 Tools for a
Balanced Lifestyle
A Program of Recovery from Weight Related Problems
Going for the 3 increases: Increase of Health; Increase of Happiness and
Increase of Energy
Chapter 4:
Addressing Resistance to Change
II.
Behavioral Patterns of Resistance to Food Addiction
Not only do Helplessness,
Irresponsibility and Hopelessness contribute to resistance to dealing with food
addiction and compulsive overeating, some of the behavioral patterns which come
from low self-esteem, as listed in Laying the Foundation: The Roots of Low
Self-Esteem, contribute
to resistance to dealing with food in a healthy way. The behavioral patterns
directly related to resistance to recovery from food addiction are: Looking
Good, Acting Out, Pulling In, Entertaining and the Troubled Person. Most food
addicts have more than one of these behavioral patterns operating in their
current lifestyle. When you begin to look at these patterns remember that you
are most probably a combination of two or more of them at one time. What is
needed is understanding how these patterns contribute to resistance to dealing
with food. You will need to be brutally self-confrontational when these patterns
arise in dealing with your food issues. You will need to give your support
system permission to "call you on it" and confront you when you are
reverting to your old compulsive ways of dealing with your food addiction. The
time has come in this program to take off your complacent masks and rid yourself
of your intellectualizations, rationalizations and procrastination. The time has
come to accept that you are a food addict and that you must change your
behavioral script when it comes to food. You will never make strides in
developing a balanced lifestyle unless you are willing to face up to the fact
that your current food related behavioral patterns are causing you to derail,
undermine or destroy your desire and efforts to turn your life around when it
comes to dealing with food, exercise and your weight. What follows is a summary
of how these behavior patterns are involved in resistance to dealing with food
addiction.
A. Looking Good
The underlying theme of the
Looking Good behavioral pattern is that "I am not good enough." This
message gets played out in food addiction by the need to present to the world an
image or behavioral style which
puts the "best face" forward even if it is a lie. The goal is to get
approval from others at all costs. An example is, if you want others to
currently think that you are doing well in your efforts to change the way you
eat then when you are around them you will be careful what and how much you eat
in front of them, but behind their backs you will be less careful. If you never
lose weight, do not have an increase in energy or do not feel better about
yourself will give this lie away eventually. It would be better to be honest
with others and admit that you have not gotten motivated yet to undertake the
task of altering your relationship with food yet. The risk is that the others
might not approve of this decision on your part. If you have been doing the
work of self-loving, self-nurturing, self-affirming and self-approving as
encouraged in this program and the Tools for Coping Series, you will not care
what others think or say about you since the only person's approval you need is
your own.
Looking Good behaviors with
food include the following:
1. You eat before you go
out to eat with others in public at a party or on a date. You do this to be
sure that you are not hungry when you go out, so that you will not eat
everything in sight and make a "fool" of yourself in the eyes of
others. You then eat sparsely at the party or on the date to look good to the
others. This is just one form of "closet eating" which is to hide how
much and what kinds of food you eat. You try never to eat out in public and if
you have to, you try to minimize how much you openly eat. This keeps the world
outside of the "truth" of your real relationship with food, even
though your size, weight and energy level tell on you.
2. Being an overachiever
on the job or at home. Since you are obese or overweight, you overcompensate
for this fact to disprove the notion that "fat people are lazy slobs."
You put so much energy in being an achiever you have little emotional, physical
or intellectual energy left to deal with changing your relationship with food.
If you changed your relationship with food and developed a healthy balanced
lifestyle, perhaps you would not need to work so hard to achieve and be
successful. However there is a danger in this reality. If you become healthier,
thinner and happier you might not be as motivated to work so hard as you do on
the job or at home. You might begin to change your priorities in life. This
reality might scare you and you prefer to stay "looking good" because
success has become more important to you than your health. Being a dead
"achiever" is more important than being a living and healthy
"lifestyle balancer" who is not as motivated to achieve.
