Click here to view the video on YouTube.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and people are talking about resolutions.

But if changing were as easy as “resolving to change,” you’d have already done it.

You have to have power and motivation to make resolutions work.

In this New Year’s 3-minute video, I talk about how you can get to a potent source of motivation for change…

By harnessing the part of you that would rather “live in a dumpster and eat trash” than have something continue the way it is.

Plus I give an update on my weight-loss project, for those who have been following along!

I realized, looking at all these recommendations, that I’ve been given a great resource…So why should I keep it all to myself?

In no particular order, here are the recommendations I’ve been given. I make no claims about any of them. Please feel free to add your ideas in the comments, and if you have given me a recommendation but I didn’t get it in here, I apologize.

Ilene recommends “Women Food and God” by Gennen Roth. Here’s a quote from it:

The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. No matter how sophisticated or wise or enlightened you believe you are, how you eat tells all. The world is on your plate. When you begin to understand what prompts you to use food as a way to numb or distract yourself, the process takes you deeper into realms of spirit and to the bright center of your own life. Rather than getting rid of or instantly changing your conflicted relationship with food, Women Food and God is about welcoming what is already here, and contacting the part of yourself that is already whole—divinity itself.

Eric shares this:

A different Eric shares this site, which makes a good case for his claim:

Everything, and I mean, just about everything you’ve been told about nutrition is an absolute, deliberate mind-control lie designed to make you miserable and unhealthy!

WWW.westonaprice.org

And Michael recommends:

Check out 2 books with bad titles — The Chemistry of Joy and The Chemistry of Calm both by Henry Emmons.

His website:

http://www.partnersinresilience.com/

I thank everyone who contributed their ideas. Do you have any resources you’d like to add? The comments are open — I’d love to hear what’s worked for you.

Related Posts

The science of overeating: The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Come with me as I take on an “impossible” weight loss challenge.

What do you really want from food?

Now I have to cook, too?!

I’d been on my weight-loss journey for about two months. I’d lost 11 pounds, and felt good about that.

But at the same time, I’d been starting to feel genuinely harassed by having to prepare my own food. And I was grumbling to Fawn about it.

“It’s sounds like you are not at peace about something,” Fawn ventured. “Perhaps it’s time to do some healing work?”

“I don’t know how much help that will be,” I said. “I know it’s important to do heart-level work when you’re upset, but this situation seems like the exception to that rule. I have to cook my own food. I guess I’d better just get good at suffering through the process.”

(Here’s a hint, by the way: when you think that something you are upset about is the “exception,” and that heart-level work won’t help… that’s the sign you need to do some heart-level work.)

What are you longing for? And what’s in the way?

Fawn wisely pressed on. “Well,” she said, “in view of the fact that I’ve been out of town a lot, and that you do have to cook your food, what do you want the cooking experience to be like?”

I thought for a moment, and said, “I want to feel good taking care of my health, every step of the way. Remember the rules I made up a the start of all this? ‘No using willpower, and no suffering.’ This ‘having to cook my own food’ thing is getting dangerously close to breaking those rules. But yes, the bottom line is I want to feel joy in all of it, every step of the way!”

“Ok, then what’s the problem?” Fawn asked. “When you go for that feeling of joy and peace in every step of your weight-loss journey, what gets in the way?”

“That’s easy,” I told her. “Cooking gets in the way. Eating well means spending a huge amount of time in the kitchen making food that is, quite honestly, not particularly thrilling. I work and work and end up with ‘Oh, that’s a nice miso bean soup. Sure am glad I’m eating this rather than a bunch of cookies.’ Bleah. All that time in the kitchen, making crappy ‘healthy’ food, and trying to convince myself it’s delicious. But it’s not delicious. It’s bland, boring, and time-consuming.”

“So that’s the problem,” Fawn said. “You want to feel joy in every part of building your good health. But it seems like in order to be healthy, you have to spend more time than you like cooking the bland, boring food that makes good health possible.”

