Willpower, is that what we need to stop overeating?

Willpower - I just looked it up in my online dictionary and here’s what it says “Control deliberately exerted to do something or to restrain one's own impulses : a stupendous effort of will.” 
What’s wrong with that? Why would it not be helpful to deliberately make an effort to restrain an impulse that we have decided is ultimately not good for us? Sounds like exactly what we need by the bucket load if we want to stop overeating. Well, I think not and I think the reason lies with the word stupendous. More on that in a moment.
Have you ever heard the expression “she has an iron will”? What image does that metaphor conjure up in your mind? If I imagine I can see before me a woman with an iron will, I see someone strong, braced, rigid, eyes fixed, jaw set, muscles tense and tight, her breathing is shallow, almost imperceptible. She may even have her fists clenched. She’s making herself impenetrable, immovable, so solid nothing will push her off course, she's ready for a fight if necessary…. Are you willing to humour me for a moment? Stand up and try that posture. Imagine yourself summoning all the will you have while you stand in that posture. I imagine that if you really put stupendous effort into it you’d resist just about anything right now. If you stayed as focused as this, if you maintained this stance, your will truly would be as iron, able to withstand almost anything it comes up against. Powerful. Strong. ‘NO’ is on the tip of your tongue. Nothing will topple you. 
How do you feel? What are you aware of in your body? What are you thinking? How much effort does it take to stay this strong and focused? How long do you think you could sustain this posture? Could you stay like this all day? All week? All your life? So, isn’t this ability to summon our will and create a body that knows how to say no, stay solid and unmovable, resist... a good thing? Isn't learning how to use our willpower the answer. Then we could summon the power of our will whenever we needed it and, with stupendous effort, to say NO to overeating?

The way I see it is this. Making a stupendous effort, which doesn’t always feel like it’s all that hard at first, is ultimately unsustainable. I’ve been reading a fascinating book about habits. I was very interested to read that scientists have discovered that willpower is not infinite. We don't have a never ending source of willpower. Even in the course of one day the more willpower we exert, the harder it becomes to keep drawing on it and by the end of the day we are very likely to have run out. And I was surprised at just how many things in a day we draw on our willpower to manage. Just how many things in my day I do, even though I don't really want to; getting up early with my alarm (and resisting the desire to turn over and go back to sleep), making packed lunches for the kids (honestly, I'd really rather not, it would be so much easier to pay for school dinners) cleaning the loo (resisting the urge to turn a blind eye to the grime), supermarket shopping (hate it), sitting in traffic jams (holding back the desire to scream at every red traffic light), taking the rubbish out (resisting the whisper to just walk past and ignore it), balancing my accounts (resisting the urge to distract myself with yet another cup of tea), clearing my inbox of junk mail (rather than giving in to the desire to shut my laptop and do something far more interesting) taking myself to the dentist (when every bone in my body wants to stay away). I could go on and on. These are all necessary tasks which I am responsible for and which I choose to do. And, they require me to draw on the power of my will to say yes to, over and over again, even when I sometimes want to say no. The things which might be easy enough to do or resist at the beginning of the day and the tasks that require our focus and attention, become far, far harder by the end of the day. We draw on the power of our will many times in the day to do things we don’t want to do or to resist the things we are drawn to and temped by… not just overeating. We may not realise it as they are small, seemingly insignificant things sometimes and each one in itself may not require stupendous effort. Just a bit of effort. And it all adds up. So is it any surprise that by the time we get home after work, or the children are finally tucked up in bed, we simply do not have the energy it takes to stay in that effortful posture? Is it really any surprise that, particularly at the end of the day, the willpower to say no to chocolate or cake or pasta or whatever has quite simply run out? Is it really that surprising that we draw on every ounce of willpower to do what we have to do for others, to be there, show up, perform, and that there's little of that left when it comes to taking care of ourselves and saying no to overeating, whatever the time of day? Who are we letting down but ourselves when we give ourselves a moment of respite from working so hard? Add to that the very fact that eating something nice feels like the one thing we are actually giving ourselves, a treat, a break and is it any wonder that we just don't have the energy to summon more willpower to resist? Resistance is futile. Even if we try, we are almost guaranteed to give in, it's just a matter of time.
The way to stop overeating is not to use willpower. If we truly want to stop overeating, the way to do it is this: decide that we want to stop. That's the single most important step; to make that decision and set our intention. Then, make sure we have support in place, whatever works for us. It could be a person or people to talk to, books to read, a forum to post on... Then, find out as much as we can about the behaviour we want to change, becoming curious about why, when and how we overeat, so that we understand the triggers, cues and motivations and we can see what we get out of the behaviour and how it helps us cope. Then, we can plan to change those overeating behaviours one small step at a time, and each time be willing to tune in and stay present to whatever we are experiencing in the moment rather than ignoring ourselves and using willpower. Stopping involves taking ourselves gently by the hand and saying no to eating, not with superhuman, stupendous effort but by learning to acknowledge and experience how we are feeling, what we are thinking and recognising our body talk. Being able to stop overeating means learning how to soothe away the discomfort, the pain, the agitation... Stopping involves identifying what we are truly hungry for and allowing ourselves to have that. Or acknowledging what it's like when we can't or don't know how to let ourselves have what we truly want. Changing our overeating behaviours and habits does indeed require effort and commitment but if it feels like you have to make stupendous effort, your are pushing too hard and you are likely to run out of steam and sabotage your efforts. If you have to draw on willpower you are fighting a losing battle. You'll only manage it for so long and eventually, a few minutes, days or weeks later you'll relent and give in. It, is quite simply inevitable. Scientifically proven even.
Willpower: wonderful, useful, empowering, effective, in short bursts. I am very, very grateful for the power of my will. But not for stopping overeating. Gentleness, commitment, willingness, openness, presence, curiosity, sustained effort (the kind that involves stretching not tearing), these are the qualities to draw on if we want to stop overeating. It's very different from using willpower, which involves ignoring ourselves and our needs, shutting ourselves off from feeling. Rigidifying and fighting. Tuning-in is the opposite; it means paying attention to ourselves, acknowledging, feeling, softening, co-operating with ourselves. We can all do it, every one of us. The more we practice tuning-in, the easier it is to stop overeating.  (A lot more on this in our new book - Beyond Temptation, out on Sept 6th 2012) My verdict; willpower, not helpful.