3. Dressing for success
and looking attractive, neat and picture perfect all of the time. You never
allow yourself be seen in public without every hair in place and every seam and
pleat ironed. You spend hours making sure your hair and clothes look great. You
spend countless hours making yourself up to look "just right" in the
public eye. You fear being ridiculed or rejected for looking unkempt,
unprofessional or sloppy. You are obsessed in making your appearance "look
good" to dispel the belief that "all fat people are slob." You
would prefer to become a the best dressed corpse than an healthy, wholesome,
energized relaxed dresser. If you put as much energy into changing your
relationship with food as you do in the efforts to dress and look good, you
would be on your way to a balanced lifestyle already.
4. Being over responsible
to see that others get enough food. This is the concentrating on providing
food and nourishment for others. This is an admirable endeavor but for a food
addict this is a dangerous endeavor and it certainly keeps food as a primary
topic of focus in your life when you are "powerless" over it. It
appears that you would be better served to encourage the people in your life to
become personally responsible for their own dealings with food.
5. Lying about what you
eat. You will lie about how much you eat and how often you eat so as to
avoid the negative reactions and responses of others. Your need to "look
good" to other goes so far as to perpetrate lie after lie about your eating
habits. However your body and health tell the truth about you. You would prefer
to hide the truth than to honestly confront it and do something about it. The
time for honesty is now, so take the challenge and change.
6. Entertaining with
food. This is where you make food the central reason for the entertaining
rather than the entertaining as being the rationale for the gathering. You focus
so much on the food that the role of socializing, having fun and enjoying the
company of others gets lost. You claim the need to entertain to maintain your
social contacts, business associations and community standing. Yet, you focus on
the food aspect of such gatherings and miss the relationship component at times.
Your biggest binges are preparing and cleaning up after these gatherings, since
you eat sparingly during them. You plan your food for these events weeks in
advance and compulse, obsess and visualize them over and over until the event is
completed. You would rather die from entertaining than live having fun,
socializing and communicating with others in healthier food-free ways. Ok so you
are saying, "Society teaches us that food is central to entertaining."
So who said society is healthy. Be daring and put socializing, communicating and
having fun as central in your entertaining and live longer.
7. Being the "best
cook." This is getting approval and recognition in the family, your
circle of friends, neighborhood or community as being the "best cook."
This can be so addictive that you find it hard to give up the need for this
recognition even if it means that you are persistently placing your life in
jeopardy by being around food so much on a daily basis. A live "ex-best
cook" is certainly more rational and realistic a title for a food addict
than being a dead "best cook."
The Looking Good Pattern
like all of the other behavioral patterns of low self-esteem is a compulsive way
of thinking, feeling and acting and it is important to become aware of the
characteristics so that you can confront yourself or have others confront you
when you are falling back into this pattern when dealing with your food
addiction.
B. Acting Out
The underlying theme of the
Acting Out behavioral pattern in relationship with food is "No one is going
to tell me what I can or cannot eat. No one is going to tell me how much, when
or where I can eat. No one is going to tell me how to correct my problem."
This message is a rebellion against any real or perceived authority figures. It
is based on the message that "I have been hurt once by others and no one is
ever going to hurt me again." The message of the Acting Out pattern is one
of anger, resentment and hatred. For example, in this program the suggestion is
made to eat in moderation and to balance one's food intake with no more than 30%
of the diet being in fat calories. An Acting Out attitude would be: "No one
is going to tell me how much I can eat and how many fat calories I am going to
ingest." This person then goes about ignoring, rebelling against or turning
off the message of health and continues to eat in unhealthy ways. The Acting Out
pattern is a fight for control. It is the reacting to the real or perceived
efforts of others to control them. The behavior of Acting Out reflects the
message: "I will never be controlled by anyone so don't try." The
unfortunate consequence of Acting Out in this program is that you will never
allow yourself to hear the messages of health, hope and happiness available to
you in life. You will resist changing your lifestyle and will have a life of ill
health, low energy and early death.