“That’s right,” I said. Bland, boring crap, and hours spent every day to make it. Yuk.”

What’s the dark fate you’re believing in?

In the work that I do, we are always looking for the fate that you believe you are stuck with in the circumstances you are experiencing. So I wasn’t surprised by Fawn’s next question:

“When you have to spend more time than you like cooking the bland, boring food that makes good health possible, how do you lose heart? What fate do you start believing you are stuck with?”

I realized the truth: “When I want to have joy in good health, but feel stuck having to spend tons of time cooking bland, boring food, I do lose heart. And the way I lose heart is I start to believe that I’m fated to be trapped in the kitchen, and miss out on everything that is good about life. I’ll be locked in the kitchen making bean paste when I could be out in the world, enjoying hot fudge sundaes.”

I started to see that I really had accepted the idea that in order to lose weight, I was going to be trapped in the kitchen, and miss out on everything that is good about life.

It’s no wonder I was upset.

What kind of higher power would set that up?

One of the questions I like to ask people is, “What kind of ‘higher power’ would set up that kind of a fate for you?” In fact, that’s what Fawn asked me next:

“What kind of a ‘higher power’ would put a longing in your heart to have joy in pursuing good health, but fate you to have to miss out on everything that is good in life?

That’s an important question, because you can make a strong case that, whatever fate you are believing in, you are also believing something about the god, universe, higher power — or whatever you call it — that set that fate up in the first place.

Put another way, it’s important to know what kind of ‘higher power’ you are believing in. If you are believing in one that has doomed you to suffer, it’s going to make enjoying your life a lot more difficult. (In my case, it was making enjoying preparing my own food impossible.)

“Wow,” I answered. “The ‘higher power’ that would put that longing in my heart, then fate me to miss out on life, is pretty uncaring. It’s a power that says, ‘Hey dude, I don’t care. Life is rough. Get used to it. Things suck for everybody. Nobody said it would be fair. Suck it up and suffer through, jerk.”

Fawn asked, “Does that idea feel like it’s from the highest and most merciful reality you can imagine? Is that truly Divine Blessing?”

I had to admit it most certainly was not. It was clear to me that I did not know what Divine Blessing would look like in this situation, but I certainly knew that this uncaring point of view was not it.

So I went inside myself, and gathered up this part of me that had bought the idea that I was fated to spend my life trapped in the kitchen. I took it and turned away from the dark ‘higher power.’ With a sense of expectation, I opened myself to the Divine Light.

Opening to the Divine Light

I should say a few words here about “opening to Divine Light.” I like to think of it the way my buddy Jim Keeley describes it — that opening to the Divine Light is like tuning in an old-style radio.

When you tune in an old-style radio, you are listening for the station you want to tune into, and adjusting the knob until the broadcast is playing clearly.

It’s the same when you turn to the Divine. You’re tuning your “inner radio,” listening for the Divine station, and adjusting and opening until the Divine broadcast is playing clearly.

The important thing to note, though, is that when you tune to the Divine broadcast, you don’t know what’s going to be playing. The big mistake I see people make is that they turn to the Light, and demand or expect that it will show up in a certain way. They expect to be given a piece of advice, or an action plan, or to have their feelings changed in a certain way.

But every time you open yourself to the Divine, it’s different — and chasing yesterday’s experience of the Divine will ultimately be frustrating. You need to turn to the Light with the expectation that it will be there, and that it can touch you — but without a specific agenda for how it will affect you.

In my case, I was turning to the Divine with the part of me that had accepted the idea that if I wanted to be healthy, I had to get used to missing out on life. I was saying, “I have no idea what the truth is, but I know it’s not the fate I’ve accepted. I know You have goodness in store for me, and I’m open to anything You have to give me.”

The kitchen as foundation and springboard into life

As I turned to the Light with that sense of open expectation, I started to feel that Light fill me in all the places where I had accepted the dark fate. I started to see that the world of possibility was bigger than I had thought. A lot bigger, as a matter of fact.

