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I can't stop thinking about food

Posted by on 1 November 2010 | 9 Comments

By Joanne M Prior

It's your big day. You've been preparing for this competition for months. The win is in sight. But you're scared. Scared because you just can't stop thinking about food. You feel obsessed. All you want to do is eat, eat, eat. It wouldn't be so bad if it was all the good stuff you felt like consuming. But it's not. It's all the stuff you know isn't good for you! You hold these thoughts and feelings under strict control but you are worried they will 'jump out' at any moment. You can't afford to be side-tracked. Thinking about 'bad' food is threatening your success and you don't like it. What do you do?

When you are an athlete and winning is your top priority is it imperative that nothing stand in the way. You need to be fully focussed 110 percent. You can't afford to be distracted. It is your job to push beyond the standard expectations and be what others would consider 'Super Human'.

Now most of the time being 'Super Human' is normal and natural for you. You have a mind and body that's willing to accept a challenge, no matter how extreme it may be. You like the feelings of contentment and satisfaction that come from continually improving on your best. 'Better, better, better'  is your motto. But  when you start to think about eating food that you know you shouldn't be eating you feel you feel 'weak'. It takes you away from feeling 'Super Human'. When you don't feel successful this interferes with your training and chance for success.

You feel embarrassed and ashamed because you know you should know better than to be thinking in this way. But you can't seem to stop. You've tried trying to switch off these thoughts and 'think about something else' but it doesn't work. You are at your wits end. Thinking about food takes your 'edge' away.  Feeling like a champion helps you to win, not feeling good about yourself potentially could limit your success.

What is truly going on here. Why is it so hard to 'switch off' these thoughts especially when you know you should know better?

The reason you can't just stop thinking about food is because the reason you are thinking about food doesn't come from your 'rational' or logical mind. It comes from your 'emotional mind'. Your emotional mind stores in it all the memories you have regarding every life situation you have encountered. It remembers when you felt sad, happy, angry, resentment, joy, peace, togetherness, disappointment, stress and anxiety and the list goes on. Your emotional mind remembers everything! So when anything happens in your current everyday life, your emotional mind searches through its memories to provide you with information on how best to react. There is no logic though in this emotional mind. Your emotional mind just spits out the information regardless of whether it is helpful now or not. So for example just say there was a time in your life where you had felt great anxiety or stress and 'bad' food was used as a way to support you through this time. Your emotional mind will remember this time and hold this memory within you. When faced with stressful situations in your current day life, as you would when training to be 'Super Human' for despite how fulfilling and rewarding the training is, the challenge is still 'stressful' to your body, therefore your emotional body will remember the 'stress' and spit out it's memory of how to deal with stress. Because in the original circumstance you associated 'bad' food as a  means to alleviate 'stress' then when placed in a 'stressful' situation now you are automatically triggered into thinking and feeling like eating. Regardless of whether you are hungry or not. The thinking about food is your emotional mind trying to help you to deal with the stress of your exercise goals.  So your obsession with thinking about 'bad' food is actually your mind trying to assist you to feel better!

But you don't need this kind of help right now thank you! For this kind of help right now could ruin everything.

What you would prefer to be is someone who doesn't battle in their mind about food.  Who only thinks about 'what to eat and when?' when it is required as part of a healthy eating plan to complement the demands of a 'Super Human' training program. Once you set the plan there is no thought or struggle about food.

So how do you swing from someone who thinks about food often to someone who doesn't?

What we suggest is follow our 3 Step Plan to break the bonds so that you feel nothing about food, just peace and serenity.

First step identify the food that plays most on your mind. Is it chocolate? Is it hot chips? Is it cheese and crackers? You may find there are a few foods that are your 'fav' foods.  Write them down. Writing them down gets them out of your mind and provides you with that first step of separation.

Second step be willing for a good few days (2-5 days) to commit to not having any of these foods at all. As if you are detoxing from them. Even if you normally don't succumb to eating these 'bad' foods still make a conscious decision to 'abstain' from them.

Third step be willing to address the issue of what is the true cause of your drive to eat these foods that you know are not good for you. Be willing to allow the emotional cause of your obsession literally rise up from your 'emotional mind' into your conscious mind so that you finally can discover what has been holding you back for you long. You achieve this by asking the very simple question 'what is the true cause of this problem?'. You may need to ask it a few times and get a few different answers. Persist until you get to the point where you don't feel obsessed about food anymore. You will get there for there are only so many memories that are stored in your mind linking food to stress! Once they are gone you are free. For every time you are stressed now your emotional memory does not keep sending you the memory to 'eat food'. Therefore you can find better ways of coping with the challenges of your life.

It might feel like an epic problem to fix considering how long possibly you've had food on your mind. But give yourself a few days of 'detoxing' physically and emotionally and you will find your mind and emotions will clear up, and food.... gone from your mind! Then the win... is yours!

Joanne M Prior is Director of 'Think Yourself... Successful'. Joanne's mission is to help women and men who are successful in life but can't quite seem to get their minds and emotions around 'how to' lose weight successfully.  Joanne's background is B.Sc. (Nutrition), followed by Post. Grad Studies in Counselling followed by her Reiki Master accreditation. Joanne is a published author of 'Think Yourself Thin' E-Book and a contributing writing for leading Health and Fitness Magazines in Australia and the UK.  For further information about Joanne's work, please contact her on +61 (0) 412 499 758, web http://www.joanneprior.com or email jo@joanneprior.com.