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.

Introducing The Pause ...

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.

If you recall from a previous post, my poor beleaguered colleague Bea? The one who has been advised to lose weight by a health-care professional and who has since been subject to the attentions of the Deadly Dieting Duet of our colleagues Vee and Jay? Well, today I had an opportunity to introduce her to The Pause.


It happened like this....


In a busy office, there are few moments when I can talk to Bea about Beyond Chocolate, and she has previously expressed an interest. But on this day, due to a concatenation of circumstances, I got lucky. Jay is on holiday, the Boss was out at a meeting, Vee was called out to deal with some family crisis, leaving Bea and me alone in the office.


Miraculously no-one rang or called in and all our other staff seemed to be gainfully employed elsewhere. We really were on our own for a few, rare moments.


I asked Bea how she got on at her appointment for her blood sugar and she said it was going down, which the health professional was pleased about. Then she confided that she knew she often ate in the evenings, when watching TV and that she wasn’t eating because she was hungry, but because she was bored.


Bea said she had been trying to keep herself busy instead, distracting herself from the desire to eat when not hungry (a classic diet tactic). I said that may work for a while, but it’s not possible to always be so busy that we can’t cram food in as well. She acknowledged that could be the case. I said that ‘keeping busy’ for the sake of avoiding eating was also avoiding whatever was driving the urge to eat. Bea agreed with that. I said I could offer her something she may like to experiment with as an alternative and she said she’d be pleased to hear it.


So I explained The Pause. 


Like this.


If we have reached the point in our self-awareness that we know we are eating for reasons other than hunger, we can then exercise a choice on what to do about our urge to eat. We can choose to still eat, acknowledging that it helps and that this is what we are doing right now to support ourselves to deal with whatever is causing the urge to eat. Or we can choose to Pause and break the automatic hand to mouth action and THEN decide if we still want to eat, or not.


We can do it like this:


1. Identify the urge to eat has been caused by something other than hunger, and decide 
(on this occasion, just once) to use The Pause.
2. Decide how long we are willing to sit with whatever is provoking the desire to eat (this can be anything from 1 second to several minutes, start small.)
3. Set that amount of time on a timer and put it nearby.
4. Sit with the emotions that come up. Notice physical sensations, thoughts.
5. PROMISE ourselves that if we still want to eat, we will. If not, we won’t.
6. When the time is up decide to eat, or not.

That’s it. But, boy is it powerful! It has helped me to considerably reduce my over-eating and to move away from eating for emotional reasons. I recommend it unreservedly as a very useful tool to experiment with and hope that it will help Bea to move further away from dieting and towards the Freedom of Beyond Chocolate.