| It’s a great day for a ball game. Your team is playing. It’s really exciting. The weather is beautiful. A lot of your friends are there. Everybody is happy. Everybody brought some food. All of you are going to share all that great food. It wouldn’t be a game without the food. Everyone eats a lot of food at these games. You don’t know exactly why that is, but it happens every game. Eating is just part of the party atmosphere. But you weigh 30 pounds more than you want to weigh. So why are you going to eat all that food? You complain all the time about your weight all the time, but when the occasion arises you are right there ready to eat. You know that if you really want to weigh less that you should not be eating all that food. You don’t seem to care. No matter what, nothing is going to stop you from joining in. You want to be part of the crowd. You want to eat what everyone else is eating Now is the time to tell yourself why you insist on eating foods, and an amount of food, that will keep you weighing what you say you don’t want to weigh. Let’s think of the possible reasons. You like being part of the crowd. Eating at games is fun. The food tastes good. You don’t want to insult your friends by not eating food that they brought. You think you’re “hungry.” O.K. That’s about it. Do you have any more reasons? If you do, tell yourself what they are. When you finish going over all the reasons you will find that none of them logically explain why you had to eat the food you ate at the game. To the contrary, after the game you felt terrible that you ate all that food and you promised yourself that you weren’t going to eat that much again. Here’s what you’re going to do. Next time you go to a game, you aren’t going to eat any food at all. That’s right. No food. Go through the whole game without eating anything. See how you feel. Be sure you feel your emotional reactions? Did you experience any negative emotional reactions? Did you miss the food? Why? What did missing the food really mean to you? After all, you’re not undernourished. Did not eating the food make you nervous or did you feel deprived? Did you want to put some of the food in your mouth? After you experience your feelings you will find that it’s not the food at all. It’s how you felt about eating the food. It was something you felt you needed to do. After you experience your emotional reactions to not eating food at games you will emotionally understand why you always ate a lot of food at games. |