The Gap and The Pause

Gretel Hallet, is a Trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich - perfect for beginners to experience the core principles of Beyond Chocolate and equally great as a refresher for any Beyond Chocolater. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate or her workshops, get in touch with Gretel.

Mind The Gap! Those of you who live in London will be very familiar with that phrase – but what happens if we are in a Gap? I am exploring that concept right now. I’m out of work, looking for work, but also really enjoying being at home and exploring this Gap that has opened up in my life. We don’t often get Gaps in life and if one occurs, I would encourage you to dwell in it and explore it. Our natural tendency is to fill gaps; if we have 5 minutes to wait, we fiddle with our mobiles, or read a book, or buy a coffee – we seldom just allow ourselves to occupy this Gap of time and not Do Anything.

It’s very hard to not have anything to do. It can be unsettling emotionally and can be almost physically painful, but I have been Tuning in to these Gaps that life throws up from time to time and exploring my feelings without filling the Gap with trivia.
On the positive side, if we don’t have Gaps in our life from time to time, we find it harder to be open to possibilities, to take our lives off in perhaps a different direction – to listen to what we actually want to do.

It is, of course, possible to create a Gap for ourselves; to step off the treadmill and look about us, to take time to consider what we want to do with however many years of life we have left. For many of us, this is a luxury we are unlikely to be able to generate for ourselves; modern life is expensive and there is the imperative to earn money, support ourselves, advance in our chosen careers.

However, if a Gap does pop up in your life, however short it is, I would encourage you to take advantage of it. What is it like to just sit there and do nothing? What if you used that time to Tune In? What would your body and mind tell you?
This Gap is first cousin to the Beyond Chocolate Pause. The Pause is a self-generated pre-determined length of time in which we can Tune In and break the endless rush, the hand-to-mouth cycle, the dive into the biscuit tin with eyes and mind averted.

What happens when I eat compulsively, without being hungry, without (often) actually enjoying what I’m eating, when I eat too much, too quickly, too soon, is that I’m not really in this moment. I’m physically there, in front of the cupboard/fridge/box/carton/shop but mentally I’m somewhere else, somewhere I don’t have to take responsibility for what I’m doing. That’s why, when it’s all over, I can be surprised at the empty packets/cartons etc – gosh! Where did all that go?!

One way of dealing with those moments is to interrupt them before they steam-roller us. And one way we can do that is by using The Pause. But in order to use The Pause, we have to know when we are likely to find ourselves facing that situation. And how we will recognise that situation or feeling is if we have been Tuning In.

