Over-Riding The Overindulgence Train
Overindulging isn't just about food, and shifting your habits can break a cycle that may be holding you back
'Tis the season to be jolly and yet somehow the holidays manage to stir up the excesses that reside within each of us — perhaps a propensity for overspending, overeating, over-indulging or maybe even a dose of being overly self-critical. Regardless, it comes in many forms and has a persnickety way of hanging around, ready to pounce at the first opportunity.So how do we board a different train and prevent ourselves from going down a disempowering and unnecessary track?When you think of over-indulgence in your life what comes to mind – food, spending, red wine — or maybe it shows up for you in the form of procrastination?I recently boarded an Amtrak train for my ride home after a long day of holiday shopping in NYC. My weary body, lugging armloads of packages, eagerly anticipating melting into a seat, was greeted by a train car reeking of some awful fast food. Total buzz kill after such a magnificent day. Now don’t get me wrong, much to my chagrin, my resident teenager would have loved it, but to me the smells were kind of gross. I realize it was dinnertime and I’m sure many hungry regular commuters simply grab their comfort foods on the run as a means to assuage the painstaking drudgery of routine commuting after a long workday. Commuting is hard – I’ve done that. I also get the psychological attachments to comfort food – been there too. However, as I glanced across the aisle at the man eating his hotdog, drinking his coke and topping it off with a bag of chips, and with a belly barely fitting into the seat – the whole thing just made me sad.I’m not judging the overweight man or his food choices – I’m bearing witness to something that has become a commonplace reality, something that more people than not don’t even take note of. Why? Because consuming junk is the new sleepwalking. When standing in a train station or airline terminal – let’s face it, healthy choices are usually limited and often wilted, shoved to the side as scents of warm Cinnabons dance in the air. The plethora of “other” stuff looks much more appealing. And it is from this positioning that we hijack our higher selves and abandon our self-awareness. So how do we get out ahead of it?The caveat to this: Before you think I am judging the man on the train, you should know that I, in fact, saw my reflection within him. I was once addicted to sugar and ate it voraciously (and unconsciously) while living in Paris as a young fashion model. I was riddled with shame as I went from patisserie to patisserie purchasing gorgeous French delights, attempting to hide my little issue. Eventually, this addiction resulted in weight gain that didn’t bode well for my career, as I squeezed myself into clothing at fashion shoots. This ultimately sounded the alarm bells for my agents, which merely led them to direct me to starve myself. Not exactly a solution — this only pushed me further from my true self.
If I could go back in time and speak to that young adolescent girl, I would ask her to sit for a moment and check in and question herself, what’s really going on underneath all of this? Is it really about sugar – what are you craving on a deeper level? I was craving so much at the time but had no way to access those emotions and had no one guiding me.
Eventually I was released from the clasps of sugar, but only to transfer it to other things, which is often the case. Because the reality is that, until we get underneath the cause, we are simply shuffling the chess pieces around. Cigarettes became my new sugar. Even as I type this, while I remember it all very well – I can hardly believe I ever smoked. In January, I will be celebrating my 6th anniversary sans cigarettes. There is very little that we do in life that doesn’t have an association to something else going on at a deeper level. Cigarettes self-medicate the lungs and the lungs store our sorrow.OK, so where am I going with all of this? Don’t lose touch with yourself, don’t medicate, don’t miss the cues your body, mind and spirit are sending you. Are you asleep at the wheel of your own intuitive self?What area could you get out in front of this holiday season to prevent shame and self-admonishment?Could you put one thing in place that is aligned with your higher self – do one thing that will propel you towards healthier and more self-empowering, self-loving habits?• If you are an over-spender, bring forth a bit of your creativity – find a way to gift differently, and more consciously this year. Reducing your debt is a gift to self and a stand for self-love.• If you are an over-eater, identify your trigger foods, times and places and try to replace one self-defeating choice with something that feeds you on a deeper level.• If you are an over-indulger in any form of negative behavior, set your critical voice of condemnation aside and dig beneath the surface. Ask your body: what’s really going on underneath this behavior (or craving) – what am I hiding, masking, burying?Sometimes our habits are so ingrained they seem insurmountable, but it’s only because we have practiced this for so long. The beautiful thing is that with each day – you get to choose again, you get to board a different train. Choose the track to your best self - the one that over-rides overindulgence.