The Missing Piece to Overeating: Why Diets Fail

(Excerpted from Positive Energy: Ten Extraordinary Prescriptions for Transforming Fatigue, Stress, and Fear Into Vibrance, Strength, and Love by Judith Orloff, MD. Three Rivers Press, 2005)

As a psychiatrist I know that there is more to overeating and obesity that meets the eye. One big reason that many diets fail is that traditional weight loss programs don’t factor in how we process subtle energy, what Chinese medicine terms life force or chi. Subtle energy penetrates and surround the body. Sensitive people who I call intuitive empaths unknowingly overeat in response to being overwhelmed by negative vibes. Empaths not only can sense energy around them, they absorb it into their bodies. If this is you, Positive Energy will teach you to center and protect yourself when the impulse to overeat hits.

Here’s the energetic premise of obesity: When empaths are thin they have less padding, are more vulnerable to soaking up negative vibes. For instance, early twentieth century faith healers were renowned for being grossly obese to avoid absorbing their patient’s symptoms-a common trap I’ve seen modern-day healers also unconsciously fall into; food is a convenient grounding device. Similarly, many of my patients pack on pounds to protect against overwhelming vibes, massive or minute. Energy is at the root of an empath’s hunger. Whether your sensitivity to negative vibes is minimal or intense, for a diet to succeed it’s important to develop alternative coping strategies other than overeating. In my book I will show you how to cope with negative vibes without abusing food. Whether accosted by an angry colleague or global threat, apply them immediately. Stick to those that work best for you.

8 Emergency Intervention to Halt Energetic Eating

When the impulse to overeat hits:

1. Identify an Addictive Craving from a True Need

Addictive craving, a symptom of nutritional abuse, is a frequent response to energetic overload. Bottomline, you eat certain foods like a drug addict; this leads to obesity. Cravings feel intense: whenever you keep lusting after sweets and carbs especially, be suspicious. (I’ve yet to see someone binge on brussel sprouts!) For instance, chocolate turns from simple pleasure to crutch when you gorge on it, use it to self-medicate stress, or to get a sugar high--also if you experience mood-swings, sugar hang-overs, can’t control your intake, or it makes you sick. With cravings, you eat to relieve stress, not to build energy. Try to identify addictive foods, and limit them.

A true nutritional need lacks such sturm and drang: there’s no lusting or lunging for food to guard against negative energies. A true need comes from a centered place, has nothing to do with soothing our emotions (comfort foods) or obsession.. Feeling healthily nurtured from food never involves moodswings--sedation or elation--rather an even feeling of satisfaction. A true need lets you enjoy your meal, optimizes energy, and doesn’t lead to obesity.

2. Quickly pinpoint energetic stressors that trigger addictive cravings.

Immediately ask yourself: Have I been exposed to bad vibes? A loud- mouth neighbor. An ordeal to pass through airport security. A siege of overbearing phone messages from your mother. Don’t write off the “smaller” incidents which notoriously send empaths motoring to the refrigerator. Avoid panic. Methodically pinpoint cause and effect. You don’t have to be victimized by negative energy. The trick is to clear it as soon as possible once you’ve been slimed.

3. Breathe Negative Vibes Out of Your System.

Take a five minute break for damage control. Slowly inhale and exhale. As you’ve learned, breath activates positive energy; it also releases negative vibes. Notice if they get stuck in a specific part of your body. For instance, negative vibes go straight to my gut; I feel irradiated by a toxic stun gun. Identify your vulnerable points. Then practice this visualization: Just as your lungs take in oxygen and expel toxic carbon dioxide, you’re going to breathe in light and clarity, breathe out stress. Breathe in vitality. Breathe out fear. I also visualize negative vibes exiting through the spaces between the vertebrae in my lower back. You can try this too. Breathing out toxic vibes is a proactive cleansing process. You’re in charge of the flow. Allow well-being to permeate every inch of you. Repeat this exercise until you’re free of negative residue.

4. Pray to Release the Addictive Craving

If you’re gripped by a craving, go into praying-mode. For a few quiet moments breath slowly. Bring your awareness to your heart, and aim for self-compassion. The craving may feel impossible to handle, but that’s okay. In this calm state ask your higher power lift it from you. No mental nudging needed. If you surrender your ego-involvement, this simple heartfelt request works like a charm. What you’re doing is calling on a cosmically influential positive energy to supplant a material-world negative drive.

5. Take a bath or shower

A speedy way to dissolve negative vibes is to immerse yourself in water. My tub is my refuge after a busy day: it washes away everything from bus exhaust to long hours of air travel, to personal unpleasantness. While you relax water works on you. It has alchemical cleansing properties which will purify your physical body and energy field.

6. Burn sage

Just because vibes are invisible doesn’t mean you don’t eat over them. Try burning sage to counteract negative energy someone deposits in your office or home--a strategy that has kept pounds off my patients with a lot of people-contact in their space. Vibes accumulate, can cause stress if not eradicated. You may not realize that left-over subtle energies trigger addictive eating patterns, but these vibes subliminally wear at you. Sage has been used by ancients cross-culturally to purify locations. Burn it, and the desire to eat over lurking negative vibes will wane.

7. Visualize a Protective Shield Around You

Visualize white light surrounding every inch of you from head to toe so that negative energy cannot penetrate this shield and deplete your energy.

8. Eat with Attunement

Develop a diet that satisfies your energetic needs. I’d like energy to motivate why you eat, more important than taste or any dietary dogma--a priority to impart to children. Whatever you put in you mouth, run by your energy meter; see what truly nourishes or depletes. Even foods you’ve shunned become more attractive when your experience their energy lift.

Food is no place to be passive. The interventions offered in Positive Energy will allow you to an active stance in eating healthily. You don’t have to let poisonous energy lodge itself in you. To stay on top of your eating, do a daily check-in. Stay alert for cravings prompted by negative vibes. Watch your responses. I promise, your eating habits will change.

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Judith Orloff MD, a psychiatrist and intuition expert, is author of the new book Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself From Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life (Harmony Books, 2009) Her other bestsellers are Positive Energy, Intuitive Healing, and Second Sight. Dr. Orloff synthesizes the pearls of traditional medicine with cutting edge knowledge of intuition, energy, and spirituality. She passionately believes that the future of medicine involves integrating all this wisdom to achieve emotional freedom and total wellness. She is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA and has been featured on The Today Show, CBS Early Show, CNN, and in Oprah Magazine and USA Today

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