Acting Out behaviors with
food include:
1. Binge, binge and binge
with no regard to the messages of how unhealthy it is for you. Your anger
and rage at being controlled by the "messages" of the Tools for a
Balanced Lifestyle Program gets you so emotionally unraveled that you proceed
to do the opposite of what is being encouraged in the program. You find yourself
rebelling and fighting the messages and in your frustration, anger and rage you
medicate yourself with food and continue your downward spiral of
self-destructiveness. You need others to confront this self-destructive Acting
Out behavior so that you can look yourself in the mirror they are holding up to
you to let you see that you are literally killing yourself out of your anger and
rebellion not to be controlled by other. This program is voluntary and you are
free to choose to enter and participate in it. No one is holding a gun to your
head to do this program. It is your free will choice to do or not to do it. Stop
blaming others for "forcing" you to do it. Accept that you are in
charge of your own life. If you want to die slowly then keep up the binging. If
you want to begin to enjoy the fruits of a healthier, more energized, life
enhancing existence than begin to take the steps of the program and put them
into your life. You need to do loads of ANGER work to release yourself from the
grips of your rebellion.
2. Maintaining an
oppositional, "yes...but.." position. You may be doing this to the
tenants of the Tools for Balanced Program which you find difficult to implement
or maintain. You are so reactive to the messages and scripts in your head which
are "old tapes" from the past from either a parent, relative, friend,
teacher or authority figure about how you "should" deal with food that
you hear these messages in the program's messages. You perceive these messages
to be forms of control just like the "old tapes" were. You are
reacting to that person in the past by Acting Out to the messages of the present
program. This makes it difficult for you to hear and to be open to the new
messages of hope, health and happiness. You hear them rather as messages of
limitation, deprivation and discipline. You feel you are being limited in your
freedom to be who you want to be. You feel that you are being controlled to be
just like everyone else. You need to do work at eliminating the power you have
given these old messages. You need to do ANGER work and resentment release work
so that you can have the emotional and psychic energy to get on with the
reframing of your life into a more balanced way of dealing with food.
Acting Out is
self-destructive. It is an expression of anger. It is a rebellion against being
controlled by others. You need to do ANGER work and LET GO work to free yourself
emotionally to be open and accepting of the messages of the program so that you
can get on with putting your life into balance.
C. Pulling In
The underlying theme of the
Pulling In behavioral pattern is to become invisible by hiding your feelings
from others. The message of this behavioral pattern is to avoid being seen or
heard so as to avoid any further pain, hurt or rejection in your life. By using
the Pulling In pattern you utilize
food to medicate your feelings and to help stuff them down. For example you may
use food to insulate yourself from further physical, sexual, verbal or emotional
abuse you have received from people in your past. The more food you eat and
weight you put on your body the better the protection from future pain and hurt.
Unfortunately rather than becoming invisible and insulated from being hurt or
rejected, due to your weight you gain unwanted attention and derision concerning
your being fat and obese. Rather than becoming invisible and insulated you are
more vulnerable to being seen and hurt.
Pulling In behaviors with
food include:
1. Clandestine eating. The
goal is that no one sees how much you eat. The more hidden, the better you like
it to be. Your eating, you reason, is invisible to others. However, your weight,
lack of energy and unhealthy life give you away to the world as a foodaholic,
food addict or compulsive overeater. It is healthier to eat out in the open and
live longer than to eat in the closet and live a miserable unhappy, unhealthy
and unbalanced life.
2. Medicating emotions by
eating. The public expression of all emotions is unwanted so you use food to
address all of your feelings. Be they happy and positive feelings or negative
and angry feelings it does not matter. A feeling is a feeling which needs to be
suppressed and kept in so as to maintain invisibility from others for fear of
loss of approval, non-acceptance or rejection from others. As stated earlier in
the Tools for Balanced Lifestyle Program, Food is Food and is not an emotional
release. Use of the ALERT, ANGER, CHILD and LET GO systems are food free methods
of dealing with emotions which are healthier, realistic and life engendering. If
you continue to stuff and pull your feelings in by using food you will be
unhealthy, lack energy and remain unhappy and unfulfilled.
