Weight Loss for People Who Feel Too Much (31 page)

MOON CYCLES

During certain moon cycles, emotions run higher than at other times. In fact,
lunacy
comes from the Latin root
luna,
or “relating to the moon,” because it was believed that a full moon made people a little crazy. Although research has disproved the urban myth that there are more ER visits and nervous breakdowns during a full moon, an especially sensitive person might be affected by the moon's phases. After all, women's menstrual cycles are somehow connected to and perhaps influenced by moon cycles.

I can always feel a full moon coming, as if it were singing through every cell in my body, and more often than not, I have an increase in mood swings around the full moon. New moons make me feel like starting new things. You might find the same is true for you. There are many online resources for lunar calendars, and you might want to pay attention to the moon's cycles and see if they correlate to your moods. If they do, you can be prepared for needing a little extra self-nurturing when the moon enters a phase that seems to make you irritable or sad. As always, be mindful of what affects you emotionally, and be self-compassionate when it comes to your sensitivities.

Over the years, I have come to be more and more open-minded and to view my experiences with curiosity, looking for consistency in the repetition. I don't believe everything I am told, but if I experience something to be true, even if I don't fully understand the “how” of it, I rely on the evidence. We people who feel too much have experiences that allow us to trace the invisible threads that for so long have made us question our place in the tapestry of life, wondering if we're cuckoo when reaching for the cookie jar, anxious for relief. As we come to listen more to our own inner wisdom, it will be easier for us to shut out the external noise, including the harsh judgments and unreasonable demands others may make of us. Instead of anticipating others' disappointment and twisting ourselves into knots trying to please everyone before they can experience irritation or anger that we know we'll pick up on, we can relax in knowing that we have control over our porous boundaries. We have the tools to clearly demarcate where we end and where others begin.

I hope that this book has helped you claim your true sense of power and granted you a healthier sense of connection to the world. I especially hope you've now solved the puzzle of your empathy, your habit of taking on the cares of the world and struggling with your weight. Just remember to be compassionate and kind to yourself and others. Your fabulous self is right inside you!

KEEP IN MIND …

• There will be especially challenging times when it's particularly difficult to manage your porous boundaries and avoid disordered eating.

• Remember that celebrations don't have to be about food as entertainment.

• Cut gatherings short or take breaks from them. Introduce new, healthier foods to celebrations that involve eating. Come up with new traditions for celebrating that don't involve eating noisy foods. At family gatherings, steer conversations away from hot topics, and keep your sense of humor.

• Be prepared for strong emotions and feelings of vulnerability to come up on anniversaries of losses and around the holidays.

• When you're on holiday, don't take a vacation from eating healthfully.

• Plan for healthy snacks and meals when you know you're going to be traveling.

• Recognize the emotional pressures that deadlines create and the tendency for that adrenaline rush to drive you into disordered eating. Be aware that people who are working with you, who handle deadlines differently from how you do, can cause you stress, too, and manage your porous boundaries.

• When feeling pressed by time, use the Slowing Down Time exercise (Chapter 5).

• When you have to make big decisions, recognize that you can't please everyone. Watch that you don't procrastinate in order to avoid making a decision that someone might not agree with.

• When you're sick, get some movement to prevent aches and pains, and don't let yourself start worrying about getting work done or whether you're gaining weight.

• Work with medical professionals, nutritionists, and the like if you suspect your hormones are off because of going into or being in menopause, having given birth, or being a man in midlife. Know that teenagers also go through hormonal shifts that affect their moods, weight, and ability to manage their emotions well without detouring.

• Changes in the electromagnetic field that surrounds you can affect you. Use Himalayan salt lamps to balance the ionization in the electromagnetic field.

• Natural-light deprivation can affect your moods and energy. Use full-spectrum light bulbs and lamps to address Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and mood problems caused by low light levels. Make sure you're getting enough vitamin D, which the body creates when exposed to sunlight.

• Not spending time outdoors, being nature deprived, can affect your mood. Spending just five minutes in nature can boost it.

