"The next day, down again, I spotted leftover pizza and felt the usual urge to binge. That's when I had an epiphany. A realization that had never occurred to me before: "Hey, you always cry after you binge. This time, why don't you cry first and binge afterward?" So I did. I lay on my bed and sobbed. When I was all wept out, I noticed something extraordinary: the impulse to binge had disappeared. Completely."
"I first tried meditation. I convinced my introverted roommate to join me at a meditation session. The instructor insisted we remain perfectly still. My legs went numb and I ached, silently vowing never to return. When the meditation ended, I felt an immediate wave of relief. I also noticed a stillness in my mind, like leaves settling after a windy autumn day. I had never felt so good in my life, and I was never going to do that again. Ever."
"Twenty percent of people report stress eating. Unlike us, animals in the wild don't do this. So why do we? The awareness from one 60-minute meditation session ended my eating disorder. I'm not claiming meditation will end everyone's eating disorders, but research shows it helps curb emotional and binge eating. I never binged again. It was the beginning of a lifelong commitment to meditation."
Persistent emotional eating occurred in college, with food used to subdue negative feelings and creating a cycle of overfullness and continued upset. A single 60-minute meditation session produced immediate mental stillness and relief. Afterward, deliberately allowing a full emotional release by crying removed the urge to binge entirely. That awareness ended an eating disorder and led to a lifelong meditation practice. Research is cited showing meditation helps curb emotional and binge eating. Twenty percent of people report stress eating, and the underlying problem can be a lack of learned coping skills for strong negative emotions.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]