3. Insulating self.
This is an effort to keep you safe from sexual advances and movement towards
intimacy with others. Since you have been hurt in the past by members of the
opposite or same sex and because you have experienced pain and suffering in past
intimate relationships, you wrongly believe that if you insulate yourself with
food and weight you will be happier, more content and emotionally sound. However
your weight causes you more problems due to poor self-image, public humiliation
and discrimination from others. You do not achieve the very goal you set out to
gain by using food in a pulling in way. It is important to get psychotherapeutic
help to address your avoidance of intimacy issues so that you can get on with
your life in a healthier way. You will need to do ANGER work on the past issues
so that you can proceed on in life with a willingness to be vulnerable to being
engaged in intimate relationships in the future.
4. Using food and weight
as the mantle of power and strength. This is to ward off the real or
perceived intimidation and control by others to whom you have given a great deal
of emotional power over you. You wrongly believe that weight and a large body
will keep these "powerful" people from hurting or wounding you
emotionally. Unfortunately, your weight becomes an object of scorn, negative
commentary or advise giving by the very "powerful" people you are
trying to be stronger than. You irrationally give them more material with which
to pick on you. Rather than leave you alone and not ride you, they pick on your
weight, poor eating habits and poor relationship with food. Rather than winning
the competition for control, you lose the battle by gaining enough weight that
your competitor has a real topic over which to pressure you.
5. False sense of
security. You wrongly believe that by having enough weight on your body you
are secure in this cold, lonely world. It is a false sense of security which
lasts only for short spurts. This is because you are daily confronted with your
image in the mirror which upsets you because your body does not look good to
you. So you avoid mirrors so you can continue to feel secure. But comments from
others and your lack of energy, poor health and unhappiness fight your sense of
security on a daily basis.
Pulling In behaviors with
food are dangerous because they cause you to become irrational, unrealistic and
out of touch with reality about the impact of the use of food to help you to
deal with your problems. You begin to live in a fantasy world where dreams,
fantasy and ideals become your goals to accomplish in life. The confusion and
disappointment which comes from not achieving these dreams creates greater
depression, resentment, frustration and greater anger. Pulling In behaviors are
self-destructive and lead to greater dis-health, disharmony and discontent in
your life. What you need to do is ALERT work to get you out of fantasy and into
reality. You need ANGER work to get out your anger about why life isn't the way
you want it to be. You need CHILD work to nurture yourself in food free ways to
give yourself authentic self-worth, self-confidence and personal security.
Finally you need to do LET GO work to release yourself from the need to control
your emotions by your use of food. Food is a powerful influence in your life
over which you are powerless. You
will never be able to eliminate the Pulling In behaviors without extensive work
on improving your emotional well being and self-esteem.
D. Entertaining
The Entertaining behavioral
pattern with food is based on the underlying theme of "let's avoid looking
at the problem by deflecting it with a joke, laugh or side stepping." The
message of the Entertainer behavioral pattern is to make light of the
seriousness of your problems with food, weight and lifestyle. The goal of the
Entertaining behavioral pattern is to show that this problem does not bother you
deeply and that you are "light hearted" when it comes to dealing with
this issue in your life. An example of this is when you crack a "fat
joke" if you find yourself in an embarrassing situation which is food or
weight related. The hope is that the others will laugh along with you so that
they do not recognize that you are in pain and hurting over this situation.
Although you hope they will see that you are "laughing on the
outside," you know that you are indeed "crying on the inside,"
which causes great pain for you. The more you avoid dealing with your true
emotions over your food and weight problems you are only prolonging the time it
will take for you to make the commitment to do something about it. You would
rather make light of it than take it seriously because it will involve a great
deal of effort, time and energy to relate to food in a healthier way which seems
too big, overwhelming and impossible to get a handle on. Entertaining behavior
is a form of disguising yourself in the public eye so that no one can get a
reading as to how you are really feeling about your problem.
Entertaining behaviors with
food are:
1. Joking about fat
people or about food. This entertaining behavior is a way to hide feelings
of embarrassment, shame, guilt, insecurity, unhappiness, anger etc over having
weight and eating problems. It is easier to joke about the problem than to
openly admit that you are a food addict, foodaholic or compulsive overeater.
