Core Value EatingPosted by Nick Niesen on October 26th, 2010 Who is more likely to sustain desirable weight, the valued self or the devalued self? Your problem in reaching and maintaining your desired weight is not due to personal failings. You have plenty of discipline ? you have gone through so much trouble time and time again to lose weight. You certainly have will power or you wouldn?t keep trying after each failure. The problem lies not in you, but in your weight-loss programs, which set you up to fail. No weight control program can succeed by dominating your consciousness with food and weight. This actually increases the unconscious impulse to eat. Setting "goals" for weight loss makes you fail in the long run. In other words, you win some, you lose some. In the long run, winning and losing even out and put you back at your original weight, if not higher. No weight control program can succeed unless it helps you regulate the core hurts that make you overeat and attack food. A successful program must develop a conditioned response to regulate eating automatically. Otherwise, you will have to do the near impossible: ?stop and think about it,? when swept up in a rush to eat. With Core Value Eating, you stop thinking so much about weight and start looking at yourself and others with more compassion. Instead of making goals, you create more value in your life. You value yourself more, which automatically makes you value your health and well being. You learn to motivate yourself with "Acts of Kindness," especially when you relapse. (Who are more likely to repeat mistakes, those who punish themselves with guilt or shame or those who value themselves?) Compassionate eating conditions Core Value to occur with the impulse to eat. The reflex of Core Value will then motivate whatever you do, including food consumption. Health and well being depend far more on how much we value than how much we are valued, even though we?re a lot more sensitive to the latter. You are probably quite aware of the times in your life when you didn?t feel valued in relationships at work or at home. What you did not notice is that those were times when you valued far less. Here?s a little test to show the power of value. List of the qualities that you believe make a person worthy of love. Just think of people who you believe are lovable, and list their most lovable qualities. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Your list consists of various aspects of compassion. You have described a person who is accepting, valuing, and loving, someone who makes an emotional investment in others, not just herself. You have described someone who is compassionate. When you feel compassion for yourself and others, you cannot feel a core hurt and you do not have an impulse to overeat. Like it? Share it!More by this author |