by JJ Smith
DAY 7: DEVELOP A FOOD-MOOD DIARY
Food for thought: It’s not what you’re eating, it’s what’s eating at you.
Exercise:
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For many of us emotional overeaters, it will take some time to really connect our experiences and our feelings with what we put into our mouths. It is a good idea to begin writing your food-feelings connections to give you more insights and awareness. When you write down every single thing that you eat, there is less chance of unconsciously eating something. This exercise will help you explore the connection between food and feelings.
Many of us are eating when we are not physically hungry. Do you eat when you are sad, bored, anxious, ashamed, angry, or afraid? Whenever you have an unpleasant feeling, do you use food to push away the feeling and sedate yourself? Some folks like crunchy foods when they are angry and sweets when they are bored and lonely. It’s time to get in touch with how your feelings affect what you put in your mouth.
In your journal, create and complete the following Food-Mood Diary:
Time
Food
Feeling Before
Feeling Afterwards
DAY 8: HEAL A BROKEN HEART
Food for thought: Profound emotional sadness doesn’t just weigh heavily on your mind, it can also significantly impact your body.
Exercise:
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Heartbreak can have a devastating effect on your health and particularly your weight. You can end up binge-eating or engaging in emotional eating to deal with the hurt and pain from a broken heart.
You have to choose to deal with the pain and not run from it or distract yourself from the pain by overeating. It’s time to rise up to the challenge and deal with it head on. Some of us just keep jumping into new relationships to deal with a broken heart, but you will still have to process those emotions so they don’t overwhelm you and linger with you for years.
Reflecting on past relationships (even if you’re married) and looking at them as lessons learned can greatly enhance your ability to heal and move on. Some of us are in committed relationships now and still haven’t processed painful feelings from past relationships.
In your journal, create and complete the following chart:
Romantic Partner
How I Feel (One Word)
What I Learned From This Relationship
DAY 9: ESTABLISH QUIET TIME WITH GOD
Food for thought: As we physically overeat, we are spiritually starving ourselves. We need to feed our spirit and starve the flesh from inappropriate eating.
Exercise:
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It is important to establish quiet time, or spirit time, with your Lord, your divine, so that you can align your worldly self with your spiritual self. Creating a place in your home will help you establish a daily routine of prayer or self-reflection. This is a place where you cannot think so much about food but instead about your heart’s desires, dreams, and goals. As you shift your thoughts toward having a stronger mind and spirit, your relationship with food will begin to shift and diminish.
Think about what area in your home would make a great place for prayer and self-reflection. Be sure there is room for a chair so you can sit and read the Word of God or other inspirational books, pray, and meditate. Decorate this area with your favorite objects, such as flowers, prayer beads, and pictures. This area should allow you to celebrate your desire to receive a miracle. This should be your dedicated space throughout your spiritual journey that allows you to focus on achieving your goals.
DAY 10: SAY GOODBYE TO SADNESS AND HELLO TO JOY
Food for thought: Experiencing joy and happiness is your birthright.
Exercise:
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GOODBYE TO SADNESS: By realizing that you have to make some changes to avoid emotional eating, you will have to acknowledge your losses. You will no longer be able to use food as a coping mechanism. Food is not to be used to make you feel better. Even though you may be more emotional than the next person, allowing your emotions to run your life has to end. No longer can you live in the vicious cycle of emotional overload, overeating, and self-loathing. Yes, you may feel sad and hurt sometimes, but overeating and bingeing not only leads to greater pain but also excess weight and poor health.
SAY HELLO TO JOY: When we’re overwhelmed with sadness, hurt, and disappointment, joy seems so distant and far. We start to think that joy is something we won’t ever feel again. But that is so far from the truth. Try to laugh, smile, and have a good time as often as you can. Life shouldn’t feel burdensome, as though you’re always caring for others and not caring for yourself enough. Commit to feeling pure joy more often. You have to learn what makes you happy and do whatever it takes to create those things in your life. Yes, you should do what makes you feel good. Experiencing joy and happiness is your birthright. Go for it. Go pursue happiness.
Now you will create two lists:
• Things that make me feel energized and happy
• Things that make me feel spontaneous and adventurous
Be sure to schedule at least one of these activities within the next few days.
EXAMPLES OF THINGS THAT CAN MAKE YOU FEEL ENERGIZED AND HAPPY:
1. Watch a funny movie that you know will make you laugh out loud.
2. Go out for drinks with old friends and laugh at life.
3. Play a game that makes you feel silly, like a kid.
4. Spend some time around children who encourage you to lighten up and be silly.
EXAMPLES OF THINGS THAT CAN MAKE YOU FEEL SPONTANEOUS AND ADVENTUROUS:
• Remodel and/or paint a room where you spend the most time with a color that soothes you.
