Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much (16 page)

Detours are habits we form to alleviate the discomfort of feeling separated from the divine force, or feeling overwhelmed by empathy overload. We take detours because we think we can find something—some substance, some action, some powerful tool—that will let us fill the great, gaping, Spirit-shaped hole inside us where we yearn for support, love, and acceptance. When we feel connected to the divine intelligence that infuses all creation, the desire for detours starts to disappear along with our habits of isolation, perfectionism, and disordered eating. We are
spiritually
sated because we are nurturing a relationship with the higher power that exists both inside us and outside us.

You are a child of this maternal, loving energy. You don't have to solve all your problems on your own. When you feel alone and weak, Spirit is there and will send messages to remind you of her presence. What a relief from the constant pressures of life!

So how do we work with Spirit? Some great practices for this are meditation, spending time in nature, and praying.

MEDITATION

There are many types of meditation and they all work well to quiet the chatterbox in your mind and help you feel more relaxed and, therefore, more open to hearing your inner voice of wisdom, which comes from Spirit. Meditation also helps with depression and anxiety. In fact, research led by Sara Lazar, Ph.D., showed that
mindfulness
meditation
, which is very easy to do, actually changes your brain, thickening the regions associated with calmness, memory, your sense of who you are, and empathy. Now, I know you're thinking, “Wait, I have
too
much
empathy already!” Well, mindfulness meditation strengthens us by giving us a greater sense of clarity and calmness surrounding that empathy, so that instead of feeling overloaded, we experience empathy in a gentler way.

Mindfulness meditation also decreases the thickness of the amygdala, the part of the brain that is responsible for anxiety and depression. It may be that this practice even grows the part of your brain that helps you stay focused and manage your emotions. You can actually retrain your brain in eight weeks using mindfulness meditation for just under a half an hour a day. You can't beat that!

So what does this have to do with Spirit? Well, one of the regions of the brain that is changed by mindfulness meditation is called the temporal-parietal junction, the part where we experience a sense of ourselves as separate physical beings, but also the part that is active when we're having an out-of-body experience, where we feel we're not connected to our separate, physical self. According to neuroscientist Andrew Newberg, in his book
Principles of Neurotheology,
this may be the part of the brain that allows us to feel we are one with the divine, inseparable. Personally, I think becoming more aware of ourselves leads to our understanding that we are spiritual beings connected to a higher power.

Now, mindfulness meditation is very simple to do. Sit comfortably, in a chair with good lumbar support if you like, and rest your hands in a comfortable position. Close your eyes, and as you inhale and exhale, focus on the sensation of your breathing, thinking, “in” or “cleanse” as you inhale and “out” or “release” as you exhale. If thoughts come into your mind or you start to focus on a sensation or something you hear, just bring your attention back to your breathing. Continue for 15 to 30 minutes. That's it!

I like to do mindfulness meditation while listening to a high-quality recording of music designed to alter my brain waves to match certain frequencies known to produce a deep meditative state. Look for binaural recordings (Hemi-Sync Metamusic from The Monroe Institute is one brand I recommend; see References). I especially enjoy using one that incorporates ocean sounds. You can also find many of these recordings on my website www.colettebaronreid.com/weightloss.

SPENDING TIME IN NATURE

Like meditation, spending time in nature has a natural calming effect, but it seems to connect us to our spirituality and to Spirit, too. Frederick Law Olmsted, a Victorian landscaper who designed New York City's Central Park, wrote, “A man's eyes cannot be as much occupied as they are in large cities by artificial things … without a harmful effect, first on his mental and nervous system and ultimately on his entire constitutional organization,” while time spent in nature is able “to refresh and delight the eye and through the eye, the mind and the spirit.” Botanist George Washington Carver once said, “I love to think of nature as having unlimited broadcasting stations, through which God speaks to us every day, every hour and every moment of our lives, if we will only tune in and remain so.”

I think part of the reason nature has this effect on us is that we are part of it. When we're outdoors, we're in our home. We experience our part in the vastness of nature even as we're aware that we have the power to crush a tiny violet in the grass or transfer an ant from a leaf to the ground; and we feel that the all is in the small and the small is in the all. Our sense of time shifts as we attune to nature's cycles and observe the movement of the sun and the clouds, the budding of the trees, and the return of birds from their wintering grounds. We feel awe at the creation we get to experience and our humble part in it.

PRAYER

There are many ways to pray, all of which allow us to become used to having a dialogue with Spirit. Saying a supplicant's prayer to our higher power reminds us that we can always count on something larger than we are to help us, and that we're not alone. When we ask for Spirit's will to be done
through
us, we acknowledge that we aren't the only ones in charge of our lives, and we can surrender to the force that provides the underlying order and harmony of the universe. We choose to trust that Spirit has wisdom beyond ours and will share it with us if we still our minds.

When you give your troubles to Spirit, you acknowledge that, as one person, you can't solve everything. What's awe-inspiring is that as you start to practice “giving it up to the divine,” you also start to notice that many of your problems work themselves out without your having to devote your mental and emotional energy to solving them. Things just have a way of getting resolved by Spirit. That's why I recommend using a Sacred Box, as described below, to let go of your worries and let Spirit take them over.

THE SACRED BOX

Find a small box, big enough to hold small pieces of paper on which you will have written a sentence or a few words. This space is now your Sacred Box, a sort of mailbox where you can place your troubles, knowing that you're sending them off to Spirit so that you can receive the help and support you need to handle specific feelings and situations.