So, we have to work backwards through that last paragraph.
Firstly, we have been Tuning In for some time and recognise the symptoms of a forthcoming binge or the symptoms of a desire to eat when not hungry etc.

Next, we interrupt the flow from desire to action – we step in just after we recognise the symptoms and just before we open the door/packet/tin.

For those of us who find this very uncomfortable, we can agree a time limit – it can be very little, mere seconds, or it can be longer – the time is up to each one of us individually.

We promise ourselves that if we still want to eat when the time is up, we will do.
And we sit with the feelings that come up during the time we have set.

The Pause and Tuning In are small but very potent weapons we have to hand, whenever we need or want to use them, and they really do work.

It’s easy to overlook the little things in life; the Gaps and Pauses, Tuning In, but focusing on them and using them can be one of the best things we do for ourselves.

One of those days

Do you ever have one of those days when you wonder what it’s all about, what you work so hard for?

I sat down with the intention of writing a blog post about tuning-in and then, when I tuned-in myself, I realised that I was feeling miserable and frustrated, that I was tensing my shoulders, breathing shallowly, tightening my lips together, sitting very still and heavy and that my gremlin was in moan mode. “What’s the point, this is all too much, nothing is working the way I want it to, I've got to keep going, I can’t stop, I can do it, of course I can, but it’s all crap and I feel miserable, Oh, what's the point anyway...” (or something along those lines). Not the best state for creativity and writing something interesting for you all to read.

So I have a choice. I can choose not to write. Or, I can choose to stuff down the misery and write something upbeat and passionate (all the while pretending I don't feel sad). Or I can write from this place, from where I am right now. I can allow myself to be vulnerable. I can write about the frustration of being a mum and working and wanting to do it all so well. How can there possibly be time to do it all? To make time to prepare home cooked meals, clean the house, give lifts here and there and everywhere, accompany one to the dental hospital and the other to a fencing competition on the weekend, run a psychotherapy practice, finish my psychotherapy training and write countless essays, manage Beyond Chocolate and all that goes with running a small buisness, be an attentive, loving partner, spend time with my girl friends, oh and do volunteer work for WIP, write books, socialise… and have time to breathe. It’s not possible. It's surely just not humanly possible. That’s what I have come to realise when I write it all down. It’s just not possible to do all those things well and stay sane. And yet I do it, somehow. I don't do them all as well and as fully as I'd like and I do them. All. I love every one of those things I do and yet right now I’m looking at the list and thinking “What can I stop doing, ‘cause something’s got to give?”. In the past I would have eaten now, to give myself a break, a moment to sit down, I would have eaten to stuff down my hopelessness and my sadness. These days I write blog posts instead - this doesn't feel like work, it's an opportunity to ask myself what I’m thinking about and get it all out. I can sit here at the computer and take a few deep breaths. I can tune-in to my gremlin and respond with a knowing nod, a kindly “I know”. There’s no point pretending it’s all OK because it isn’t - and worrying, berating myself or pushing and steeling myself won’t make it any better either.

What do I really want right now? A moment to put my feet up, a moment to have a bit of a cry maybe or just allow myself to feel glum and miserable and hopeless. So I’ll stop here, make myself a cup of Earl Grey tea and sit in my misery chair for 10 minutes. I’ll set the alarm on my phone and I’ll let myself moan and complain and worry for the whole 10 minutes or until I’ve had enough. I always feel better when I've allowed myself to do that.

Not a very uplifting post! But honest. If you find yourself having one of those days, tune-in, notice what you are feeling and name it, pay attention to what you’re thinking, what is your gremlin saying? Notice what you are doing with your body and ask yourself what you need and want and then, maybe, give yourself 10 minutes in your misery/anger/worry chair - or whatever it is for you in that moment.

Oh, and Happy Easter!

Are you in a Comfort Zone?

Gretel Hallet, is a Trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich - perfect for beginners to experience the core principles of Beyond Chocolate and equally great as a refresher for any Beyond Chocolater. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate or her workshops, get in touch with Gretel. 


I’ve received another challenge from a Diet Guru. This one says;


"Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone - I Dare You!


It is all too common for us to stay within the safety of our comfort zone yet this is NOT where change happens.


If you want something different....if you long for results then you must be willing to take a RISK, Reach and Step outside of this circle to face the uncomfortable!”