• Take a hip-hop or salsa dancing class; maybe call a friend and ask them to join you.
• Pull your car over when you see a county fair and go enjoy it.
• Tag along with a friend to participate in an activity they enjoy. You may find that you like it too. If not, congratulate yourself for stepping out of your comfort zone and keep looking for other activities that make you happy.
DAY 11: SAY THIS PRAYER BEFORE EATING
Food for thought: Use the power of prayer by asking God to feed your hunger and heal your mind.
Exercise:
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Every time you eat anything, say this prayer:
“God, feed my hunger and heal my mind. I need wisdom to make wise eating choices. I need power to walk away from temptations. Help me be free from the struggle with eating and weight gain. Allow me to find strength in Your love. In You, all things are possible. In Your Holy Name, Amen.”
Even if you are eating unhealthy food, say the prayer. God is not there to judge you but to restore you. This prayer will begin to dissolve the desire for unhealthy foods. And feel free to rewrite the prayer if there is something else you want to say.
DAY 12: CREATE A “DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT” LIST
Food for thought: We have to deliberately identify new ways to deal with emotional, painful, or challenging situations that don’t involve food or eating.
Exercise:
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When you are overeating or binge-eating, you already know that it is bad for you and will work against your weight-loss goals. What will help you is learning new ways to cope with emotional, painful, or challenging situations that don’t involve food or eating. We will explore different ways to cope that allow you to be more loving and kind to yourself.
As a coping mechanism to replace emotional eating, write out a list of things that you can do to nurture yourself instead of indulging in unhealthy eating. This is called a “Do Something Different” List.
List as many alternatives to emotional eating as you can think of. Write the list on an inspirational notepad and keep it posted where you will read it when you need it the most.
Here are some examples of things that you can add to your “Do Something Different” List:
• Visualize something positive, like your n
ext Caribbean vacation
• Lie down and rest or go to sleep, if tired
• Get out of your home or workplace and take a walk
• Download your favorite music and dance
• Call a friend, a family member, or a support buddy
• Go through magazines and clip art with which you’ll create a vision board
• Go browse a bookstore or read a book
• Write a letter or journal entry in your diary
• Take out some art supplies and paint or draw or do scrapbooking
• Go to church/synagogue
• Watch a good movie or go out to the movies
• Relax in a detox bath
• Breathe/meditate/stretch/do yoga to focus on inner peace
• Bring food to homeless people in your neighborhood or to a local shelter
DAY 13: DO A KITCHEN INVENTORY
Food for thought: Allow your kitchen to be a place for enjoying foods that fuel you.
Exercise:
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Go through the foods that you are likely to binge on or foods that you have binged on in the past. Ask a supportive person to come over and go through your cabinets and refrigerator with you. Get rid of all of those foods. If you live with a partner or spouse, you might need to sit down with them and explain to them what you’re going through. This is really important. If you were an alcoholic, it would be crucial that your partner didn’t bring alcohol into the house while you were going through recovery. Think of trigger foods like alcohol. You will feel more comfortable if they are not easily accessible. As you go on in your process, you might begin to learn new trigger foods that you never would have thought would cause you to binge.
For example, one client discovered that she couldn’t keep raw, unsalted sunflower seeds in her home. If she did, she’d eat as many as she could and even if she finished them all, she would find something else to continue eating. Even though this was a healthy snack, it was a trigger food for binge eating.
Once you’ve cleared the house of binge foods, vow not to bring any binge foods home and declare your house a binge-free zone. This is not a forever thing, but for now, in the early parts of gaining control over your eating habits, you want to keep yourself safe. Just as a recovering alcoholic wouldn’t spend time in a bar or keep bottles of gin in his or her home, you don’t want to have any trigger foods in your home either.
You should also note in your journal all your trigger foods so you can stay away from them.
DAY 14: FORGIVE YOURSELF AND OTHERS
Food for thought: If you want to release excess emotional weight, you will have to master forgiveness.
Exercise:
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There may be relationships in your present or past that have to be dealt with head-on in order to heal. Simply put, we have to forgive in order to lose excess weight.
