Do you struggle to lose weight?

I’d be telling a big porky pie if I said mindfulness hasn’t helped me with my weight *.

*Apologies if this musing about losing weight isn’t relevant for you, but I’ve had conversations and questions about it recently so really wanted to write about it. If you experience addictive personality traits, you may still find it worth the read.

As an emotional eater I have struggled and struggled with food (went on my first diet as an overweight eight year old and I’ve yoyo’d like a yoyo on a bungee for a lot of my life). Anyone who has an emotional dependency on food knows, it’s a much fatter issue than what's on your plate. It’s a whole big mixing bowl of addiction, food highs, guilt lows, self-hate, self-harm and self-comfort. For the person chowing down it feels feverishly ugly and sad. But it’s filling a deep hole -- a hole of shame -- often left by an emotional meteorite that once ate us.

But this is what mindfulness has taught me and how it has saved me from my own fair hand bringing endless crisps to my own fair mouth:

1. This is not about food.

It’s about urges and intrusive food thoughts. The work to be done is in the brain and heart, not in the diet book.

2. Dieting for weight loss only make us more obsessed with food.

We fixate on our next ‘healthy snack’, or what we'll have for dinner while eating breakfast, non-stop.

3. How we do something is how we do everything.

We live in a binge culture. As Johanna Handley (The Last Food Fight) taught me: discomfort is ok. As mindfulness taught me: learning to master urges in all areas (phone, scrolling, booze, shopping splurges, instant gratification of any kind, plus food) is life changing.

When the urge comes to check the phone, you employ the same technique as the urge to have another biscuit: you feel it and allow it and watch what it does (your mind will speak, your body will flare, discomfort and self-hatred may flow, all sorts of intrusive things may happen but they will change and they will go if you allow them to).

This is not about willpower or resisting, it’s about feeling and observing. By doing this in all areas, not just eating, you master your brain’s neuroplasticity for the better (dampening the brain’s reward circuit and subsequent dopamine hit). Meditation helps support this. The real reward is feeling more in control around food.

4. It isn’t until we stop depriving ourselves that we lose weight for good.

By shifting the goal “lose weight” to the more immediate goal “don't overeat”, being mindful of intrusive food thoughts and riding urges, we self-correct and our bodies reclaim their equilibrium weight.

5. We're built to seek out the sweetest, fattiest, saltiest food for our very survival.

McDonald's and Ben & Jerry's take fat advantage of this. But it's not good for our health to go hunting & gathering in the cake aisle in Tesco.

It’s not our fault but it’s our responsibility if we want to change. And until the perceived benefit of food freedom outweighs the benefit of succumbing to urges, it won’t happen.

It was a revelation to realise that all of this learnt behaviour just needed unlearning. That I could ride whatever came up. That sometimes I would fail (still do) but could just start again. That it’s never ever about “starting tomorrow” or “starting Monday”, it’s about reclaiming power right now. Letting go of the need to be thin is hugely liberating. Daring to desire a healthy relationship with food is downright delicious. And for me, after a lifetime of food struggles, these last two bedrocks have resulted in long-term weight loss for about six years. It can work for you too.

How would it feel to have a healthy relationship with food? Why not feel an urge today, rather than feed it? You don't even need to wait 'til Monday.

Happy Monday

Love,

Jo x

P.S. If you have any questions or thoughts you want to share about this musing, or would like me to expand on any of it, just drop me an email 💛