• Some people who feel too much are strongly affected by moon cycles.

Whatever the challenge to manage your porous boundaries, continue to use the basics of this program:

• setting your intention in the morning and, in the evening, reflecting on your day and something positive that you did, and journaling whenever you feel a need to speak your truth

• getting regular movement

• being kind to yourself, using the IN-Vizion Process, and any other exercises you find helpful (such as Slowing Down Time)

• doing the Emotional Freedom Technique as an alternate technique any time you have an extra minute or two

• incorporating Himalayan salts into your daily life, especially through a salt bath, and making sure your emotional field and eating remain simple

Afterword: Moving Forward to a Fabulous You

As you take your place in this wonderful dance called life, you'll come to recognize that you are indeed “one” with everyone else on this earth. After working this program, you'll feel less and less driven by the need to shut down and detour away from the exquisite, intense connection that empathy brings. Freedom is something you can feel deeply, from the depths of your soul, as you come to recognize that only love is real and that the fear that kept you a prisoner in your wounded self was an illusion.

As people who feel too much, we can take our place in the global community, recognizing that our empathy is something that is beginning to take shape in everyone as we evolve into a civilization more interconnected and more collaborative than at any other time in human history. We are a sentient species that has now populated the whole world. Will empathy bring peace and a better way of life? I hope so.

What I have learned is what you will learn, too. Life is never perfect, and it's a day at a time that you need to concern yourself with, not a lifetime. As you take care of yourself each day, you are helping to foster a new, healthier experience for everyone on this planet. Deal with the weight you can carry, not with the weight of the world.

I have come to understand that there is a huge paradox we collectively experience: the wounded ego somehow bought into the illusion that we are separate, not whole—and unsafe. When we feel too much, we have a sense of urgency to disconnect from ourselves, from each other, and from Spirit. Yet more separation is not the answer. A boundary isn't a wall; it's a structure created by our conscious decision to trust ourselves and experience our self-worth. It supports our individual expression, which is central to our human experience. We are meant to feel and to express the true reality of our nature, which is unity and Love.

We can have healthy boundaries that are fluid and flexible while we experience the world with deep and profound sensitivity, and we don't have to end up with our face in the fridge, trying to escape. Love is the only true reality; when we know this, everything changes.

Going forward, there are three things you need to remember. First, forgiveness isn't something you do when you feel like it. It's mandatory. You can't walk around in your life holding resentments and expect to feel freedom at any level. Let go of your emotions about the past that are no longer helping you and only weighing you down. Hold on to the wisdom you have achieved as result of your suffering, and the compassion you have for others who have suffered, too.

If you refuse to forgive, you will continue to be fat. Release the emotional weight of a past you can't change. Otherwise, your fear will be your companion and it will rob you of peace and self-respect. All human beings suffer and hurt each other when they buy into the illusion that there isn't enough, that intimacy is unsafe, and that retaliation and anger are the only ways to protect the treasures of the heart.

Second, faith is not just something for church. You are the church. Your faith in a power greater than yourself is an action, not an idea, because faith is surrender. You surrender your life to that higher power, God, Spirit, or whatever name you have for the force you believe in that is beyond your comprehension, and peace, miracles, and magic follow. Every day, you can be awed by the mystery. Remember, you are part of that and there is a plan for you. Act as if you believe in magic, and it will come to pass that you will see the signs everywhere. I know this to be 1000 percent true, as it has happened to me.

Third, be grateful. You are living in exceptional times. Now is the time for you to claim your fabulous self and show her (or him) to the world. Shake that tail! Dance as if you mean it and laugh every day! Don't take yourself so seriously, and above all don't let others dictate to you what size you should be or what kind of beautiful you need to be to be accepted. Who makes those ridiculous rules anyway? If you can see the humor in the absurdity of it all, you'll be free to be your wonderful, fabulous self. You will hold the key to expressing the divine spark inside you that has been waiting to come out, maybe for your whole life.

I bet you're awesome.

