SELF-HELP EXERCISES
Thread 2 – Exploring Your Relationship with Food

This is one of several threads from the Never Diet Again® program. It will help you begin to understand your relationship with food. This is not a complete program, and there are many other aspects of an eating disorder that need to be addressed. If you find you are continuing to struggle with compulsive eating, seek the assistance of a licensed therapist who is experienced in working with eating disorders. In addition, you need to realize that behaviors such as bulimia or anorexia can be life-threatening. Even though you might tell yourself that you’d rather die than be fat, you deserve to have a happy life, and you need help in getting self-destructive habits under control. Please contact an eating disorders specialist before you end up in the hospital, or worse …

INTRODUCTION
Food is the fuel we need to run the vehicle we travel in every day. That’s one of the reasons that food addictions or eating disorders are so difficult to handle – you can give up smoking or drinking, but you can’t survive if you don’t eat. Eating ought to be one of life’s great pleasures. But for many people, even those who eat all the time, food causes more pain than pleasure. Understanding your relationship with food, and getting to the source of some of your difficulties may help you turn things around, so that you can eat more normally and enjoy food rather than suffer from it.

There are ten exercises in this thread. Read the first section and give yourself several days to take it in and to try the suggested exercise before going onto the next section. Rushing through is like skipping over from A to Z in the alphabet and then wondering why it’s difficult to spell anything.

1. Finding Out More About My Early Years

Begin to find out all that you can about your infancy and early childhood. Find pictures of yourself as an infant, or age 1-3. If your parents or other family members are available, ask them questions, such as:

• Was I breast or bottle fed?
• Was I on a feeding schedule?
• How did I handle food?
• Were there any feeding problems, such as:
  • allergy to formula?
  • mother having emotional or physical problems?
  • mother having inverted nipples or not enough milk?
  • colic?
• How was my early childhood in general? Was I known to be:
  • happy?
  • very good?
  • rebellious?
  • often punished?
  • lonely?
  • sickly?
  • friendly?
  • under considerable stress?

Even if no one is available, or no pictures can be located, you can still recall some information by relaxing, practicing deep breathing, and then allowing images of your childhood to arise in your mind.

2. Finding Out More About My History

Go to a park playground, mall, or fast food restaurant. Find children age 1 1/2 to 3 years old and observe:

• how they relate to their parents or caretakers
• how they operate both dependently and independently
• how they deal with food
• how their parents or caretakers deal with them.

As you observe, try to imagine:

• what was I like at that age?
• what was happening with my siblings, if I had any then?
• what was going on in my parents’ lives at that point?
• how were my interactions with my parents and with food at that time?

3. What Messages Did I Learn About Food?

What early messages did I receive about food? For example:

• I had to eat everything on my plate (the "Clean Plate Club") before I left the table
• I was supposed to feel guilty about the starving children (in China, Russia, India, on the moon) who were somehow going to be affected by my eating habits
• I had to eat my vegetables before I could have dessert
• I’d better eat quickly before my siblings took everything
• my mother's inability to properly feed me as an infant left me with a feeling that "there's never going to be enough"

How are these messages still affecting me as an adult? For example:

• I feel I must eat everything on my plate at a restaurant because I paid for it - or someone else paid for it - and I shouldn't waste food or money
• I stuff down my feelings with food because "nice children" don't get angry
• even if I’m not hungry for dinner and all I really want is apple pie, I order a complete meal and finish the entire thing, before I feel entitled to dessert
• I eat everything in sight because it's here today and tomorrow there may not be any

The more self-aware you can become, the better you will be able to manage your eating problems. So ask yourself what early childhood message is playing somewhere in your mind when you are overeating.

4. What Messages Did I Learn About Expressing My Feelings?

What early messages did I receive about feelings and expression of them? For example:

• in my house, children to be "seen but not heard”
• I expected to "go to your room and don't come out until you're smiling"
• I was told, "Don't cry or I'll give you something to REALLY cry about"
• I was told to "Stop being selfish - think about other people's feelings"
• what other messages did I receive about expressing my feelings?

How are these messages still affecting me as an adult? For example:

• is it difficult for me to express certain feelings?
• do I even know what I am feeling?
• am I afraid that others will laugh at my opinions?
• do I feel I really don't deserve to get my needs met?
• do I feel I should not say “No” to the requests or demands of others?

