YOU CAN’T “LOVE YOURSELF” THIN

MAY 28, 2020 - To keep myself as motivated as I can, I ordered a couple of books. The first one I’m diving into is Never Binge Again by Dr. Glenn Livingston and today I read about his theory on not being able to use the tactic of “loving yourself” thin.

He calls the part of your mind that shouts at you to binge eat “The Pig” (which is a hot-button word for some of us, but he throughly explains his reasons for this phrase in his book). “The Pig” is your unhealthy-thinking alter-ego, and he calls for you to IDENTIFY IT and CAGE IT. In his experience, says Livingston, the act of recovering from bingeing, serious overeating, and/or simply learning to stick to a food plan is NOT like nurturing a wounded animal back to health. It’s more like capturing and caging an aggressive Doberman Pincher. This dog must respect and obey you—or it will have its way every time!

His theory - in essence then - states that if you use a soft, loving approach to combat your unhealthy-thinking alter-ego, it will overtake you. You have to be the strict parent, the stern authority…you have to be…the PACK LEADER (a la Cesar Milan). It’s an interesting perspective and one that reminds me a lot of my OCD treatment...

In my therapy for OCD, my doctor called the part of myself that is my true being “The Gatekeeper" - the one that makes choices for my life and sticks to the preplanned agenda. The false alarm mis-signals of anxiety given off by my brain should be treated as irrelevant in order to habitualize my brain to the anxiety spikes, thus decreasing my desperate compulsion response to them. This is also what I’m interpreting Dr. Livingston (I presume? tee hee) is saying: STICK TO YOUR AGENDA no matter what your unhealthy-thinking alter-ego is going to squeal. BE THE GATEKEEPER. Make the choice to treat the signal as irrelevant, and it will inevitably become so, thus decreasing your knee jerk compulsion to binge.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT. (Pun intended.)