The Diet Mentality

Do you or anyone you know find yourself saying “after all this holiday eating, now I’m starting my diet”? It’s because you are in pain.

Is the pain coming from the number of pounds you put on over Succos? I know it looks that way. However, neither your body size, the number on the scale nor your reflection in the mirror creates your feelings of pain and insecurity.

As much as we want to blame an external circumstance for our pain (our physical body, the food choices we made, the reasons we made those choices), that is not what is creating our upset and frustration right now.

It’s all the thinking we have about our weight and body. It’s what we make extra pounds and over-eating mean about ourselves. It’s our judgments (what’s my problem?), expectations (I shouldn’t have been so out of control), self criticism (I look and feel like a whale).

Your belief in all these thoughts now as they pass through your mind are creating insecure feelings. Believe it or not, they don’t help motivate you to “get back on track,” as if there was such a thing as a right track to be on.

Instead they perpetuate bad feelings and the continued apparant need to beat yourself up (which btw will innocently lead to more bad food choices).

What if this time, today, you were willing to put the hammer down? Whatever choices you made during the holiday are over. You don’t have to continue to think about them and then feel bad about them. I mean, you can, but it’s not going change the past.

The good news is that the past is not what is creating your upset now. Thought creates experience in the moment.

The question then is not which diet do I need now? The question is what if I wasn’t so bothered by the content of my thinking? Is it possible not to believe all of the negative thoughts I have about myself and my body?

We can’t control our thinking, but Hashem can. He can shift our perspective or give us an insight that would make that belief look and feel different. Maybe even interesting.

We just spent a week surrounded by Hashem’s clouds of glory wanting to be infused with the message of letting Him into every aspect of our lives. Now is the time to live that message.

Our free will may not be in our choosing a diet mentality today. It may actually be in letting Hashem in to our minds and hearts. If we let Him do His magic, He can relieve us of our pain and replace it with peace.