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“We suffer pain because we organize our life around the concept of an enduring self in a solid world, even though all of it is simply ideas and forms coming in and out of existence… The quietness of meditation offers an opportunity to witness how the entity of ‘me’ comes into being.”

- Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

Just came across this late at night shortly before bed, and thought it was worth sharing.  Sakyong Mipham is the son of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, one of the first high Tibetan lamas to teach in the United States in the late 60’s.  He passed away in 1987.  I have been reading “The Essential Chogyam Trungpa” on and off for a couple years- it’s great, though I think a basic understanding of some Buddhist fundamentals make it much more accessible.

I’ve had the very good fortune of recently coming into contact with the most coherent and succinct description of Buddhist fundamentals I’ve ever seen in the 20 years of paying attention to it.

I plan on doing some posts in the not so distant future about the basics of Buddhism- particularly from the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism as I have been learning it from my dear friend and Buddhist monk Erik Jung and his teacher who I’ve met on just one occasion His Eminence Dzogchen Khenpo Chogya Rinpoche.

This explanation of positive and negative thinking, how it works, and how it creates the moment to moment sense of happiness or unhappiness that we experience is both profound and entirely practical.

More coming on this soon.

I wanted to write an article so people who are just getting to know me and my work can have a frame of reference for why I focus specifically focus on emotional eating.  Yes, I cover other weight loss and personal development related topics, but my particular interest and focus as a coach and writer is emotional eating and the various synonyms that come with it (binging, night snacking, overeating, etc).

As a quick side note, I’m writing this, I’m sitting on the back porch of my mother’s home in Asheville, NC and a big, beautiful butterfly just flew in front of my face.  I’m relaxed after a run and swim in the river with the dog…a nice cup of earl grey tea by my side, and the bullfrog resident of her little pond just surfaced to make himself known.  I think it’s mating season for him…he’s been around a bunch this week.

Why am I talking about this in the middle of the post?  Because it illustrates a point I’ll come back to which is that we get so absorbed in ourselves and our struggle and the incessant thoughts/activity in our heads, and we neglect to appreciate the simple things in life.  We get way out of the habit of slowing down and getting involved in the world that is going on outside of our head.

Reminds me: Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh says something to the effecct that if you can’t meditate when you’re washing the dishes, then you can’t really meditate on a cushion either.  In other words, savor and rejoice in the mundane.

So here we go, Why I Focus on Emotional Eating (hopefully in some sensible order):

1. I struggled with it myself. There was a period in my early 20’s when I was food obsessed.  I was not in balance in my life.  I was avoiding dating and relationships because I was scared of commitment, and food was my outlet.  I was actually rail thin because I was obsessive with healthy food and exercise.  Crazy amounts of my mental energy were absorbed by food and my body. I had some distorted body image issues as well (I was somewhere between chunky and meaty growing up and had an internal image of myself as fat).   It was finally when I began really confronting the underlying issues (for me it was intimacy) and started dating in particular that the issues with food and my body finally normalized- and quickly at that.  They have been normal and in balance ever since.  I enjoy food, but I don’t think much about it when I’m not hungry.  In fact, even when I’m hungry, I often find preparing food and eating it to be something of a chore rather than a source of anticipation and excitement.  More than anything food is fuel to me- which I think is a normal and healthy relationship to have to food.
2. I’ve always been into health, fitness and mind/body wellness. Since my days as a high school athlete, I’ve always been interested in fitness and nutrition (well the nutrition part came later at the hippie college I went to- you can learn more about those days in my full bio if you’re interested).  I’ve also been very interested in mind/body stuff like meditation, yoga, martial arts and guided visualization work since that time as well.  In the course of learning all these things, I’ve learned a lot about how to help people make powerful shifts in their life.
3. I’ve always had ‘the ‘therapist gene’. Since around the time I was 16, I’ve been very interested in personal growth work.  Someone once said to me that I have ‘the therapist gene’, and I think that’s pretty accurate.  I was the kind of person who others naturally came to for personal feedback, and it’s no small wonder that I went on to get my Masters Degree in Counseling.  As I’ve evolved in my work and transitioned to what I call Personal Development Coaching, focusing on weight loss challenges- and emotional eating in particular- has  been an obvious and natural fit for me.
4. I “get it”- meaning I instinctively get what is involved in losing weight and keeping it off, both from the mental/psychological point of view and also from the physical point of view (how to exercise, what to eat).
5. A lot of people struggle with emotional eating. Of all the various aspects of the weight loss process, I think the strong emotional attachment to food dogs people the most and is one of the most difficult to overcome, because it’s almost always symptomatic of deeper issues going on.  As I’ve gotten deeper into working with clients on their weight loss issues, it’s become apparent how much an imbalanced relationship to food is so many people’s achilles heel.   (more…)