Are you ready to conquer your food foes and woes this holiday season?
| I’ve been working with a pilot group to test out some new programs that I’m developing around stress, food and digestion, and I feel more than ever face to face with the overwhelming pain that so many people experience around their lack of control with food. |  |
Can you relate to this?
As soon as the stress starts mounting, the urges to reach for food heighten. Then the subconscious takes over and the cupcakes are on their way down the hatch. Then come feelings of embarrassment and shame. “I am trying so hard to take care of myself. I should know better. Why do I keep slipping up?”
Then the stress intensifies, the subconscious regains control and you’re eating again. “Why do I do this to myself? I’m so uncomfortable with the way I look. I’ll never be able to feel good about myself again!”
The despair is overwhelming, compounding the stress with self-judgment. “Who is this person? I don’t want to be this person. I try so hard but nothing works!”
And now here come the holidays…
It’s a powerful cycle, and the cycle will continue unless you find the motor that’s driving it and fix the problem at its core.
Think of when you hear a knock in the engine of your car. If you turn up the radio and sing really loud, you won’t hear it anymore. Problem solved? Nope. Next thing you know smoke is pouring out from under the hood as you’re rolling down the highway, and now you can’t hear the car next to you honking at you trying to warn you. Before you know it, the engine is on fire and your vehicle is going down in flames.
Lightning-speed tricks of the subconscious
If you experience emotional eating, you know that the process can happen so fast that you might not even realize why you’re eating or how you got to where you are. One minute everything was fine, the next minute not.
So what happened? There are patterns, old memories and beliefs that live in your subconscious. They can be dormant for long periods of time – even years! And then one day something happens in your outer environment that triggers that memory, and the activated memory triggers an emotional reaction. All of this can happen in the subconscious, often at lightning speed, and you don’t even know what hit you.
A normal human response to the unclear emotions is to rebound away from them. “What was that? That’s not making any sense to me right now, so I’m going to get away from it as soon as I can.” And we’re most likely not even aware of these thoughts occurring.
The conscious effects of the subconscious response
So what do we do when we don’t want to feel something that makes us uncomfortable? Many of us reach for the comfort of foods. We eat to comfort ourselves. All of this still happening in the subconscious layers.
Three ways foods can comfort us when unfamiliar, unclear and uncomfortable emotions come up:
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Food can Pacify emotions to keep them quiet |
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Food can Bury them, cover them or hide them |
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Food can Distract us from them, and help us to deny that they exist |
It’s like turning up the car radio and singing really loud so that you don’t hear the engine knocking. But it just leads to eating more. Your conscious focus on self-care has just flown out the window. Now you’re feeling heavy and sluggish. Body image concerns leave you feeling shame and low self-esteem.
Next thing you know you decide not to go out with friends. You may decide not to say hello to that new “person of interest”. You may even decide not to apply for that job or promotion.
This is the smoke pouring out from under the hood. And you still don’t know what caused the problem in the first place, but you do know it’s still there, getting louder and trying harder to get your attention.
Can you really break the cycle?
It’s really not a lost cause. It is possible to slow down the lightning speed of the subconscious behavior and get to the truth of what lies beneath. And you don’t have to become a mechanic to find out what’s knocking under your hood.
You can learn to transform the behaviors that stem from your subconscious and regain control of your life. The CAREFOR Connection 7-Step Transformational Healing Method gives you 7 simple steps that can help you to slow down the lightning speeds and access what is needed to heal your engine at its core.
Here’s an overview of the steps:
- Awareness: Look at what was happening around you when you began to lose control. Notice how you are feeling about the situation.
- Discernment: Discern the difference between what is happening on the outside, how you are feeling or thinking about the situation, and what responses or actions/reactions you are compelled to take.
- Acceptance: Accept yourself and your state for what it is. Your state is not the truth of you, but something that is happening within you. Your reaction to something is not what defines you.
- Discovery: Discover what is happening under the layers of your consciousness to find the inner truth and deeper need that is calling to you from within.
- Transform: Call upon Source to fill that deeper need and Transform the challenging energies within you, transforming your once subconscious behaviors to a state of peaceful purpose in your conscious awareness.
- Evaluation: The situation will look different from here once the energies are released and replaced with healing energies from the Divine.
- Gratitude: Take a moment to give thanks for what you’ve learned and for the gifts you’ve received through this transformational experience!
There is a way to break the cycle. Reach out for help. Receive guidance. Learn the deeper truths of yourself.
We invite you to receive support
To help you during the challenging times of the holiday season, my friend Donna Crews-Finney and I have put together a 4-week mini Tele-Course called Harnessing Holiday Hunger. We want to help you through the added stress and temptations that surround you between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
We both understand the challenges of eating, health and body image, and we know the successes of overcoming the hidden emotions and breaking the cycles. We’re here to offer you the tools plus loads of love, understanding and support to help you succeed.
We’ll be holding a no cost introductory Tele-Class this Thursday, November 1st to help you get started. We invite you to come to this intro call to learn more. Visit the webpage for more info and to register. The link to sign up for the introductory Tele-Class is near the top of the page.
Please note: If you know the 4-week Harnessing Your Holiday Hunger Tele-Course is for you, you’ll want to sign up for the course now. Enrollment is limited so that we can ensure individual attention to each participant.
Feel free to contact either of us if you have questions for either of us. We truly look forward to supporting you to succeed in your goals.
Much love,
Debra Graugnard & Donna Jamila Crews Finney
