On Believing

It's the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.

- Muhammad Ali

One of the things the therapist said at the IE workshop I attended Saturday was that you will have a hard time turning down "forbidden" foods until you really truly believe that you can eat whatever you want.

It made me realize that I'm still not truly convinced that I can have what I want. I *want* to believe it. I really really really do. And I've done a lot to legalize foods. But I'm not quite there yet. Every time I sit down with a big juicy burger or a burrito from my favorite Mexican spot, part of me still thinks that I shouldn't be having this. That once I'm really eating only when I'm hungry, I won't be able to eat enough to really enjoy myself. And so I think the inability to stop when satisfied is still part of that "last supper" eating because in the back of my mind I think that somewhere along the line I'm going to have to give it all up and just eat like a handful of broccoli or something. Logically, I know this isn't true. But I never let a silly thing like logic stand between me and self-destructive behavior.

But again, I'm rushing things. I expect everything to just click and to click quickly. Patience has never been one of my virtues. But I know I need to have patience here. I just want to be sure that I'm not using patience as an excuse.

The therapist was a believer in affirmations. She said that only recently had she come to believe that they could be useful. Before she always thought they were kind of hokey. I'm with her on that. But I need to do things differently this time around. I've been doing the same thing - i.e., dieting - for thirty-odd years, and it has gotten me nowhere. If I can seriously fall for diets that said eating foods in magical combinations or precise percentages was the long lost secret to weight control (and I *did* fall for those, among so many others!), then I can give affirmations a try. This is the year. I have to give it my all. And if that means saying some affirmations a couple times a day over the next few months, I'm willing to give that a try. I really have nothing to lose.