When we try to cut back our food in order to lose weight without addressing the issue of desire, we actually increase that desire for food by withholding it. This is why our willpower seems to be so low.
An URGE is just an intense desire caused by your thinking. If desire is always answered with a reward, then the desire will continually increase after every exposure.
What started as a thought and a desire, turns into a perpetual rewarding URGE thought cycle. What caused the URGE in the beginning, which was a conscious thought, becomes an unconscious thought pattern that we aren’t even aware of. That thought has been thought so many times that it’s actually unconscious and the URGE is really intense.
Consider a toddler having a tantrum in the grocery store. The toddler is screaming urgently, urging, and urging. So you give it a candy bar. The toddler stops urging. But what has the toddler learned? Screaming, demanding, being urgent, causing URGES, works. The more you give that toddler a candy bar every time you go to the grocery store, the more demanding that toddler’s going to be for that candy bar. That is what it is like to react to URGES, to give in to them.
Option number two is to resist those URGES. The toddler is screaming, and we’re yelling back at the kid. Watching your kid go into full meltdown totally wears you out. Eventually, many of us give in and react to it, or we resist and exhaust ourselves from it.
“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” - Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.
The third option is simply allowing the URGE. Allowing the toddler to have a fit, allowing the kid to demand it, and to not react at all, and to not try to get the kid to stop crying, and not try to resist it. Just let it be. What you will notice with a toddler and with an URGE is that when you just allow it to do what it does without resisting, without complying, without reacting, it eventually extinguishes itself. A toddler will learn that throwing a fit does nothing. There is no reward for creating the urgency. There is no reward for creating the URGE. It extinguishes, and this is exactly what we need to do with our URGES for drinking, for eating, for all of the things that we do that are buffering against our own will.
When you have an URGE and you answer it, it intensifies. When you have an URGE and you don’t answer it, when you just allow it to be there and you don’t resist it, it dissipates. The more you allow an URGE without rewarding it, the less meaning it has in your life, and eventually, it disappears.
An URGE is simply a desire caused by a thought in your mind. If you’re having a lot of URGES and they’re very intense, it’s most likely because you’ve had multiple URGES and rewarded those URGES and it’s become unconscious. It will not feel good to allow an URGE. Allowing an URGE to be there, allowing a toddler to scream at the top of his lungs in the grocery store is not pleasant. But eventually the toddler stops screaming, and eventually, the URGE goes away, and if you do it enough times, you will completely extinguish the URGE.
When you notice a compulsive URGE rising, stop and take three conscious breaths. This generates awareness. Then for a few minutes be aware of the compulsive URGE and write down what you are thinking and feeling at this moment. As awareness grows, addictive patterns will weaken and eventually dissolve. Remember to catch any thoughts that justify the addictive behavior, sometimes with clever arguments, as they arise in your mind. You will realize the URGE is talking. Remind yourself of your weight goal. Keep asking yourself why you are feeling this feeling until you get to the root belief. Do you want to keep believing that? Is it time to consciously change that belief to something that will help you reach your goal?
If you want to include the food you are craving in your life, plan it ahead of time. If you want to drink, decide you are going to have a glass of wine with dinner tomorrow night. You are not drinking because of an URGE, you’re drinking because you planned ahead. When you do it this way, you are not perpetuating or rewarding URGES. You’re using your prefrontal cortex to plan for something ahead of time and therefore you maintain authority over it. This is not the same as giving in to an URGE and rewarding the URGE.
Deprivation is a feeling we create based on our thoughts. For example, “I can’t have that,” is a thought that creates deprivation and cravings versus consciously choosing to work towards your goal and creating and honoring an appropriate food protocol.
The misery we feel when we stop overeating is part of the process and the reason we are overeating in the first place. Eventually your hormones will balance, your body will go into fat burning mode and you will learn how to allow negative emotions. Then you will feel better than you have in your life.
Have compassion for yourself and show curiosity like a researcher instead of a judge and jury meting out punishment. This journey is not just about being able to wear the clothes you want or to manage your weight. It’s about learning to honor your commitment to yourself, and developing the ability to process emotion and manage thinking. This is the journey that will get you to your goal and change your relationship with food and your body forever.
Start by downloading the Free Guide: Change Your Relationship to Food and Your Body. Then join me for free live classes where you can learn more and get your personal questions answered. Sign up now.