Notes

CHAPTER 1: FEELING TOO MUCH: THE HIDDEN THREAD

You probably see other people in shades of gray rather than black or white, and you don't overidentify with one separate group.
Ernest Hartmann,
Boundaries: A New Way to Look at the World
(Summerland, CA: CIRCC EverPress, 2011), p. 5.

African-American women are three times as likely
 … 
to be overweight.
Mark Penn, with E. Kinney Zalesne,
Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes
(
New
York: Twelve, 2007), pp. 181–83: “According to a 2002 study in the
Journal of the America medical Association
(
JAMA
), women in general are about twice as likely as men to be morbidly obese, but a sobering 1 in 6 black women is that overweight—almost more than three times the prevalence rate for any other subgroup of women or men.… According to a 2006
JAMA
study, morbidly obese people tend to be concentrated in the 50 to 59 age group, which means the heaviest black women are in their working and grandmothering prime. And here's the worst part. Also according to the
JAMA
study, which tracked its subjects for seven years, middle-aged, morbidly obese women had almost double the chance of dying during the study than women of normal weight. That puts middle-aged black women at perhaps one of the highest mortality risks in the nation.” Penn goes on to say that “Although black women make up only about 6 percent of the U.S. work force, they make up 7 percent of all educational service workers. They make up 23 percent of America's service industry overall. Black grandmothers are raising or helping to raise 44 percent of the black children in America—well above twice the grandmother raising rate of any other racial group in America.”

… 
Aron estimates the number of highly sensitive people to be around 20 percent
.… Elaine Aron,
The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
(New York: Broadway Books, 1997), pp. 28–29. In citing the 20 percent figure, Aron references her own research, as well as that of Harvard psychologist Jerome Kagan.

… 
845 million people
 … 
are on Facebook.
845 million people out of 7 billion is about one in eight, or 12 percent. See https://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics (retrieved March 27, 2012).

CHAPTER 2: WHEN YOU CARRY THE WEIGHT OF THE WORLD

Studies by the HeartMath Institute
 … 
show that our brain waves respond to electromagnetic signals from the heart of a person in the same room with us.
Rollin McCraty, Ph.D., “The Energetic Heart: Bioelectromagnetic Communication Within and Between People,” in
Clinical Applications of Bioelectromagnetic Medicine,
edited by P. J. Rosch and M. S. Markov (New York: Marcel Dekker, 2004), pp. 541–62; http://www.heartmath.org/research/research-publications/energetic-heart-bioelectromagnetic-communication-within-and-between-people.html.

You can actually get your heart to entrain to the rhythm of music just by listening to it.
Don Campbell and Alex Doman,
Healing at the Speed of Sound: How What We Hear Transforms Our Brains and Our Lives
(New York: Hudson Street Press, 2011).

“The world essentially operates
 … 
in the connection between [things].”
Lynne McTaggart,
The Bond: Connecting Through the Space Between Us
(New York: Free Press, 2011), p. xxv.

One member of a couple sent loving, healing thoughts to the other
.… 
[W]hen two people were in separate rooms with their eyes closed
.…
”
Ibid. McTaggart cites her lengthier description of these two experiments in chapter 4 of her previous book,
The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World
(New York: Free Press, 2007), pp. 56–61.

For people who feel too much, emotions and thoughts are intertwined.
Ernest Hartmann,
Boundaries: A New Way to Look at the World
(Summerland, CA: CIRCC EverPress, 2011), p. 47.

“The leaf began to emit biophotons
.…
”
This is just one of many “intention” experiments writer Lynn McTaggart has conducted along with scientists. See Lynne McTaggart,
The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World
(New York: Free Press, 2007). See also: http://www.theintentionexperiment.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/The-Leaf-Experiment.pdf.

… 
seventeen years for research to make its way into mainstream clinical practice.
J. A. Mold and K. A. Peterson, . “Primary Care Practice-based Research Networks: Working at the Interface Between Research and Quality Improvement,”
Annual of Family Medicine
3, Supplement 1
(May-June 2005):S12–20. See also: http://www.childrens mercy.org/stats/weblog2005/SeventeenYears.aspx (retrieved March 7, 2012).

