves would disappear.

We might experience ourselves in a negative way. Yet it is not who we really are. We have that sense as a result of beliefs and conditions. And we might experience ourselves as someone with an eating problem. That also is not who we really are.

For more information about overeating and weight, please see my eBook, The Secret to Ending Overeating For Good, at http://emotionaleatingreport.com

Unconsciousness Is What’s Important, Not The Food

Most people who overeat claim that they eat because “it just tastes good.” But food tastes good to everyone, not just people with an emotional eating problem. So that can’t really be the reason.

Geneen Roth, in her best-selling book, Women, Food and God, perceptively points out the real underlying issue in all cases of overeating.

“The bottom line, whether you weigh 340 pounds or 150 pounds, is that when you eat when you are not hungry, you are using food as a drug, grappling with boredom or illness or loss or grief or emptiness or loneliness or rejection. Food is only the middleman, the means to the end. Of altering your emotions. Or making yourself numb. Of creating a secondary problem when the original problem becomes too uncomfortable. Of dying slowly rather than coming to terms with your messy, magnificent and very, very short—even at a hundred years old—life. The means to these ends happens to be food, but it could be alcohol, it could be work, it could be sex, it could be cocaine. Surfing the Internet. Talking on the phone.

“For a variety of reasons we don’t fully understand (genetics, temperament, environment), those of us who are compulsive eaters choose food. Not because of its taste. Not because of its texture or its color. We want quantity, volume, bulk. We need it—a lot of it—to go unconscious. To wipe out what’s going on. The unconsciousness is what’s important, not the food.”