In this new Light, I started to have the sense that the Divine made me to be healthy, fit and of service to the world. And I started to feel that the Divine wanted to support me in that health, fitness, and service.

And I started to see that part of how the Divine supports me in all of that is through the food that I eat.

From that perspective I started to see how meal planning, shopping and cooking are the foundation of that support. I started to see how the time I spend in the kitchen is the foundation that powers me to spring forward into the world.

I started to see that the purpose of my life is not to be laboring down in that foundation, scrubbing the bricks and never experiencing life. The foundation is important, but the foundation is not the purpose of my life.

I started to see how the time I spend in the kitchen isn’t meant to keep me from the world — it is like a springboard that is meant to power me in it.

If that’s true, then I want to cook!

I shared all this with Fawn, and she asked me, “In view of this new truth, how does that change your relationship with cooking?”

“It changes it a lot,” I told her. “If the kitchen really is my springboard into life, then I want to use it well. If the food I make there is designed to fuel my actions in the world, then I want the food I make to be great.”

Rather than seeing it as a burden, cooking time now started to seem like a time of recharging — a gathering of energy and preparation for doing great things in the world.

That felt much better.

The sequence of challenges in changing my body

As I go through the process of improving my health,  I’m finding there are a sequence of challenges that need to be overcome.

– First, it was about deciding I actually wanted to make a change, even though it seemed impossible, and committing myself to doing the heart-level work of making it possible.

– Then it was about admitting that I actually didn’t want to change, and getting past my desire to eat whatever I felt like in the moment. It was about seeing that the freedom I desired lay in controlling my behavior, rather than in being out of control with food.

– Then it was about keeping my motivation by understanding the science of what I was up against, so I’d have mental fuel to keep eating well, and

– Today it was about getting past my resentment of having to actually prepare my own food, and seeing how the time I spend in the kitchen is the foundation and a springboard for doing great things with my life.

I’ve really been appreciating the support and the guidance people have been giving me in the comments. What do you think the next challenge will be, what’s your experience with that challenge, and how have you gotten past it?

There’s also science.

I recently found a book that does a great job explaining the science of overeating, and today I’d like to share with you some of what I’ve learned from it.

The book is called “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite.” It’s by a former US FDA head, David Kessler, MD.

You can get the book on Amazon.com here.

In this post I’ll share some of the quotes from the book that really struck me, and my thoughts about them. But be aware — there’s a lot in this book I won’t be sharing with you. I won’t be sharing his research about how the food industry works to “load and layer” food so you’ll become addicted to it. I won’t be sharing the theory of treatment of “Conditioned Hypereating.” I won’t be sharing many other parts of the book. If you like this blog post, “The End of Overeating” may be worth checking out.

Americans weigh more, and eat more

Did you know that Americans didn’t used to be fat? It’s true. According to Kessler, as early as 40 years ago, weight was generally pretty stable across a person’s adult life. “American adults typically gained a couple of pounds between 20 and 40, then lost of couple of pounds in their 60s and 70s.” That was it.

Things have changed. Kessler points out that, in the 40 years between 1960 and 2000, 20- to 29-year-old American women’s average weight has gone from 128 pounds to 157 pounds. At the same time, American women ages 40-49 went from an average of 142 pounds to an average of 169 pounds. And while he didn’t provide the numbers for men, I feel confident that their increase is just as big if not bigger.

Americans are also eating more:

“By far the largest increase has been in the consumption of fats and oils, with a 63% jump over a thirty-three year period, from per capita annual consumption of about fifty-three pounds to about eighty-six pounds. The use of sugars and sweeteners is also up — by a modest 19% — and in that same period we ate 43% more grains and 7% more meats, eggs, and nuts.”

We eat more, and we weight more.

But…Why? Why is this happening? And what can we do about it?

Introducing the “Hyper-palatable 3”: Sugar, Fat, and Salt

Kessler points out that “Early human diets contained only about 10 percent fat. Sugar intake, primarily from ripe fruit, was also modest.” And I imagine early humans intake of salt was modest, too.