5. Listening to My Inner Voices

What messages do you give yourself?

a) Divide a piece of paper in two columns and carry it around with you for the next several days. Start noticing when you are talking to yourself about food, your abilities, etc. On the left column, write some of the things you hear yourself saying. For example:

• I’ll never find a good relationship – I’m too fat.
• I deserve exactly what I am getting, given how poorly I’m running my life.
• What is wrong with me, anyway?
• That was a great job I just did – I’m proud of myself.
• You idiot – how could you be so stupid?
• You have absolutely no self-control.
• Oh well, messed up again, but only a little.

b) Then on the right column, note whether the comment was positive, neutral, or negative. Also – especially if what you heard in your mind started with “You” instead of “I” – note who in your life might have ever said things like that to you.

c) Now take a minute to think of one other person to whom you would speak like this? There is probably no one who receives such critical and negative feedback from you, as that you are giving to yourself.

d) Imagine you are with a very dear friend. Imagine that person just said the very negative things you recorded in the first column. What kind, respectful, or supportive things might you say if you heard these things from someone you treasure. For example:

• Lots of people who weigh more than you do are in good relationships. Even if you never get to be skinny, you can still find love in your life.
• OK, so you messed up the project. You do lots of great work most of the time. I’m sure you will be able to fix it tomorrow.
• Yeah, you feel stupid right now. But you are not stupid, or you wouldn’t ever have gotten this job in the first place.

If you think of yourself as your own very best friend and supporter, you will find you can be a lot nicer to yourself. And since we know that beating up on ourselves usually leads to more emotional eating, it’s worth the effort to be more positive.

6. Exploring Pain

Think of a time in the recent past when you ate as a reaction to pain. What did you fear would happen if you let yourself feel your pain, instead of eating it away? For example:

• I might cry all day.
• I would go to bed instead of to work.
• I’d run screaming through the streets.
• I’d feel like dying or killing myself.
• I might feel like killing someone else.

As a result of eating, what happened to the pain? For example:

• it disappeared forever
• it got worse
• I forgot about it
• I felt much better about myself
• I felt terrible about myself
• the pain came back the next day

7. Exploring Alternatives I Have for Dealing with Pain

Unless you want to continue to use food to numb out your pain, and then suffer the consequences that you experience as a result of emotional eating, you’ll need some alternatives for nurturing yourself, for dealing with pain. Make a list of at least 10 alternatives that you would be willing to try. For example:

• cry
• walk
• go to the gym
• read
• call a friend
• scream and hit a pillow
• write or draw about the pain
• listen to music
• go to a movie
• cuddle with a teddy bear, heating pad, or a caring person
• take a bath

Be sure to include some things that you can do when you are out in public or at work, as well as those you can do in private or at home. Write the list you created on a card and carry it in your purse or wallet.

This week, whenever you find yourself wanting to eat as a result of emotional pain, distress, anxiety, anger, depression, loneliness, or other non-hunger reason, stop and ask yourself:

• Will eating will help with this particular incident?
• Will eating take my pain away or make me feel better?

If the answer is no, take out your list of alternatives before you reach for "comfort" food. Try at least one alternative to eating, and then decide whether or not you still want to eat. If you do, then go ahead, but each time you are in pain, try an alternative first.

8. Exploring the Benefits of Fat and/or Obsessing about Food

It seems easy to list the disadvantages of being fat or having constant problems with weight and eating. For example:

• not attractive
• feel bad about myself
• embarrassed
• can't get better job/relationship
• feel tired and achy

What may be less apparent are the possible advantages or benefits derived from having this "problem." For example, fat may:

• be equated with love or warmth
• serve as a "social sieve" to screen out "wolves"
• allow you to avoid relationships that you think may be painful
• keep you from confronting more serious issues that scare you
• provide a sense of power, strength, or security
• keep you from confronting your fears of success or failure elsewhere
• feel comfortable, because it is known, while thin may feel scarier

Create a list of all the ways that fat is your friend, the purposes or values it holds for you, and the good reasons you have for not wanting to give it up.

9. Finding Other Ways

Now that you have explored some of the possible advantages or benefits derived from having this "problem" with fat, the purposes fat or food obsession may serve for you, you may begin to appreciate its value. Before you will be willing, at a deep level, to let go of fat, you will need to find other ways to fill those same needs.

Look at your list of purposes and brainstorm. See if you can create a new list of ways to accomplish the same or similar results without food or fat. For example, if you said that being fat allows you to be "different" from your thin sister, come up with three other ways you can feel and appear different, such as:

• I can get a stylish new hair-do, totally different from my sister’s ordinary one
• I can get involved in activities that my sister does not do
• I can go back to school in a totally different field from my sister’s studies

10. Thinner Me -- How Will Others React?

You probably noticed it was hard to consider the positive aspects of fat. It is almost always easier to name the problems you associate with fat. Let’s do almost the reverse. Imagine seeing yourself as a thinner person. Besides the good things you envision, notice what problems might arise. For example:

• Have you been giving some power to fat to control you? If so, how will you feel being in control yourself, if you are back in charge?
• Have you been giving power to your family to tell you what to do or what to think, while perhaps subtly holding onto the control by determining for yourself what you will eat? If you were thinner, how might your family and friends be threatened by a "new" you?
• Is it possible that in some way they might interfere with your weight program?
• If fat has kept away guys who might feel threatening to you, how will you handle being thin and possibly sexy looking? How will you feel safe without putting back on weight?
• If fat has given you an excuse for your other failures or shortcomings, how will you deal with those things more directly?

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