Any time you feel you can't cope or don't understand what's going on in your life and how it's going to lead to your greater good, write a note about it and place the note in the Sacred Box. If you start obsessing about something, place a description of it in the box. You can place your anger there, or your resentment or jealous thoughts, too. If you're feeling overwhelmed, place a note about it here, being mindful that you are surrendering this to the care of a higher power. Doing this is an act of faith ritualized by having created this receptacle for grace to enter your life. Every six months, or at the end of every year, I take out all the notes I wrote, all the concerns I handed over to my Sacred Box, and sure enough, everything has been taken care of by a force greater than myself.

The Sacred Box probably works so well because making a ritual of a commitment or intention seems to solidify it in ourselves. Although it may seem easier just to say, “Spirit, please take this burden from me,” the Sacred Box can be a powerful tool for letting go of worries, too.

LETTING GO OF PERFECTIONISM AND EMBRACING YOUR TRUE POWER

One of the reasons we worry so much is that we can't stand the feeling of being out of control of our porous boundaries and being in empathy overload. Another is that, because we've been heavy, we've experienced judgment and disrespect, even contempt and abuse. Of course, we want to try to take care of every detail so no one can criticize us:
If I'm the good girl, the perfect daughter, maybe Dad won't make a crack about my weight. If I'm an utterly devoted girlfriend, maybe he'll be so attracted to me that he won't notice I gained weight again, or tell me I'm getting fat.

Are you a perfectionist? Is your anxiety getting the better of you, causing you to try to micromanage the world around you so as to create a stronger sense of safety and control? Take the following quiz and find out.

• THE PERFECTIONIST QUIZ •

1. You're trying on a new outfit to wear to a wedding or other special event. As soon as you put it on in the dressing room, you:

A. Glance at yourself in the mirror for all of two seconds, mutter, “Yeah, that'll do,” then hurry out to the cash register so you can ring up your purchase and head over to the food court to buy a treat to quiet your anxiety.

B. Take your time looking at yourself in a three-way mirror from all angles, account for the lousy dressing-room lighting that would make any clothing look horrible even on a supermodel, then make a decision based on whether you feel comfortable and attractive in this outfit.

C. Try on the outfit, notice that it might be just a bit tight, hesitate to ask another shopper what she thinks because she might hurt your feelings, and decide instead to ask the sales clerk because you know she'll tell you how great you look. You buy the outfit and carefully file the receipt because you suspect you will exchange it for another two days from now.

D. Try on the outfit and several others several times, then blow your budget buying two or three of them, and vow to skip lunch every day until the special event so you will look good in all of them and can make a last-minute decision.

2. In your school days, your attitude toward writing a paper or doing a big homework project was:

A. Wait until the last minute, then try to talk your friend into letting you see what she'd written, and if that failed, you'd wait until the last minute and scribble out something, anything to fill up the page.

B. Manage your time well so that if you hit a roadblock, you could check with your teacher and feel confident as you went back to working on the project.

C. Rewrite and rework the project again and again up until the last minute, when you ran out of time altogether and had to rush the final steps.

D. Drove your teachers, parents, and friends crazy with your obsessive worrying about how you would do, and ended up crying over minor details at 3:00
A
.
M
. the night before the project was due.

3. When you discover you've made an error that will affect someone else, you:

A. Hide it and lie if confronted.

B. Consider how best to break the news and what to offer that person by way of apology, and promptly approach him.

C. Feel guilty, stuff your feelings and binge, and fret about how you'll ever come clean with the other person.

D. Lie awake at night imagining over and over again how you will apologize, and exactly how the person will react, then launch into an inner diatribe about what an idiot you were. You vow never to make that mistake again,
ever!

4. Your boss or a client gives you some negative feedback about your work, although in a friendly way. You:

A. Make excuses and find someone or something to blame.

B. Thank him for sharing, promise that you'll do better next time, offer to make up for not doing satisfactory work, and without drama, take a few minutes to analyze what happened and how you can prevent it from happening again in the future.

C. Apologize profusely, swear up and down that it will never happen again, and make such a big deal about it that the person feels uncomfortable.

D. Apologize profusely, vow solemnly never to let it happen again, then go home and curl into a ball as you burst into tears.

5. You just realized you have mindlessly binged on ice cream from your freezer and have eaten half the carton. You:

A. Quickly put the food away, and tell yourself, “That was no big deal, really,” but pick up more ice cream the next time you're grocery shopping.

B. Stop yourself and use one of the techniques in this book, or another you've used successfully before, to get in touch with your feelings and the real reason you're bingeing. You throw out the rest of the ice cream and gently remind your partner not to buy it and leave it in the freezer again. You recommit to working this program.

C. You write six pages in your journal venting about your lifelong problem with bingeing on ice cream, then realize you're obsessing just a little too much and use one of the techniques in this book to smooth out your emotional waters.

D. Quickly pull out a calculator, eyeball the portion size you just consumed, read the label, and calculate how many jumping jacks you have to do to burn off the extra calories.

6. When it comes to cleaning your home, you:

A. Invest in low-wattage light bulbs so no one can spot any grime or dust, and avoid having people over because you're afraid they'll judge you.

B. Keep it reasonably clean and clutter free but, hey, you have better things to do than clean all the time.

C. Keep it spotless most of the time and stress out when it gets even slightly messy.

D. Vacuum twice a day, making sure that your vacuum leaves a pleasing pattern on the rug before you put it away. Anyone could eat off your floor, and your clothes in the closet are arranged by color and size, are on the same exact style of hanger, and all face the same direction at all times.

7. You are learning a new skill and finding that you're not picking it up as quickly as you thought you would. You:

A. Give up.

B. Try to identify ways to become more capable, and keep trying.