First, list those whom you need to forgive but have not been able to forgive. Don’t think we are just talking about grand things that you have to forgive; it can even be the slightest comment or annoyance from a coworker. It is anything that you have floating around in your mind that takes your thoughts away from God’s love. It is not just the people who have deeply hurt or betrayed you. It can be people who have betrayed you in small ways as well. Whenever you think of their names, write them down in your journal as well as the feelings you have toward them. Take your time through the process so you can really feel your emotions toward each person. Say to yourself, “I am willing to forgive this person and see them the way God sees them.” Sometimes you are forgiving a small thing, and sometimes it’s a huge thing. But always know that forgiveness isn’t your gift to them, it’s your gift to yourself. Your emotional and physical weight will be released and you will feel lighter and freer to hear from God.
Don’t overlook the opportunity to add yourself to the list of those you need to forgive. Most of us have done things we regret and feel guilty about. We may know that we have done somebody wrong and we have been carrying those feelings of guilt for years. Forgiving yourself is a critical part of the healing process.
Also, say to God, “I am sorry.” Express what you are sorry for and who you are sorry to. If you have hurt someone else, they carry that in their spirit, but so do you as we are all connected to God’s spirit. It may be necessary to reach out to that person to apologize even if it feels shameful or embarrassing. But your willingness to make amends for your past mistakes carries more power over losing weight than any diet plan on the market. Don’t ignore your wrongdoings any longer. By hurting someone else, you have hurt yourself. Forgive today and forgive quickly so you can release emotional weight from your physical body.
DAY 15: PLAN TO LOSE
Food for thought: All success in life starts with a plan.
Exercise:
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Ask winners the secret of their success in academics, business, or sports, and they consistently say they start with a plan. If you want to win the weight-loss war, you have to plan to lose weight. We suggest not just one master plan, but several plans. In your journal:
• Make a weekly meal plan. Every Sunday make a meal plan for the coming week. List the foods you need to buy on a grocery shopping list. My grocery shopping list is 80 percent the same each week.
• Post this meal plan on your refrigerator door. Check off each meal and day. If your eating doesn’t go exactly according to plan, make adjustments as you plan the next day.
• Plan for tomorrow. Before you go to bed, make a healthy to-do list for the next day. Each night before bed, write down what you plan to eat the next day. Compliance experts know that if people actually put down on paper a list of what they intend to do, they’re more likely to follow through. If you forgot to plan the night before, make up a menu in the morning, and stick to it so you aren’t focusing on food later in the day when you’re tired and hungry.
• Now plan your indulgences. List the foods you adore even though you know they aren’t great for your weight loss or health. Rank your five favorites in order of their importance to you. Allow yourself to eat the top two or three but not the others. Plan how often (maybe start with just once per week) you will indulge. This allows you to enjoy meals/snacks that reward you for staying committed to your journey.
DAY 16: WRITE A LETTER TO YOURSELF
Food for thought: You will need to do things differently in order to get a different result for your future.
Exercise:
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To improve all sorts of decisions in your life, you can get perspective from your past self to help you be more objective about your future. Writing a letter to your younger self can help you gain clarity and closure, forgive yourself and others, as well as heal hurts and pains.
Thinking about your past can be uncomfortable, but it’s a healthy discomfort because you’re confronting your own weaknesses and shortcomings. The goal is to help you reflect so you can make better decisions for your life in the future.
If you could go back fifteen years into the past, what would you tell your younger self? What lessons have you learned over the last fifteen years and how will those lessons help you be a smarter and wiser person going forward? Think about what things you would do differently if you had known better. What life lessons have you learned from your romantic relationships? What career opportunities did you miss because you were not qualified or you mismanaged your time at work? The reason we do this is because there’s no use going another fifteen years repeating the same mistakes and setbacks in life.
In your journal, write the following:
Dear Self,
I am coming to you from fifteen years in the future to give you some valuable information. Here’s what I learned . . .
DAY 17: MEDITATE TO BUILD YOUR LIFE FOR TOMORROW
Food for thought: What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind.
Exerc
ise:
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Meditation quiets the mind, relaxes the body, and helps us to focus on the present. Once the head chatter has stopped, you are open to experiencing guidance or inner wisdom and might intuitively get an answer to a question that has plagued you.
Are you meditating at least once a day? Today’s exercise focuses on meditating once today.
HOW TO MEDITATE: Although there are different types of meditation, most include the following:
• Quiet. Find a location without distractions (phone, TV, others talking) so you will not be disturbed.
• Comfort. You do not need to be sitting like a yogi to experience meditation. It is often recommended, however, that you keep your spine straight. If you tend to nod off, be seated rather than lying down.
• Concentration. You can gaze at an object (maybe one in nature—a leaf, waves of the ocean, a tree in the distance—or perhaps something like the flame of a candle).
• Observation. Rather than judging yourself, be in the role of a detached observer. No judgments, no criticisms, just notice with impartiality. Awareness of the breath.