These foods are vital in small quantities, but they were rare, so humans developed the ability and the desire to seek them out. “That may be why we have 300 or more olfactory receptors to sense the odors associated with fats, as well as an innate preference for sweetness,” Kessler says.

So what happens when sugary, fatty and salty foods — once rare and pursued — become available in unlimited quantities?

A study at the University of Chicago performed by scientist Anthony Sclafani provides an answer that probably won’t surprise you. Sclafani fed rats a “supermarket diet:”

“[The rats were fed foods including] sweetened condensed milk, chocolate-chip cookies, salami, cheese, bananas, marshmallows, milk chocolate, and peanut butter. After ten days, animals that were fed the supermarket diet weighed significantly more than rats that were fed bland chow. And the rats on supermarket diets continued to gain weight, eventually becoming twice as heavy as their control counterparts.”

Yikes!

But as I said, you’re probably not surprised by this. Most of us have experienced “losing control” against foods high in sugar, fat, and salt.

That’s why Kessler calls sugary, fatty and salty foods “hyper-palatable.”

They’re not simply “palatable” — that is, “good tasting.” They’re “hyper-palatable” — off-the-scale desirable, tasty beyond anything humans have developed resistance to.

And it turns out that, if you eat a ton hyper-palatable food, it’s not because you have some sort of moral failing.

It’s because of biology.

When we go up against sugary, fatty, and salty foods, our biology can easily be turned against us. Then overeating — and getting fat — wins.

This is your brain on heroin opioids

Kessler says that “alone among the senses, taste is hardwired to brain cells that respond to pleasure.”

That means that there are specific neurons that respond to different aspects of the eating experience. Some specific neurons fire when you eat something sweet. Others respond to a certain texture in food. “A neuron stimulated by a sweet taste that has been coupled with a fatty texture would be activated when we eat, say, an éclair.”

When these neurons fire, they trigger the body’s pleasure system:

“When we first put a highly palatable food in our mouths, taste buds in the tongue respond by sending a signal to an area of the lower brain responsible for controlling many of our involuntary activities, such as breathing and digestion. When the lower brain receives that signal, it activates the neural circuitry that contains natural opioid molecules.”

“From the lower brain, the sensory experience of taste travels through the midbrain, reaching regions where the sensory signals of food are integrated. Those signals are ultimately relayed to the ‘nucleus accumbens,’ an area of the brain that is the center of reward.”

This causes the release of opioids into the brain. Also known as endorphins, they have a “rewarding effect similar to morphine and heroin.”

That gives the big burst of pleasure that is familiar to many of us. It’s what we feel when we eat a hyper-palatable food — in my case for instance, a chocolate-chip cookie. The intense pleasure is the opioids being released into the brain.

A vicious cycle: Opioids drive even more eating

Unfortunately, when you eat hyper-palatable foods — foods that are full of sugar, fat and salt — you don’t generally become satisfied.

In fact, eating hyper-palatable food drives you to eat even more hyper-palatable food:

“In a cyclical process, eating highly palatable food activates the opioid circuits, and activating these circuits increases consumption of highly palatable food.”

“Animals eat more high-sugar, high-fat foods after receiving opioid injections. We also know that after using drugs that stimulate the opioid circuitry, people report that palatable food is more pleasant and they eat more of it.”

Not only do the opioids activated by hyper-palatable food stimulate eating more, they also keep you from growing tired of those foods.

You’re never satisfied. You just keep wanting more.

Sugar, fat and salt literally change your brain

I’m not using “literally” to mean “figuratively,” either. As we’ll see in a moment, the cycle of cue/dopamine/opioid/habit/repeat literally changes the way your brain functions in regard to food.

Cues to eat

First, there are the “cues” to eat.

A “cue” is a stimulus that “trips the trigger” and tells you to eat. It’s what makes you think, “Oh yeah, it’s time to eat that now.”

For me, the cue to eat a cookie might be seeing it at the coffeeshop.

