Thursday, August 21 2008

All eating is emotional. The word, "emotion" literally means, "of action, moving." The biological function of emotions is to move or motivate behavior.

On this motivational level, we are not aware of emotions. We only become aware of them if we do not do what they tell us to do. That's when they start to feel bad and grow harder to resist.

Weight loss programs fail when they attempt to do the impossible: take emotion out of eating. Sustainable weight loss means choosing which emotions motivate it. The essential choice is between core hurts and Core Value.

Core hurt eating tries to avoid feeling:

• Disregarded
• Unimportant
• Guilty
• Devalued/Disrespected
• Rejected
• Powerless
• Inadequate/Unlovable

Core hurt eating is always overeating, because we know that as soon as we stop, the core hurts will get worse. So we don't stop, until our bodies make us.

Core Value eating is an expression of one's value of:

• Self Competence
• Growth/Creativity
• Health/Nurturing/Well being
• Compassion

Core Value is always in your best interest. It honors you, and you honor the food you eat as a gift of life. It honors those you love and those who love you.

The reality is, you will not lose weight until you value yourself more. When Core Value controls unconscious motivation, behavior changes automatically, from that which avoids core hurts into that which heals, corrects, improves, builds, and rebuilds.

There is no such thing as eating out of boredom. Bored people overeat only if their boredom threatens them with core hurts. If my boredom means that I'm unimportant or inadequate enough to find something of interest, I am likely to eat. But that's just the unconscious motivation. If I become aware that I shouldn't be eating this whole cake, I'll resentfully conclude that it's so hard being me, I deserve a treat! Or, I'm a screw-up anyway, why not have a good taste? Resentful eating is the purest form of core hurt eating.

In the absence of core hurts, the natural motivation of boredom is to find something of interest, not to eat. Eating never relieves boredom; engaging the mind does. But boredom is not the problem; core hurts are.

Incidentally, no one eats a whole cake or a quart of ice cream or a box of chocolates. We eat a moderate amount of these things. Then just one or two bites more, one or two more, and so on, usually faster and faster, trying to outrun the core hurts.

This myth is so prevalent that most of us have made lists of our "comfort foods," things like cake, oatmeal, chocolate, chicken and dumplings, ice cream, and so on. 

That some people feel comforted after eating certain foods has nothing to do with the food and everything to do with the emotion that motivates their eating, namely, their Core Value. They feel like they are "taking care of themselves," and, significantly, do not tend to overeat.

If Core Value motivates eating or anything else, the likely result will be comfort and general well being. If core hurts motivate "eating for comfort," the result will be guilt, shame, and considerable discomfort.

This is a most damaging myth. The same people who espouse it, by the way, tell overeaters who had absent mothers that they eat for affection because their mothers didn't express love with food.

In general, mothers use food to express affection to children who grow up to be thin just as much as they do to those who become obese. That aside, eating for affection belies common sense. Overeating leads to recrimination and eventual self-loathing, certainly not to love.

If we felt love by eating, we would savor it, prolong it, drag it out as much as we could. Yet overeaters and those who attack food tend to eat at one pace: fast and furious. Some actually keep eating just so they'll feel so bad about themselves afterwards that they will finally stick to their weight loss plans.