Find Your Enough, Face Your Feelings, Feel the Love

"What happens in your mind determines your experience of life."

—Marianne Williamson

Let me take you back to how my days began. Upon awakening, I would immediately run my hands over my stomach to feel how concave or round it was. I needed to feel my hipbones. Getting out of bed and making my way to the scale was exhilarating. I liked playing a game with myself where I would guess my weight before stepping on. A good number invigorated me and actually made me feel high. Insanely, a number that was more than my desired weight served its purpose as well. It meant I would have to restrict, and there was great comfort and safety in that as well. It had become routine for me to step on and off three times, checking the accuracy of the scale, questioning its position on the tile floor. I had given up my power to the scale, defining myself by what I imagined others saw about me from the outside. I lived according to thoughts created by the inner voice that told me I needed to "be" thinner, smarter, or more of something.

For a long time, I believed I was broken. It didn't matter that I was in a loving marriage, had raised two daughters who were kind, generous of spirit, and highly successful in their respective lives. I couldn't shake the negative self-talk that came from believing I wasn't enough or that there were circumstances in my life that I judged to be unfair.

Not until I accepted recovery in the sense of regaining what was lost or taken, was I even aware of how much of a choice I have regarding how I react to what life hands me. I've come to view life as a poker game—I can pick up the cards dealt me, hold them in hopes of a winning hand, or I can fold, confident in the knowledge that this round has reached its rightful end and there will be other chances to play.

Focusing on what I am grateful for required a shift in my mindset and a new way of being. I started with simple gratitude for my realization that I needed to be grateful. Next came gratitude for the journey itself and my commitment to it, even though the journey was difficult at times.

What followed were monumental shifts in my thinking as I opened up to the possibility of being enveloped by the love in my life. I developed a willingness to ask for the peace and serenity I longed for. I started to notice the beauty of the world around me—for example, cloud formations and the colors of the sky at sunset. My mind got quiet, and I could relax into the paradox that even with all the uncertainty, life was as it was supposed to be. Soon, the things I was grateful for were around me in abundance as I released the negativity that held me back.

When we disengage from the inner voice of negativity and realize it is not telling the truth, we are no longer boxed into our thoughts and we can fully inhabit our bodies. This experience can be spiritual in nature as a kind of magic occurs when we tap into the wonder and natural beauty of the body we possess.

When we do this, we change in that we operate from a place of love rather than fear—the fear of not being "enough." Love allows us to be forgiving and compassionate. When we are present like this, love starts with ourselves. We can live in gratitude, focusing on what we have rather than what we think is missing, opening us up to the possibilities that we can handle whatever comes our way.

While this first step is the foundation for your journey to food freedom, it is also the ultimate goal. I am not asking you to render yourself powerless; rather, I am guiding you to empower yourself as you disengage from fear and limiting beliefs that keep you repeating compulsive and unhealthy behaviors.

Willpower doesn't work, as it implies an all-or-nothing control exerted to restrain us from self-indulgence. Willingness is a kinder state of being that prepares us to accept change from a loving place, a more feminine approach that is more aligned with the journey. When the journey includes self-kindness and connecting to the truth buried in our souls, we reclaim what we've forgotten as we lost ourselves in food and negative thoughts about our bodies.

As I hope you discover in this chapter and in the following pages, your relationship with food is a reflection of your relationship to yourself and your story. Our stories differ from one another but nonetheless they got us to the same place of fear and uncertainty.

Maybe you feel you need to handle everything by yourself; maybe you have larger-than-life issues that create the sense of you having to be bigger to carry all those issues; maybe when things start to go well you don't think you deserve it; maybe you are afraid of losing a loved one if you look or act a certain way. The reason doesn't matter. What matters is that your desire to change your relationship with food is not about becoming more or less of yourself, but becoming more authentic to yourself.

When you lovingly transform your relationship to yourself, you transform your relationship to everything else.

It starts with gratitude. Gratitude awakens us to being open and connected to our selves and others like nothing else. It allows us to stay in the present moment and even accept our flaws and imperfections, enabling us to feel at ease, a lightness of being that will bring us home to ourselves.

Practicing gratitude negates the two root causes of the disease of not enough. The first is a sense of dissatisfaction, which opens the door to the second: being consumed with and compulsive about trying to get more, be more, and be better in order to be happy and content. We think, "If only I could lose this weight; "If only I could get to the gym every day"; If only I can get my partner to communicate better"; "If only I had more money, a better job ..."

The gift of gratitude is that it reverses the pattern of looking outside ourselves and immediately puts us in touch with the many gifts and blessings already present in our lives. Gratitude allows us to be connected to the positive life force of now. Instead of waiting to lose the ten, fifteen, or thirty pounds in order to be happy, gratitude for the journey will bring happiness where you are so you can wear the great clothes today or have the talk now with your boss about the raise you deserve.

Gratitude helps to eradicate fear, unveiling the loving-kindness we need to live the fully nourished life we deserve and desire. Gratitude is a profoundly transformative practice and a big part of many cultures. In the Jewish spiritual tradition, for example, the very first words of prayer spoken upon wakening express gratitude for the gift of another day of life: "I am grateful. Thank...