Or I might be unaffected by seeing it, but the smell of it, fresh-baked, might cue me to eat.

The more I obey a cue, the stronger and more far-reaching that cue becomes. After enough times of eating a cookie after I’ve seen it, not only will I get cued by seeing the cookie, I’ll also start being cued by driving by the coffeeshop where the cookie is available. Then I’ll start getting cued every time I get into the car. Then I’ll start getting cued to go buy a cookie when I even think about getting into my car.

Kessler says, “With experience, the association between cues and food becomes even stronger, and we become more single-minded in our focus and our pursuit.”

Not surprisingly, he concludes, “That increases consumption.”

Dopamine and the pursuit

When we see a cue, the chemical dopamine is released in the brain.

This releasing of dopamine is like putting your foot on the gas pedal of desire. It makes you go faster in the pursuit of food.

“If opioids give food its pleasure and help keep us eating, dopamine motivates our behavior and impels us toward food.”

When a person gets cued and dopamine is released, they are driven to overcome whatever obstacles might be between them and the goal.

How hard will dopamine drive us in pursuit of hyper-palatable foods? Scientist Sarah Ward, working at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, found this:

“The breaking point where the animals will no longer work for a sugar and fat ‘reward’ is slightly lower than the breaking point for cocaine. Animals are willing to work almost as hard to get either one.”

That’s some pretty serious pursuit.

And again, it’s not a moral weakness if this is happening to you. It’s not you “just being weak” or “needing to try harder.” It’s your brain’s natural reaction to constant exposure to foods full of sugar, fat, and salt.

Habits nail that coffin shut

If you act out a set of behaviors over and over, it will usually become a habit. And, because of the pleasure that comes with the opioid release of eating hyper-palatable foods, habits of eating sugar, fat, and salt are very easy to form.

As Kessler says,

“A continuous cycle of cue-urge-reward is set in motion and eventually becomes a habit.”

“In one study, people were given high-sugar, high-fat snacks for five consecutive mornings. For days afterward, they wanted something sweet at about the same time each morning that they had been fed the snack, even though they had not previously snacked at that time.”

This is serious, because when you have a habit, you can actually take action before you know you are doing it:

“Researchers have been able to measure movement before subjects know they are going to move. Brain activity stimulates a motor response in advance of awareness.”

Have you ever just “found yourself” eating, before you even knew you were doing it? That’s “action in advance of awareness.” It’s part of the effect that hyper-palatable foods have on your brain.

Summing up the science

Kessler concludes:

“Foods high in sugar, fat and salt are altering the biological circuitry of our brains….Rewarding foods are rewiring our brains. As they do, we become more sensitive to the cues that lead us to anticipate rewarding foods.”

“The cycle: a cue triggers a dopamine-fueled urge…dopamine leads us to food…eating food leads to opioid release…and the production of both dopamine and opioids stimulates further eating.”

Kessler has defined this behavior as “Conditioned Hypereating.” It’s a syndrome in which this new brain chemistry has taken control.

In conditioned hypereating, everything seems to become a cue to eat. The cue releases the dopamine, which drives us to eat, which releases the opioids, which drives us to eat more… And the cycle goes on and on, and we get fatter and fatter.

Thinking in terms of 3 types of food: The good, the bad, and the ugly.

As you may recall from a previous post, I very highly value feeling free to make my own choices. Discovering that I was being a puppet in the hands of sugar, fat, and salt really motivated me to change.

As I’ve contemplated this change, I’ve realized that most people see food in two categories:

1. The good: Food you enjoy. You eat it, because you like it.
2. The bad: Food you don’t enjoy. Generally speaking, you don’t eat it. You avoid it because you don’t like it.

Before hyper-palatable foods were constantly available to us, these two categories worked just fine. But I believe a third category of food has arisen:

3. The ugly: Hyper-palatable food. Hyper-palatable food is food you enjoy — too much. You don’t eat it because

• • it takes control of your biology,
  • it alters your brain chemistry, and
  • it takes control of your behavior and makes you eat even more.

