Part 4: Time of Decision

Once episodes of overeating diminish and hidden feelings become apparent, the second phase of your journey begins.

You feel proud and excited as you establish a healthy and reasonable eating pattern. Your good feelings, based on controlling what you eat, reinforce hope that you can create a better life for yourself. In time this more balanced way of eating and living will become familiar.

In this phase of your journey, as newly formed eating habits begin to become routine, you will begin to feel vulnerable and unsure.

This is a critical time. The emotionally flooding thrill of early success will pale as you feel previously hidden emotions. You may feel tempted to return to overeating to soothe yourself.

The temptation to return to overeating signals your next opportunity. Your feeling of exposure and vulnerability springs from being near secrets you have from yourself. Your anxieties suggest that you run away by eating. Your journey to health points forward into the challenge of meeting your fears. This is a time of decision.

Let's take a closer look at inner secrets, those secrets inside that even you don't know.

Necessity of Inner Secrets

If you overeat or binge, you may in your past have experienced something you could not bear to feel or know. Overeating puts a great, numbing shield between you and your awareness of yourself. It is part of an effective system many people develop in order to not fully know their history.

That history may involve events that happened to you, events you witnessed, events you heard about. That history may involve bewildering and powerful emotional experiences you had in the past but did not have the strength or maturity to understand or tolerate. Overeating protects you from knowledge about yourself.

No one can end an effective protective system unless they know they do not need that protection any longer. If the threatening sense of danger you have is a secret from yourself, you have no way to evaluate your safety. Without knowledge of your inner life, you can't know when you are out of danger so you will continue to use your protective system, overeating.

Once you know your secrets, you begin to learn that you are able to live with the knowledge. You can strengthen yourself through practice and understanding to live your life with more appreciation for the experiences you have survived. Then you will have no need for the methods which keep you numb and oblivious. There lies triumph and freedom.

Are you curious about your inner secrets?

Curiosity

Are you curious about your inner secrets? Curiosity is the beginning of freedom. Curiosity can mobilize your strength and courage. It can propel you on your triumphant journey.

Responsible diet books or physical exercise programs provide tools and guidance to help you achieve more physical health, strength, flexibility and stamina. They do not address the powerful issues that challenge or block your entry to a more healthful psychological and emotional path.

To reach the more healthful path that can lead to triumph and freedom you need your curiosity.

Curiosity asks, "Why must I live this way?" Then, as you become more alert and aware, you will seek your answer in a new and deeper way.

This is the search, find and understand section of your journey. Your secrets are treasures which, when discovered, understood and emotionally processed, will help free you from your overeating life style.

How Secrets Relate to Overeating and Binge Behavior

For our discussion there are two kinds of secrets: the ones you know about and the ones you don't know about.

Secrets overeaters know about and try to keep hidden from others cover a wide range of eating behaviors. Some secrets include:

• gorging on bread, pasta, pastry, ice cream, frozen yogurt, especially alone at night.
• getting caught in the sweet/salt trap eating peanuts and chips with cookies and candy.
• Sitting in front of the TV, eating and 'checking out' for hours.
• Eating for comfort while driving the car.

Overeaters often calm social jitters by eating privately before they eat a meal with other people. This also helps overeaters to hide their true eating habits. It's easy to say no publicly to second helpings and chocolate cake when you have eaten sweets before the meal. Plus, you know you can gorge yourself when you get home.

Overeaters often try to convince others to join them in "innocent treats," pretending their eating splurge is an occasional lark and not part of a regular pattern.

Keeping secrets from others often involves lying. Lying strips you of your self-esteem and fills you with permanent guilt. The guilt feels permanent because the lies seem so necessary. Without the lies, your secrets would become known. Public disclosure of your secrets seems to you like it would be a personal catastrophe.