This behavior works to divert the attention of others away from your real
problems with food so that you do not have to discuss your real feelings in
public. The reality is that as long as you persist in avoiding openly admitting
your problem to others you will never be able to put the time, emotional energy
and commitment into doing something about it. Openly discussing your problem in
a serious vain is a way to strengthen your recovery efforts from food addiction.
Identifying and openly admitting your problem is a major hurdle to jump to get
on track with putting your lifestyle into balance and developing a new healthier
relationship with food. It would be better to be a healthy, higher energy,
happier thin person than to continue to perpetrate the myth that you are a jolly
fat person who is unhealthy, devoid of energy and unhappy on the inside.
2. Making food a regular
topic of conversation. This entertaining behavior is a way to hide the fact
that food is a problem for you. Rather you try to give the image that "I am
OK with food." The image becomes the goal in these conversations. However
you forget that non-verbal communication speaks louder than words. Others know
that your health, energy and personal happiness are affected by your weight and
food problems. They can sense the truth by what is not being said just by
looking at your body and the way you live your live. It would be better to learn
a whole new topic to converse about so that you are not feeding your obsession
and addiction to food. It would be better for you to be a boring
conversationalist who is healthy, with higher energy and happier than a sick,
low energy and unhappy food discussant. As was stated in the introduction to the
Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle Program, it is better not to discuss your
activities in this program so as to keep yourself from feeling pressure to lose
a certain amount of weight or to be watched carefully by others as to what you
eat. The goal is to broaden your horizons about life and to take a new course of
action when it come to what you talk about in your free time. Food free
conversations are healthy conversations for food addicts.
3. Flamboyant and Jolly
disposition with others. This entertaining behavioral combination is a way
to overcompensate for what your real feelings are. You might dress flamboyantly
to indicate that your weight doesn't bother you. You might enjoy being
recognized and pointed out as being idiosyncratic in your dress. You might make
it a point to always be jolly, jubilant and light hearted when with others to
indicate "that although I am overweight I am still a happy person."
This combination of behaviors is a mask which you wear to be dishonest to
yourself and to others. The time has come to take a stand and come clean. Admit
to yourself and others that you are not always OK with your weight and food
problems. Admit that you have negative emotions about food and your weight and
take steps to address these feelings.
Entertaining behaviors are
based on the need to deny reality when it comes to negative emotions. It is
important to do grief work and ALERT work to identify what realities in life you
are running away from facing. You need to do ANGER work about the negative
impact that you food addiction has had on your life. You need to do CHILD work
to nurture yourself in food free ways so that you do not need to spend so much
emotional energy "to put on a happy face" for others to hide your
pain, shame and sadness. You need to do LET GO work to let go of the need to
avoid facing reality for what it is. You need to accept that keeping your focus
on your problem with food will keep you on track in your efforts to change your
lifestyle and heal your relationship with food.
E. Troubled Person
The Troubled Person
behavioral pattern with food is a combination of the other four behavioral
patterns with the underlying theme of denial. The message of denial is the
perpetrating of the delusion or myths that you are not a food addict, nor a
foodaholic nor a compulsive eater. It is the holding tenaciously to the beliefs
that: "I can control my relationship with food by dieting" or "I
can quit my over use of food any time I want" or "I don't have a
problem with food." The goal of the Troubled Person is to keep others from
trying to get you to change or address your eating or weight problems. It is
focused on redirecting peoples efforts to change and control you by use of
denial, anger, counter attacks, or vitriolic ranting. It is the use of
manipulation, such as helplessness, dependency, guilt, blatant self-pity,
hopelessness or self-flagellation. The Troubled Person is not motivated to
change. It is the ultimate irresponsible response to food addiction and unless
it is addressed and changed will be the reason why you are never able to get
your life into balance. It is the behavioral pattern which is ultimately
self-destructive which can lead you if unchecked to a life of poor health,
unhappiness and possible early death. The Troubled Person behavioral pattern is
"diet driven" with the belief that "This diet is going to be the
last diet of my life, all I have to do is to lose my weight and it will be gone
for ever." Looking for the magic cure or simple solution to "fix"
everything is the drive of the Troubled Person. What follows is an example of a
Troubled Person behavioral pattern dealing with food addiction. It is my story.