Since I’ve been thinking of food in these three categories, rather than the old two, it’s been much easier for me to change my eating habits.

Now that I know the truth about hyper-palatable foods, I see them for what they really are. If a food is hyper-palatable, I don’t eat it. It doesn’t matter if its tasty. I don’t need the trouble.

I’ve also come to recognize the feeling I get when I eat a hyper-palatable food. When I eat a hyper-palatable food, I feel an intense pleasure, located in the center of my head, along with the desire to eat more of that food. Your signal may be different from mine, and I encourage you to discover what your signal is.

For me, if I feel that “hyper-palatable pulse,” I stop eating that food right away, because I know it will take control of me if I give it the chance.

The bigger picture

I have some other ideas about the importance of managing your brain chemistry that I’ll discuss in future posts. Today, I’ll simply say that I suspect that there is a kind of brain chemistry that feeds the feeling of deep blessing. I believe that such brain chemistry is actually incompatible with the driven-to-eat brain chemistry that comes from eating hyper-palatable foods.

My suspicion is that you can either be in the “blessed” state of mind, or the “pursue hyper-palatable foods” state of mind — but not both. And because we all want to live from a flow of deep blessing, knowing how to get your brain chemistry right is important.

Put another way, I’m suspecting that the act of making changes in our diet runs down to the core of who we are as people, and directly into our spiritual lives. It’s not just about losing weight. It’s about where we get our sense of sustenance, on the deepest levels.

And that’s a good thing, because I know that I’m not seeking a way to lose weight if it means spending the rest of my life in a battle to keep from getting fat again. If you’re like me, you’re not interested in a life-long battle, either.  So whatever solution I arrive at has to not only work in the long-term, it has to really, truly help me feel like I’m being fed by a deeper blessing current. I think most other people would like that, too.

I’ll talk more about it in coming posts, but I wanted to give you a sense of where I think all this is going.

For now, I suggest you start to think in terms of foods you like to eat (the good), foods you don’t like to eat (the bad), and hyper-palatable foods that cause you pleasure, but which you don’t eat anymore (the ugly).

I welcome your thoughts in the comments.

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My wife Fawn had asked me what I wanted my relationship with food to be like. Hearing me answer, I think she was starting to regret having asked.

“I want to eat hot fudge sundaes. I want to eat donuts. I want to eat chocolate chip cookies — In fact, that’s such a great idea, if I wasn’t talking to you I’d go get some cookies right now! That’s how brilliant that idea is. I want to eat what I want, when I want it, and as much as I want of it, and nobody can stop me.”

We were talking because I had committed to lose weight and become more healthy, but — and this is putting it mildly — I wasn’t feeling like doing what it would take to get those outcomes.

“Cookies, and more cookies,” I continued. “That is what I want.”

“So, why do you want that?”

Fawn looked a little shocked by my belligerence. But, being a smart facilitator, she moved on with the process anyway.

“Okay,” she said, “That’s what you want. But why do you want that? What does it seem like doing that will give you?”

I knew the answer without a moment’s hesitation. “Why do I want that?” I answered. “That’s an easy one.

“I want to eat whatever I want because I want to be free. I don’t want to live that dull, grey, restricted, boring life of eating ‘healthy.’ I want to be unrestricted and free, eating up the wonders of life. I want life without restriction. I want joy and color and amazingness. And if that means eating cookies whenever I want them, then that’s what it means.”

Fawn had wisely uncovered what I truly wanted: Freedom.

And she had seen my prescription for freedom: Cookies.

It was time to take the next step.

The heart never truly longs for something unwholesome

In the work we do we are always looking for the deepest longing a person has in a situation. We like to think of it as if the Divine placed that longing in your heart. It’s sacred.

And by that same token we believe that the heart never truly wants something unwholesome. We never truly, in our deepest heart, long for something that will destroy us.

