| Why do you eat as much as you do? You weigh 30 pounds too much and eating the amount of food you do keeps you at that weight and makes it impossible to weigh any less. Have you ever thought about the amount of food you eat? By eat, of course, we mean put in your mouth, taste, chew and swallow. As you surely know by now, from a mechanical standpoint, that’s all eating really is. Let’s say you are eating something you really like. Let’s say it’s chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. You know that chocolate cake has lots of calories but you decide to put some of the cake in your mouth. Great. It tasted wonderful. O.K. why don’t you stop after you have a forkful? You know what it tastes like. Why do you have to put more of the cake in your mouth? You know very well that if you put more of the cake in your mouth it’s going to sabotage your desire to weigh less. So why are you doing it? Do you really need more of the taste of the cake in your mouth? Let’s find out exactly why it is that you are going to put more cake in your mouth. Just thinking about it isn’t going to do a thing for you. You will always make up some silly reason for putting more cake in your mouth. You know, you didn’t want the hostess to think you didn’t like her cake, etc. Give it up. The only way you will understand why feel the need to put the cake in your mouth is to just take one bite and not eat any more. This isn’t a test to see if you can give up cake. The reason you’re going to do this is to see how you feel when you don’t get to put all the cake you want in your mouth. Now, you’re not putting any more cake in your mouth. You don’t care what anyone thinks. You’re not going to do it. How do you feel? Are your taste buds screaming at you to give them more cake? Do you feel deprived? Are you getting anxious? What negative emotional reactions you are feeling? After you are sure you feel all the negative reactions put some more cake in your mouth. Now you probably feel better. What a difference! You got some more cake in your mouth. Why do you think that getting some more cake in your mouth made you feel so much better? Once you feel the difference in your emotional reactions to not having as much of the cake you “want” and then having it, you will begin to understand the emotional reasons you eat as much as you do. You are not eating the amount of food you do for rational reasons. You are doing it to satisfy your emotional needs. |
