What Are You Hungry For? Read Online Free PDF Page A

it was what boys wanted, and in turn she felt wanted. The more she acted out, though, the worse she felt about herself, so drugs and alcohol eventually followed.
    All of that is well behind Tracy now. She is fifty and happily married, and she generally feels good about herself. But there’s no getting around the fact that she is 80 to 100 pounds over her ideal weight. She was never my patient but a personal friend instead, and when we meet socially, it’s usually at a restaurant. I don’t judge how she eats or give advice, but at a typical meal, I’ve noticed a few things:
    When she sits down, Tracy’s first remark is usually that she’s not hungry, but she’ll find something to eat.
    Waiting for the first course, she talks and eats several pieces of bread from the bread basket at the same time. She butters the bread without looking down at what she’s doing.
    She orders two courses, an appetizer and entrée, as soon as the server asks what she wants.
    She always cleans her plate.
    She never orders dessert but picks away at mine if I order one, generally eating at least half of it.
    Looking at these habits, what strikes me is that Tracy acts them out unconsciously. She pays attention to me and our conversation but not to what her hands are doing. She’s learned to blank out what she doesn’t want to see. I’m sure that you now get what’s going on here: Three areas of the brain are fighting a silent conflict, each using its own kind of message.
    Tracy’s lower brain keeps saying, “I’m hungry. More food. I’m still famished.”
    Her emotional brain keeps saying, “I don’t feel good about myself. More food. I still feel bad.”
    Her higher brain keeps saying, “I know I shouldn’t be eating like this. More food. Why bother resisting? It doesn’t matter because the impulse will keep returning anyway.”
    It would be wonderful if somebody could take a snapshot of this cross talk in her brain, show it to Tracy, and make her see what’s going on. Perhaps one day advanced brain scanning will do precisely that. But even with a perfect snapshot, the brain never stands still. Tracy’s problem is always shifting. One minute she’s obeying one part of her brain; the next minute another part takes charge. That’s why in a single meal she can enjoy her food, hate herself for eating so much, promise to do better, and ignore the whole thing. Her behavior constantly contradicts itself.
    This is the inner war being fought by everyone who struggles with their weight. Here’s a secret:
You will never win this war.
If you could, you would have long ago. As long as you keep fighting with yourself, you will be stuck at the level of the problem. You must rise above the level of the problem and reach the level of the solution.
    Tracy is following a typical and unfortunate pattern. Every hour of the day she obsesses about food, controlling her eating, and being overweight. She is mired at the level of the problem. What would it take to lift her to the level of the solution?
    I assured her that the answer exists. “It’s right inside you,” I said. “When you obsess and worry, you are giving your brain the wrong assignment. You’re telling it to send negative messages to every cell in your body. You can choose to stop doing that.”
    “But I feel bad,” she protested. “I don’t have any positive messages to send.”
    “No, not when you’re so anxious and unhappy with yourself,” I agreed. “But there’s a positive message you’ve overlooked. Paying quiet attention to how your body feels is a powerful message, all by itself. Awareness isn’t noisy or emotional. It looks on quietly, and that’s the best state for your body to start rebalancing itself.”
    Tracy looked a bit mystified, but she smiled, because some part of her caught on. She was relieved that there was a way to get unstuck. Whenever anyone is trapped by habits, old conditioning, and out-of-control eating, they need to become quietly aware,