Hi, I am Jim and I am a
recovering food addict, obese person, compulsive overeater and foodaholic. I was
obese from the time I was in fourth grade. I always had to wear
"huskies" or "fat boy" clothes. I was always self-conscious
about the size of my body. I was embarrassed and ashamed of it. I always felt
"not good enough" and wanted others approval all of my life. I worked
hard to get others' approval by being an honor student in school and working
hard at jobs I was given. Once I reached adulthood, I became obsessed with food.
I enjoyed the taste of food and talked about food all of the time. I always used
food references when talking about any topic be it politics: "It was a
crackerjack deal" or sports "He was a real hot dog" or religion
"It was as peaceful and nurturing as being in a bakery as fresh bread was
being baked in an oven." I was always looking for the quick fix on my
weight problems. I went from one diet to another. I would lose and gain my
weight. I was a yo-yo dieter but in denial that there was a problem with this. I
had two sets of clothes, my "fat clothes" and my "thin
clothes." I did not know anything about nutrition and was completely
resistant to learning anything about it. I would use intellectualizations,
rationalizations and obfuscation to address my food and weight problems. I would
resist anyone's suggestion that I had a problem. I would get angry and rage at
anyone who suggested I was lazy and irresponsible. I was defensive when someone
would address my need to change the ways I dealt with food. I was unable to
listen to anyone talk about lifestyle change.I resisted exercise as just
something "jocks" did. I
was always believing that: "I've been cheated because I have a big body
which loves food." "It wasn't my fault that I was fat, it was my
genetic predisposition and family of origin which made me so." I was
clinically depressed and lacked energy falling asleep at the moment I sat in a
chair. I had health problems, my knees were weak from the years of strain under
my weight and I had two knee surgeries to take out the cartilage in them. I was
angry, resentful, lonely, embarrassed, guilt-ridden and disgusted with myself. I
worked harder and harder to achieve success in my profession to get others
recognition, acceptance and approval, but no matter how hard or how much I did I
never felt "good enough." I was the "family chef" and cooked
for everyone. The focus of all of our entertaining was food. It was so bad that
for a couple who was recently engaged, my wife and I gave a party to celebrate
their impending marriage. The food we prepared became the focus of the evening
and unfortunately the couple got ignored by all of our guests. I was in a
downward spiral. I was becoming more and more convinced that I was destined to
be a rolly polly, jolly fat person who had to regale everyone with my "fat
jokes" to let them know that I wasn't bothered by being fat. I would binge
and eat to medicate my emotions and negative mind set. I could sit down and
finish off two meals in one sitting and then top it off with a number of
desserts and sweets. I was eating all of the time. I became obsessed with food
and was a closet eater hoping to hide my eating habits from others. When asked
about my weight, I always claimed to be working on it by saying I had just begun
a new diet. My life had become unamanagebale due to my compulsive and addictive
use of food. I was a Looking Good, Acting Out, Pulled In, Entertainer with food
who had become a deeply Troubled Person.
In 1985 I went into a one
week treatment program to address my behavioral patterns which stemmed from my
dysfunctional past. I became committed to working on my self-esteem. I began to
write on a weekly basis a recovery plan for every emotional issue I needed to
change to improve my self-esteem. This resulted in the Tools for Coping Series
books. I found that after a year of work on my self-esteem, I was able to accept
the messages of lifestyle balancing and changing one's relationship with food by
becoming nutrition literate. I implemented a program of exercise in my life
which I keep to this very day. I have become a recovering food addict whose body
is an Italian Bank account. I live like a caveperson in the ways I relate to
food and exercise. I was only able to turn my life around by recognizing that I
was a Troubled Person with food and I came out of denial and ceased living my
life in a delusional fantasy. To insure I would not relapse back into my old
unhealthy ways I began to self-disclose to others the nature of my food
addiction and low self-esteem. This self-disclosure compelled me to continue to
work on these issues so that I could be honest with myself and other and not
become a closet hypocrite. As a result of my recovery process, I am on the alert
when others claim they want to change but function more in denial and Looking
Good in their efforts. I have found that confrontation is the best motivational
tool to use to keep me out of denial and delusion and I use this tool with
others to keep them honest and on track. So you can now understand why the Tools
for a Balanced Lifestyle book has an emphasis on dealing with the resistance to
change and is confrontational in nature.
