Why You Sometimes Can’t Stop Eating Insights Mar 2007

Have you ever found yourself at the bottom of a bag of cookies, or finishing food, and realized you’ve eaten the whole thing?  Sometimes you can’t remember eating it.  Sometimes you remember going for the food, but with a detachment in your memory that makes it feel disconnected from your thoughts.          

Sometimes you make up your mind not to eat something, and then go right ahead and eat it anyway.  Even as you are eating, your mind is chastising you, berating you, and probably abusing you for what you are doing.  Yet on you go, eating it anyway.          

And then you feel miserable.  You are painfully aware that you are somehow out of control.  It doesn’t make any sense, but your body just doesn’t listen to your decisions.  Not about food, that’s for sure.         

I hope it will be a great relief to discover that this is perfectly reasonable, and that you can learn how to change it.  To learn how to change this situation, you’ll have to learn about your limbic brain and why it will usurp control of your behavior.         

The good news is that you aren’t crazy.  A decision will not influence your limbic brain.  Frankly, it has control of your body, so your decisions aren’t going to tell it what to do.  In order to communicate with it, you’ll have to learn to talk to it through specific kinds of meditation and processes that it understands.  I have written about many of those processes in this column, and you can find previous articles on my website.         

I want to explain why your limbic brain usurps your behavior.  I will also explain why it will allow you to diet successfully, but just for a while.  Then, it will usurp you again so that you’ll stop losing weight even though you’re still dieting.  Or, it will boot you ruthlessly off the diet wagon, triggering feelings of failure and despair.  This is all part of the function of your subconscious – with understanding and tools, you can change it.  You can actually feel in control of your life again.  It’s a huge relief.           

To understand your limbic brain, you must first understand that it functions with primitive programs that were designed to survive life in the cave.  Those programs have not been updated.  They do not seem rational to a modern mind. 

Here’s an example of the type of program you’re dealing with:  eat whenever you can, because food supplies are uncertain.  If you have any doubt how powerful such a subconscious program can be, I have one word for you:  buffet.  How many people eat more than they want or need at a buffet?  They probably eat more than they planned to eat, too, because their limbic system is gleefully stocking up for the next time the hunters come back without a buffalo.

Here’s another example of the type of program that copes with cave life:  the amount of food you eat determines your status and value in the tribe.  To understand this, consider a pride of lions.  Female lions go off to hunt.  When they return with food, the male lions eat first.  That’s because the male lions are the protectors of the pride.  The fact is, if the pride is not safe, nothing else counts.  Not even bringing home dinner.  So, the female hunters eat after the male protectors, and then everybody else gets whatever may be left over. 

When I was a child, my mother always chose the largest serving for my dad – that was probably true in your house too.   That means that when you diet, your limbic brain will feel threatened because it interprets smaller servings as a degradation of your value.  No wonder it feels so miserable to be on a diet.  After a while, your limbic brain just won’t take it anymore, and boots you off the diet wagon so it can feel secure. 

Isn’t it amazing how such a primitive program can be operating, below our awareness, in modern times?  That would be the problem – many of these programs do not suit our lives. 

Why are you able to diet successfully for periods of time?  No one decides to go on a diet because they’re bored.  Either you’re feeling particularly frustrated with your current state, or you’ve got a goal such as a particular outfit or event driving you.  The stress that drives you to go on a diet is what creates the acceptance of your limbic system.  However, the moment the stresses of the primitive programs are bigger than the stresses that caused you to diet, the diet stops working or it breaks.  Then, not only will you regain the weight, you may gain more as compensation for what you’ve lost, in case it’s a long time before the hungers get another buffalo.

Take a moment to realize that this is not your fault.  No matter what decisions you make about food, you cannot enforce them continually unless you learn to master your subconscious.  Can you forgive yourself for not being able to control something that was never in your control?  If you can think about that, you can consider helping yourself learn to master your subconscious and take back your sense of self.  You might start to actually believe you deserve it.    

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