July Week 4: Forgiving Yourself For an Overeating Episode

I have really enjoyed this month of “Bouncing Back” with you. One thing that came up in the mastermind and the meeting was our need to forgive ourselves in order to bounce back. Many people said they couldn’t forgive themselves, or at least didn’t know how.

I have outlined a few steps that help me to forgive myself and then understand and learn from my mistakes: overeating episodes or even going off-track for a week or so and gaining some weight. If we don’t learn, we will just keep making the same mistake over and over. Forgiving yourself opens you up to learning and learning shifts you back into mastery out of the struggle.

FORGIVING YOURSELF FOR AN OVEREATING EPISODE

1. SAY 'I FORGIVE MYSELF' EVEN IF YOU DON’T MEAN IT: Since you want to begin a forgiveness process, say “I forgive you” to yourself to start the ball rolling.
2. OWN IT: Own what it was that you did that you didn’t want to do, specifically. Just saying "I was “bad” " or ”I was a pig” or “I shouldn’t have done that” brings you into shame and self reprimand. When you get specific, you engage your rational mind and can separate out the food and/or incident and begin to work on forgiving it and moving on.
   
   I just ate half of a pound bag of M&M’s.
   That portion was two times as much as I needed and I ate all of it.
   I said I wouldn’t eat dairy and that ice cream was dairy.
3. UNDERSTAND IT: Once we take responsibility for our action by owning it, we can look at the “why” we did it a little more closely. Not to lay blame! We just want to learn from what we did in order to make corrections in our thinking or our behavior so we can move forward from the incident with more mastery. Ask yourself, “what would I do differently next time?” The Buddha says, “when you lose, don’t lose the lesson”
   
   Example: "M&M’s are a trigger food. I bought them and brought them into the house. Whenever I do that, I end up eating them even when I say I won’t. Next time, when I am in the store and I think I can buy M&M’s for home and that I can manage them, I will remind myself that M&M’s really don’t make me happy, especially when I bring them into the house."
4. RECOGNIZE THE UNREALISTIC EXPECTATION
   Usually we get mad at ourselves because we fail to live up to a high standard that we have set for ourselves. When we can pinpoint the expectations, we can look at them and see that they probably were set from standards that are too high and do more harm than good.
   
   “I expected never to eat sugar again and I ate the M&M’s. Is it realistic for me to expect never to eat sugar again? Probably not. Maybe I can instead I don’t bring chocolate into the house, that might be more realistic.”
5. IDENTIFY THE FEELINGS YOU HAVE AT THE MOMENT
   If you can narrow in on the feeling, the more you see it and feel it the more you can begin to let the negative feeling go with the desire to understand instead.
   
   "I am mad at myself for eating the chocolate when I said I wouldn’t. It makes me feel like a weak person. I am not a weak person I just have no control over chocolate. Can I stop being mad and understand that I am human. I made a mistake but I have learned something from the mistake so I can let go of the anger and be grateful for the lesson."
6. FORGIVE YOURSELF AGAIN!: Once you have learned the lesson you can forgive yourself again and get on with your day with a powerful sense of staying connected to yourself, rather than stay unforgiven and disconnected from yourself.

I hope you have a chance to forgive yourself this week and to really know what they mean when they say, “Forgiveness is DIVINE!”