Therefore, when I said “I truly long to eat cookies, and never stop,” Fawn knew that I was full of it. Did I really, truly, on the deepest level of my being, long for something that would eventually give me diabetes and a heart attack? Of course not. The heart never truly longs for something unwholesome. Fawn knew she had to look deeper.

“Okay,” she said. “So let’s get into this. I really want to understand your experience of eating cookies and being free. Where do you get the best cookies?”

“The coffeeshop by our house,” I answered. “They have the best freakin’ chocolate chip cookies in the world. Hot out of the oven, perfectly browned, chocolaty and gooey. MMMmm. I wish I had one right now.”

“Okay,” she said. “Imagine how it feels to walk into that coffeeshop. You walk, in, and what happens?”

“I walk in, and walk up to the counter.” I told her. “I see the cookies. I smell them. Wow, they look so good. I have to have one. I absolutely have to have one.”

Fawn said, “Just out of curiosity — could you choose not to have one?”

“No!” I said. “I can’t choose that. I must have one. I want one. I have to have one. I must have one! I must! I must!”

At that moment I had one of those “comes the dawn” experiences.

I had one of those rare human moments of actually hearing the words that were coming out of my mouth.

And it was quite a revelation.

“Hey, wait a minute!” I said. “If I must have one, I don’t have any choice. That’s not freedom! That’s not freedom at all!”

Not free at all

There I was, a guy who was committed to feeling free. I had just discovered that I wasn’t free at all. In fact, I was being controlled by the very food I desired most.

That was a big realization.

I continued to talk as I unpacked this new insight. “You know, I do like the pleasurable sensations of eating; that’s for sure. But I see now that I do not like being out of control. I do not like going to a coffeeshop for a cup of tea and getting a cookie and a hot cocoa because I can’t stop myself. I do not like that at all.

I continued, “I don’t want to be controlled by ‘there’s a cookie, I have to get it. There’s a mocha, I have to buy it.’ I hate that, actually. I hate that I’m consigned to being out of control, and to not have any choice.”

As much as I enjoy eating, I had to admit, “There’s no joy in being out of control.”

In that moment, I discovered that my true longing was to be in control of my eating. My true longing, when it came to sugary foods that made me fat and out of control, was simply to stop.

“I want to be able to take a stand,” I told Fawn. “I want to be able to take a stand in the world and say, ‘for the sake of my health, I’m not eating that.’ I want to be that free.”

Until you connect to your desire to change, change is hard

Before I did the healing I’m describing, I had said I wanted to change my behavior around food. In fact, I’d said it on the teleseminar where I announced this weight-loss project, and in earlier posts on this blog.

But when I was “dirt honest” about it, I had to admit that I really liked eating whatever I wanted, because it seemed like it was a way of being free.

Your motivations may be different than mine. Perhaps feeling free is not your top priority. Perhaps it’s feeling supported, or feeling powerful, or feeling in control.

But, fundamentally, if you are saying you want to change your behavior, but actually don’t want to change it, you probably shouldn’t lie about it. You need to look deeper to see if that behavior is really, truly giving you what your heart longs for, and move from that new realization.

Let’s look at my case:

If I hadn’t acknowledged that I wanted to keep on eating everything, how well would I have been able to change my behavior around food? Probably not very well. I would have “talked a good game,” but still eaten and eaten and eaten.

I often see this in my clients, and participants at my workshops. People want something to be different in their lives, then pretend to want to take the action to make that change happen…but part of them really doesn’t.

Then they try to change, but their repressed desire to do the behavior they are supposedly trying to stop works against them. They then wonder why they are having difficulty, and why they can’t be “self-disciplined.”

Once I acknowledged that I really liked overeating because I thought it  gave me freedom, I was able to look deeper. I was able to ask, is my compulsive eating really an example of being free? From that perspective I was able to see quite clearly: It was not.

In the face of that realization, I really started wanting self-control. I got “on board” with my desire to control what I was eating. I wanted to be free to make my own choices about food, not have them made for me.

This opened up a real feeling of lightness and possibility for me. I felt a new energy in my body, and the energy said this:

“I want to choose, and I CAN choose.”