Troubled Person behaviors
with food include:
1. Resistance to change.
You are not willing to come out of denial and stop your delusions about food in
your life. Although you are reading this book or are enrolled in this program,
you are not in reality ready to make the changes necessary in your life. You
need time to come to grips with your self-esteem issues. You need to learn to
love yourself more so that you believe you are deserving of efforts and
activities necessary to put your life in balance and change your relationship
with food. You can expect that if you are in the program that you will be
confronted in an ongoing basis by your class leader and fellow classmates when
you revert to your denial or delusional approach to the problem. You will be
"called on it" when you are caught making excuses or giving
rationalizations why it is hard for you to implement the Tools for a Balanced
Lifestyle in your own situation. Remember, everyone in this program is a food
addict and we all know the "cons," manipulation and excuses to avoid
doing the hard work to change. If you are not confronted when you are slipping
into denial then the rest of the class might be lapsing into denial as well
which would not only be dysfunctional and unhealthy but a waste of time for all
of you. So try not to waste the time of your fellow classmate by bringing up
issues which are nothing more than excuses to remain in your old status quo.
2. Magical thinking.
You are unwilling to accept that it takes a great deal of work, effort and
energy to change your lifestyle and ways you relate to food. You hold onto the
delusion that there is a simple, easy one step method to lose weight, have a
thin body and have a happy life. You are unwilling to accept personal
responsibility for your own life. You want an external solution to be given you
to turn your life with food around. You will need to be confronted with reality
on a regular basis by this program, your class leader and your classmates. When
you lapse into magical, fantasy or dreamlike visions you need to be confronted
to help you get back into reality. It is something like the old Williams's After
Shave commercial where the guy gets a slap in the face after he puts on the
aftershave lotion and he says: "Thanks I needed that." Confrontation
to bring you back into reality is not comfortable and you might find yourself
getting angry, upset, embarrassed or feeling shame. But you need to accept that
in this program the confrontation given is done so in love and concern for your
lifelong well being. It is better to have a jolt to your system to get you back
on track than to be allowed to relapse back into your fantasy and delusions
which would result in you doing nothing to change your lifestyle and for you to
continue to be unhealthy, unhappy and out of control with food.
3. Blaming others for
your problems. You are unwilling to accept your problems with food are your
own responsibility to change. You feel justified in blaming your parents,
relatives, old friends, teachers, employers, coworkers and other people in your
life for your obesity, being a food addict and compulsive eater. You are not
willing to look yourself squarely in the eye and say: "Yes, there may have
been things done to me the past which resulted in my turning addictively to
food, but today as an adult, I must accept personal responsibility for my life
and take the steps necessary to turn around my life with food in a healthy
way."
4. Diet oriented. You
find it hard to accept that you are powerless over food and believe you can
control your relationship with food by simply going on a diet. You are very
hesitant to accept the messages of the Tools for a Balanced Lifestyle Program
because they do not include dieting. You have experienced success in diets
before and you are skeptical how not going on a diet will result in you losing
weight and changing the way you deal with food. You are a "diet
junkie" who is only happy or content when your are on a diet. Dieting has
become a way of life for you. You are not willing to accept the research
findings that your yo-yo dieting results in your gaining all of the weight back
after you conclude your diet and maybe even gain more. You are unwilling to
accept that you need to implement exercise into your life. You are unwilling to
believe that you are seriously "nutritionally illiterate" even though
you claim to know more about food than most dieticians and nutritionists do. If
you were so literate about nutrition and food then why are or were you
overweight?