CHAPTER 3: THE WEIGHT-LOSS PROGRAM FOR PEOPLE WHO FEEL TOO MUCH

Showing kindness toward yourself, having self-compassion, is more effective than willpower when it comes to sticking to your eating goals.
Claire E.
Adams and Mark R. Leary, “Promoting Self-Compassionate Attitudes Toward Eating Among Restrictive and Guilty Eaters,”
Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology
26, no. 10 (2007): 1120–44; http://guilfordjournals.com/doi/abs/10.1521/jscp.2007.26.10.1120.

… 
willpower can be depleted quickly; exercising willpower uses glucose (sugar).
Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D., “The Science of Willpower,”
IDEA Fitness Journal
5, no. 6, (June 2008); http://www.ideafit.com/fitness-library/science-willpower-0.

Social stress makes it harder to exercise willpower
.… 
getting enough quality sleep and being in a good mood boost willpower, as does eating well and getting movement.
Ibid.

The tapping slows the heart rate
.… Much research has been done on EFT and how it works, and we're continuing to learn more about how this combination of tapping meridian points, acknowledging our problems, and affirming that we love ourselves is so effective. See Dawson Church, Ph.D., Garrett Yount, Ph.D., and Audrey Brooks, Ph.D., “The Effect of Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) on Stress Biochemistry: A Randomized Controlled Trial,”
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease,
in press. See also David Feinstein, Ph.D., “Rapid Treatment of PTSD: Why Psychological Exposure with Acupoint Tapping May Be Effective,”
Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training
47, no. 3 (2010): 385–402; James Lane, Ph.D., “The Neurochemistry of Counter Conditioning: Acupressure Desensitization in Psychotherapy,”
Energy Psychology: Theory, Research & Treatment
1, no. 1 (2009): 31–44. These and other research articles on EFT, including three that show EFT helps alleviate food cravings, are available through http://www.eftuniverse.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=18&Itemid=21 (accessed May 15, 2012).

… 
regularly acknowledging what you're grateful for will make you happier, healthier, and more optimistic.
John Tierney, “A Serving of Gratitude May Save the Day,”
New York Times,
November 21, 2011; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/science/a-serving-of-gratitude-brings-healthy-dividends.html?_r=1.

Keep in mind that whatever you experience in these places in your mind, you're always in charge.
In my book
The Map,
I wrote about using the IN-Vizion Process to explore landscapes and dialogue with archetypal beings that dwell within them, such as the Goblin and the Bone Collector. Even when you encounter a being in your inner landscape, it is only an aspect of yourself and you are always in control of the experience. Colette Baron-Reid,
The Map: Finding the Magic and Meaning in the Story of Your Life
(Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2011).

Negative ions are believed to affect serotonin levels in our brains.
M. C. Diamond, J. R. Konner Jr., E. K. Orenberg, et al., “Environmental Influences on Serotonin and Cyclic Nucleotides in Rat Cerebral Cortex,”
Science
210, no. 4470 (November 7, 1980): 652–54; http://www.sciencemag.org/content/210/4470/652.abstract.

Research suggests that people who have thin boundaries
 … 
are especially sensitive to changes in the ionization in the environment.
Michael
Jawer, “Environmental Sensitivity: A Neurobiological Phenomenon?”
Seminars in Integrative Medicine
3, no. 3 (September 2005):104–109. Jawer, an expert on indoor air quality and workspace management, says there's a connection between positive ion buildup and migraines, fatigue, irritability, anxiety, and depression, and says that people who report to be “electrically sensitive” often report sensory sensitivities and mystical and paranormal experiences.

