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7 Tips to Stop Dieting From The East

By Ellen Frankel

A tell-tale sign that the holidays are just around the corner is the number of weight loss television commercials telling viewers how they can lose pounds and have the ideal body in time for the holiday festivities if they purchase their products. If you have your magnifier reading glasses on, you can read the disclaimer that the results shown on the advertisement are atypical. Of course they are. Despite the weight loss industry taking in 60 billion dollars a year, statistics reveal that 95%-98% of dieters regain the weight in the long run, often with added pounds.

This holiday season, while we enjoy the lights that shine from the city streets to the country lanes, we can also turn into our own inner light and, in the process, let go of the dieting culture and move into an internal and intuitive/attuned basis for eating allowing us to make peace with food, our bodies and ourselves.

The teachings of the East can instruct us in the West on how to move from the stress of the diet mentality to the calmness of the natural stream within us all. Here are 7 tips for cultivating this priceless gift:

Trust yourself and your inner wisdom. That means trusting your own internal cues to guide you when you're hungry, what you're hungry for and when you've had enough instead of turning to external dictates telling you when and what to eat.

Everything is cyclical. All that arises passes away and will arise again. In the realm of eating, this means that getting hungry and satisfying that hunger is a natural process. Denying what arises (hunger) encourages disconnection, rather than connection, and discourages being with what is - being fully in just this moment.

Everything changes. How many of us have said that we want to look like we did in high school, or at our wedding or after a 2-month bout of Mono? Things change, and that means our bodies change, too. Rather than fighting that, we can move toward acceptance by take good care of ourselves physically, emotionally and spiritually. We are a culture obsessed with denying aging and death, and forever searching for the fountain of youth. A better approach is to embrace the wisdom and gifts of each age.

The middle way: Seek balance in life. In the realm of food, this means neither living a life of deprivation nor one of over overindulgence.

Compassion: For others and for oneself. In the realm of food and body, this means acting in a loving, compassionate and non-judgmental way in how we feed ourselves and talk about our bodies. It means celebrating body diversity, and letting go of a culturally mandated notion of perfection and, instead, sharing the beauty of imperfection.

Gratitude: for being in this world. Here, we can move from anger and shame (what we feel after breaking a diet, or when we feel badly about our bodies) to a place of gratitude and peace for being a part of the great whole and for having a human body in this lifetime.

Mindfulness. Practice moving through the world with awareness. This includes eating with awareness, without guilt, without counting calories or fat grams. Instead, we can live with an appreciation for the food that gives the body energy, nourishment and enjoyment.

As the holiday season draws near, the biggest gift we can offer ourselves and our loved ones is our full presence. And we can do that by moving into a place of self-love and attunement, counting our blessings rather than our calories.

Ellen Frankel, LCSW is a Jewish Buddhist and the author of the novel, Syd Arthur (Pearlsong Press, April 2011) and other books related to her work with eating and body issues. You can visit her website at: www.authorellenfrankel.com.