5. Irresponsibility.
You find it hard to keep the focus of your efforts and energy on taking
responsibility for your own life. You find it hard to accept that
"you" are the reason why you are overweight, obese, unhappy and out of
balance in your life. You find it hard to believe that all of the effort,
activity and energy spent on correcting your relationship with food is to be
done by you. You are waiting for someone else to do it for you. You are
convinced that if you wait long enough someone will come into your life with a
message and "cure" which will make it simple, easy and permanent to no
longer be a food addict, compulsive eater and foodaholic.
6. Defensiveness. You
are always waiting for something to be said to you which you can pounce on to
justify why this program is not for you. You are looking for something to be
said which you can justify why this program is a failure and waste of time just
like all of your earlier efforts. You are alert to any innuendo of non
acceptance of yourself to justify quitting the program. You are not happy with
the need for confrontation being an integral part of this program. You reason
that: "Since I have a problem, I should be treated with kid gloves."
You find it difficult to accept that because you are a food addict you cannot be
treated with kid gloves. If you remain in denial of your real problems, you will
never change your life in the process. There are no easy answers in this program
which puts you off. You do not like the fact that dealing with this problem is a
lifelong effort. You are put off by the fact that the Balanced Lifestyle effort
takes a long time before you can see results. You are put off by the fact that
all of the work is yours to do. You are put off by the statement that "The
Program only works if you work the program."
You are holding onto your defenses so that you do not have to come out of
denial and get out of your delusional way of living. It would be better for you
to be a healthy, happy and energized humble recipient of the messages of this
program than for you to remain an unhealthy, unhappy and hopeless foodaholic.
You need confrontation to get you out of your defensiveness and your class
leader and fellow classmates need to provide this to you if you are to be
"called on it" enough to motivate you to change your lifestyle.
7. Lying about doing
something about your problem with food. You are unwilling to admit to
yourself and others that you currently are not really doing anything to get your
life in balance and change your relationship with food. You are not ready to
take the steps necessary yet. You are not able to be honest with yourself or
others about your lack of effort. The unfortunate thing is your body, low energy
level and lack of happiness give you away. It would be better for you to be
honest about your lack of effort at this time than to perpetrate lies which only
make you feel guilt and shame for saying once you put them out there. Lying only
makes you feel worse about yourself and drives you more to food in an addictive,
obsessive or compulsive way.
Because all food addicts are
Troubled Persons, you need to put more effort in healing your self-esteem. You
need to work at implementing the Tools for Coping mechanisms for growing in
self-love and self-nurturing. You need to accept the Self-Esteem Seekers
Anonymous tenets and 12 Step Program. You need to work at using the ALERT system
to get rational about who you really are so that you can grow in
self-acceptance, self-approval and self-love. You need to use the ANGER system
to let go of your anger at others and yourself so that you can grow in
forgiveness of others and self-forgiveness for what has happened to your body
due to your poor relationship with food. You need to use the CHILD system to
grow in self-worth and self-confidence by letting go of shame and guilt, growing
in self-forgiveness and overcoming your desire for invisibility. You need to
learn to deal with your feelings in a healthier ways by identifying them and
then assertively expressing them to get them resolved. You finally need to use
the LET GO system to let go of your need to control others and to let go of your
powerlessness over food. You need to grow in a spirituality so that you can hand
over your food issues in a healthy way so that you can proceed to take the steps
necessary to put your life in balance.
The behavioral patterns
related to food are strong, compulsive, learned patterns which take years to
correct. You need to identify them in your life and take the steps necessary to
confront yourself when the appear in your behaviors. You will need the support
of others over your lifetime to "call you on it" when you relapse into
these unhealthy ways of dealing with food.
Related Tools for Coping Series Readings:
1. Laying the Foundation
2. Tools for Personal
Growth
To
assist you in moving on to other sections of Tools
for a Balanced Lifestyle Chapter 4: Addressing
Resistance to Change, click on to the topic you want to go to next:
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