[Four o'clock] is when our blood pressure naturally peaks.
Robert B. Sothern, D. L. Veseley, E. L. Kanibrocki, et al., “Blood Pressure and Atrial Natieuretic Peptides Correlate Throughout the Day,”
American Heart Journal
129, no. 5 (May 1995): 907–16; http://www.ahjonline.com/article/0002–8703(95)90111–6/abstract). See also, L. E. Sheving and F. Halberg,
Chronobiology: Principles and Applications to Shifts in Schedules
(Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic, 1981). Blood pressure, body temperature, and heart rate are highest “in the afternoon,” according to J. C. Dunlap and Jennifer J. Loros,
Chronobiology: Biological Timekeeping
(Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, 2009), pps. 341–45.

Just spending five minutes walking or exercising outdoors can improve your mental health.
Jo Barton, Jules Pretty, “What Is the Best Dose of Nature and Green Exercise for Improving Mental Health? A Multi-Study Analysis,”
Environmental Science & Technology
(2010): 100325142930094, DOI: 10.1021/es903183r (retrieved from: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100502080414.htm). Also
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es903183r (retrieved March 25, 2012).

… 
bottles of soda pop or servings of salty snacks that are 50 to 60 percent larger than they were thirty years ago.
Between 1977 and 1998, soda pop serving sizes went up 50 percent and salty snacks went up 60 percent. S. J. Nielsen and Barry M. Popkin, Ph.D., “Patterns and Trends in Food Portion Sizes: 1977–1998,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
289, no. 4 (2003): 450–53.

… 
women who watch three to four hours of television a day
.…  L. A. Tucker and M. Bagwell, “TV Watching and Obesity in Adult Females,”
American Journal of Public Health
81, no. 7 (1991) 908–11. Compared to women who watched on average one hour of television a day, women watching three to four hours a day were twice as likely to be obese, and women watching four or more hours a day were more than twice as likely to be obese.

… 
unsuspecting subjects ate from a soup bowl
.… Brian Wansink, J. E. Painter, and J. North, “Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake,”
Obesity Research
13(2005): 93–100 (retrieved from: http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v13/n1/full/oby200512a.html).

CHAPTER 4: STEP ONE: SPEAK YOUR TRUTH

Cinematherapy.
Counselors often use cinematherapy as a way to help their clients experience their emotions at a distance, as they watch them played out in someone else's story on screen, then talk about what that experience was like. You can also watch movies to remind yourself that your life isn't so bad after all and to connect with a feeling of gratitude. S. Knobloch-Westerwick, Y. Gong, et al., “Tragedy Viewers Count Their Blessings: Feeling Low on Fiction Leads to Feeling High on Life,”
Communication Research,
March 26, 2012. Cinematherapy was popularized by the humorous series of books of the same name written by Peske and West; See Nancy K. Peske and Beverly West,
Cinematherapy: The Girl's Guide to Movies for Every Mood
(New York: Dell, 1999).

… 
many people who feel too much also experience physical sensations more intensely
.… Elaine Aron,
The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
(New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1996), p. 7.

U.S. Navy SEALS
 … 
replac[e] negative self-talk with positive affirmations.
http://information.usnavyseals.com/2009/07/learning-to-learn-the-navy-seals-way.html (retrieved March 23, 2012).

In moments of stress, there's actually more blood flow to [the limbic brain].
See David Perlmutter, M.D., F.A.C.N., and Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D.,
Power Up Your Brain: The Neuroscience of Enlightenment
(Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, 2011).

CHAPTER 5: STEP TWO: OWN YOUR TRUTH

Meditation
 … 
helps with depression and anxiety.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200304/the-benefits-meditation (retrieved March 24, 2012).

Research led by Sara Lazar, Ph.D., shows that mindfulness meditation
 … 
thickens the regions [in the brain] associated with
.… This landmark study was conducted on people who had never meditated before. Changes were found in the posterior cingulate cortex (where self-awareness and empathy are experienced), the left hippocampus (involved in memory), the cerebellum (involved in language, focus, and motor control), and the temporal-parietal junction. See “Mindfulness Practices Lead to Increases in Regional Brain Grey Matter Density.”

The temporal-parietal junction [may be] the part [of the brain] where we experience a sense of ourselves
.… Andrew B. Newberg, Ph.D.,
Principles of Neurotheology
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2010), p. 175.