What Is A Feeling Anyway?

From Why Can't I Lose Weight? blog by Brooke Castillo

You have heard me say it often: "The only reason you eat is a feeling." Your thoughts cause your feelings which cause your actions. So you have a negative thought that causes you to feel a negative feeling which causes you to fog eat.

My advice is to feel the feeling instead of eating. But what is a feeling? What does it really mean to feel instead of eat?

Here is my simplified answer. "A feeling is an experience in the body, caused by a thought in the mind." Here are some examples of what I mean by an experience in the body:

Fear is felt as a heightened heartbeat, increased “flinch” response, and increased muscle tension.

Anger, based on sensation, seems indistinguishable from fear except for heat.

Happiness is often felt as an expansive or swelling feeling in the chest and the sensation of lightness or buoyancy, as if standing underwater.

Sadness is often experienced as a feeling of tightness in the throat and eyes, and relaxation in the arms and legs.

Shame can be felt as heat in the upper chest and face.

Desire can be accompanied by a dry throat, heavy breathing, and increased heart rate.

Ultimately the reason we fog eat is to distract ourselves from the current physical sensations, caused by our thoughts, to instead focus on the physical sensations caused by eating.

If we can learn how to experience the physical sensations caused by our thoughts long enough to change the thoughts- we will no longer have the need for the distraction of eating when we aren't hungry.

So next time you want to fog eat- sit down and document the physical sensations in your body; see if you can identify the feeling and name it; then try to access the thought and change it.

If you repeat this process enough, you will never be fat again.

Eat Or Feel

I love reading motivational posts, or blogs. Often others can put my thoughts or feelings into words far better, or should I say, far more eloquently that I can. Brooke Castillo is one of those people. Her blog is amazing, and I highly recommend her book.

This is the choice we have in front of us. Anytime a negative feeling comes up we have the choice to go the kitchen or visit ourselves. So many times we tell our own selves to "talk to the hand." We ignore our need to feel. We ignore what the feeling represents or what it is trying to tell us. We choose not to listen. We walk away from ourselves and into the kitchen for crackers, oreos, or left over mac and cheese.

Imagine how we must feel when we do this to ourselves. Imagine what it must feel like to be ignored and "shut up" with food. Imagine what it is like to be burdened with excess weight and unfelt emotions. But you don't have to imagine this scenario do you? You don't have to imagine what this feels like, because you know. You are familiar with self neglect if you are overfed.

It really is a choice. You can choose to feel an emotion from beginning to end. You can choose to write about it in your journal in detail. You can choose to let a vibration go through your body. That is what a feeling is-a vibration in your physical body that you try to dull with lots of food.

So next time you feel the urge to eat, sit on your couch and feel. When you think you can't stand it for one more second-keep sitting and keep feeling. Don't fight the feeling with your willpower, allow it with your heart. Repeat until the feeling is gone. Notice the thought that caused the feeling.

If you continue this process you will find yourself and hear yourself. You will give yourself the attention you are seeking. You will be in your body without distraction-awake for each moment. Connected.

Meet yourself. You're waiting.

Fat is merely Tissue, Stored Potential Energy

Fat is not a feeling. You cannot be fat. Fat does not reside as an emotion in your psyche. Fat is merely tissue, stored potential energy.

(my comments: That says to me that my fat has the potential to do something useful, like burn off and go away! Yipee!!! )

When you are "feeling fat", you are really feeling something else. Fat is another decoy emotion. Fat is a substitute for what is really going on with you.

Know that your feelings about your weight and the feeling you create from overeating or depriving yourself are engaging you in a decoy struggle. It is a distraction from your real emotional life. It gets you thinking about food and your weight instead of what is really going on under the surface. ... Each time we try to feel, we rebel, playing this rebellion out by overeating. It's good for immediate gratification, but bad for our long term happiness. This great drama can fill our minds and keep us distracted quite well.

Your real work on this planet is not your weight or your fat. The fabric of your emotional journey is not about deprivation and overeating. It is about love and fear and manifesting the magnificent person you already are. It is time to pay attentionto your real life. Stop distracting yourself from your emotional life. Find out what you are feeling, and feel it. It is then that you can find the way to who you really are. I promise you, it is not just fat.

Excerpted from If I'm So Smart Why Can't I Lose Weight, by Brooke Castillo

Feelings & Beliefs

I am struggling too some days on Kimkins (especialy last night). The struggles are no different to any diet I've been on before. But now I have some tools to teach me to deal with issues that come up.

Yesterday I was spending some time listening to Brooke Castillo's audiobook If I'm so Smart, Why Can't I Lose Weight? I am trying to focus more on feeling my feelings, instead of just eating to cover them up. ('cos if I'm berating myself afterwards about overeating I am certainly not feeling lonely, bored, angry, fearful, you fill in the blank...which is obviously the point, but I'm not dealing with my emotions effectively, I'm just gaining pounds!) Apparently by sitting there and studying the feeling you will uncover eventually the belief that underlies the feeling. The belief is probably wrong and outdated, and so the idea is to change the belief, update it so to speak, and thus change the feeling - all without touching food and beating oneself up. Sounds easy, but it is hard. I do not like some of the feelings and beliefs that doing this so far has brought up for me. And what I am coming across is going to take some working with. But it is a step in the right direction.