Yes, Renée, all these ideas are well and good, but HOW do I get my head around these thoughts I’ve believed all my life?
Maybe everyone at school made fun of you for a behavior, preference, or even the color of your hair, (hello, fellow redheads!) or your parents were not very supportive nor encouraging. Somewhere along the way, you picked up wounds and beliefs about yourself, and a common response is to go to food for comfort and stress relief. It works for the moment, but the long-term results are hard on our hearts as well as our health.
So how do we loosen the grip of those wounds? How do we change what is going on in our heads?
It takes a bit of practice.
Set Alarms
On your smartphone, you can set an alarm, and you can change the word “ALARM” to whatever word or phrase you want to focus on and take in. The negatives were drilled into you, so let’s drill in some good stuff.
I set several alarms that go off throughout the day. When they go off, I have to look at my phone to shut it off, so I read it. Every time I read it, it reminds me of what I want to learn to think or believe, or perhaps it’s a lesson I need to learn or a reminder of my purpose. You can make it whatever you need to hear whether it’s one word or a phrase. You can change them as often as you like. I leave mine until I think I’ve got it and then choose a new one. Some of them stay a long time – deeper wounds can take a bit longer to recreate your thinking – but over time, it has helped me.
The thing is, we can’t change our thinking without effort, but a little effort can bring about great changes.
How can you work with your tendency to meet one of your goals?
Renée Jones is a counselor and coach specializing in overcoming emotional eating. After 40 years on the Diet Yo-Yo, she struggled to find what worked for her while emotional eating sabotaged every attempt. When she finally overcame that emotional eating to lose her weight, maintenance on a low-fat diet left her tired, hungry, and cranky. In April of 2015, she found the ketogenic lifestyle and later Carrie Brown’s recipes, which freed her from the Diet Yo-Yo and dark mood swings.
Now she helps others get free of their emotional eating and other baggage so their hearts can heal along with their bodies. She has a Master’s degree in Counseling with certifications in both traditional and contemporary models as well as Horse-Assisted and relaxation methods. She has an international counseling and coaching practice.
Author of What’s Really Eating You: Overcome the Triggers of Comfort Eating
Connect with Renée!
www.packyourownbag.com