Or not.


For some people, a challenge like the above can be just the thing they need to spur them into action. ‘I’ve slothed about long enough,’ they think, ‘It’s time to take action!’ and so they do, in whatever way they have identified as the way they wish to go. I’ve seen quoted again and again that for many women, a photo of themselves at an unguarded, un-posed moment, often on holiday or at an event, is the spur to launch themselves into another diet. Some diets will even recommend you keep a photo of yourself at your previous slimmest as a spur to keep you on the ‘straight and narrow’! For many reasons this won’t work, but the point I’m making here is that those women have been spurred into leaving their comfort zones and taking action.


For other women, a challenge like the one above is just not going to help one little bit. Maybe they are already feeling quite bad enough about themselves and being told to push themselves right out into unchartered (or all too well chartered!) territory is just too scary or horrifying to contemplate. After all, a ‘comfort zone’ is just that – a place where we feel comfortable. Where’s the incentive to step outside that into a chilly and uncomfortable place where there’s RISK?!


Bizarrely, diets can become comfort zones. It is strangely comforting to hand over control of our eating and our bodies to someone else who will tell us what we can and can’t eat, when, how much etc. It takes away the responsibility for what we may perceive as our own ‘failure’ to be slim, toned, ‘perfect’. And when it all goes pear-shaped (deliberate pun!) we don’t blame the diet – we blame ourselves – we weren’t ‘good enough’, we didn’t ‘do it’ properly. That particular comfort zone is a dead end.


Beyond Chocolate can also become a comfort zone. Perhaps we have been working with the principles for long enough not to need to keep looking them up in the book and now we’re starting to feel comfortable with where we are and what we’re doing. Unfortunately, the quote at the top is right; if we nestle into a comfort zone, we’re not going anywhere. However, I’m not entirely convinced that throwing ourselves bodily out of the comfort zone is necessarily helpful either.


So what is my conclusion? I would encourage those of you who feel you are happily snuggled into a comfortable and familiar zone, to consider poking a toe out. I wouldn’t discourage those who would like to leap with a ‘Banzai!’ into a new challenge, either. I would say that it is definitely worth having a look every now and then to check whether where we are is comfortable (but going nowhere) or is part of a progression that we have chosen to undertake.


In other words – Tune In.

Satisfaction

Gretel Hallet, is a trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate, get in touch with Gretel.
Something happened recently which helped me to realise quite how far I’ve come since I started working on my relationship with food and my body with Beyond Chocolate. I spent a weekend in London and visited my sister and small nephew and niece. Then, exhausted, I made my way to the hotel I’d booked for the night. (In case you were wondering, my parents were staying with my sister, and I decided one more would be too many).


When I arrived at the hotel, the receptionist was unwelcoming and uninformative, but I have stayed in many a hotel in my time and thought I’d find all the information I needed in my room. Unfortunately, this hotel wasn’t as organised as some of the others I’ve stayed in ... there was a room service menu, but no indication of which number to ring to access it. So I rang Reception – answer machine. I rang the Concierge – answer machine. I left a message on both to ring me back – no-one did.


Room service ended at 9pm, so at that point I decided to give up and eat the complementary fruit and biscuits and drink the complementary soft drinks and tea. It was perfectly sufficient. I don’t think you can possibly understand how significant those words are. I wasn’t able to access any food so I ate fruit and biscuits and it was fine. I’m still not sure I’m getting my point across here – maybe I can’t in cold print, maybe you’d need to see the incredulity on my face and the incredulous body language.


You see, I have spent over 30 years worrying in advance about the provision and availability of food during any outing. I have been the sort of person who would go into every cafe possible and would never pass a fast food outlet or newsagent without stocking up in case of future famine. The sort of person who would eat at cafes because they were there rather than because I was actually hungry. If this had happened even a few years ago, I would have rushed out of the hotel to find a restaurant, even though (with hindsight) I wasn’t actually very hungry.


And that, I think, was the key this time. In the past I would have eaten an evening meal by hook or by crook, but now I am happier to go with the flow and, on occasion, eat what’s available and be all right with that. It’s a huge step forward for me and it feels good!


What’s brought about this change for me is working with the 10 Beyond Chocolate principles – it hasn’t always been easy, but it certainly works. I was able to Tune-in, realise I wasn’t very hungry, but that I wanted the comfort of something to eat and drink after a long and tiring day, and to eat what was available until I was satisfied. And then let it go.