I started to really feel the truth of it. I wasn’t doomed to be an automaton, shoveling sugar into my mouth. I could choose for myself.

I started feeling how it felt to able to make my own choices, rather than having food make those choices for me.

It felt great.

Getting “on board” with changing

Your process may be different than mine. The important thing is that you participate. You have to acknowledge where you are at right now — even if it’s wanting to eat everything in sight. Then you need to look deeper, to your deeper desire, and let yourself come into relationship with that longing.

When your heart is really “on board” with changing, it’s much easier to ignore the cookie you’d otherwise eat, or whatever else is tempting you as you set about changing your life.

For me, since this process happened — almost 2 weeks ago now — I’ve found myself staying away from the food that I’d normally go crazy with.

I haven’t been using self-discipline. Not one bit. I’ve simply been following that desire of my heart to make my own choices, and to be free.

Here’s how my weight has been doing since I started this project:

January 24th, 2011: 240.2lbs

February 17th, 2011: 236.2lbs

March 4th, 2011: 233.8lbs

During the first interval, a 3.5 week span, I lost weight at a rate equivalent to 5lbs/month — my target rate. The rate during the second interval — 15 days — was equivalent to losing 4.8lbs/month — very close!

This last bit I’m especially grateful for, as immediately after doing the healing I’ve described here, Fawn and I went on a trip to a place where I usually gain weight. I was able to easily pass up all the brownies and cookies this place offers, and actually lost weight on my trip. That’s good news indeed!

I’ve been really encouraged by the comments people have been posting as I’ve been taking this journey. I hope you’ll comment if you feel called to, and let me know how things are going with your journey toward change — whatever that change may be.

 

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I announced I was going to do something that a lot of people want to do, but aren’t able to accomplish.

I announced I would lose the excess 50 pounds I’ve been carrying around…

• Without using self-discipline,
• Without beating up on myself, and
• Without suffering,

… And that I would blog every step of my journey.

So why would you care?

If have a challenge in your life that seems impossible — be it losing weight, finding a job, restoring a relationship, finishing a graduate thesis, or whatever — I think this quest will interest to you.

If you are like most people, you approach seemingly impossible problems with everything you’ve got. You probably…

• fire up your self-discipline, and
• get the best advice you can get, and
• use the best techniques you can come up with.

These are all good ideas… But without the one “missing piece of the puzzle,” eventually you’re likely to lose momentum. And when that happens, evereything can fall apart.

In my case, with my weight, in the past I’ve taken these actions. I’ve been disciplined. I’ve had good advice. I’ve used smart techniques.

How’s that worked out for me? Well, here are the numbers…

• Six months ago, my weight was 229 pounds, and my total cholesterol was 204.
• Five days ago, my weight was 236 pounds, and my total cholesterol was 210.

That’s right — in the last six months, my weight has gone up and my cholesterol numbers have gotten worse… Despite my best intentions.

Clearly something is missing.

The missing piece: the state of your heart

I like to say that if the state of your heart is good, then you don’t need any advice — you feel internally motivated to do the best thing.

However, if the state of your heart is upset, the best advice in the world won’t help you, because you have no motivation.

If you want to make a major change in your life — if you want to accomplish something “impossible” — then you need to be able to get your heart back into a “great state” when you are upset…. so you’ll have the internal motivation you need to effortlessly keep going toward your goal.

I invite you to follow along and apply my journey to your “impossible” challenges.

I hope you’ll decide to follow along with me, on this blog, as I do the “heart work” to keep my motivation going as I pursue my proper weight.

I’ll do my best to make the lessons I learn as universal and applicable as I can, so you can apply them to your life, too.

I also hope you’ll comment on my posts — starting with this one. You might…

• ask questions,
• give encouragement,
• let me know what seemingly impossible project you want to take on in your life,
• and share how that project is going for you.

It’s my hope we can create a community around this where we all learn, all feel supported, and all discover the courage to consistently go for what we long for.