Starting From the Beginning

It's hard to imagine starting from the beginning- a new career, a new relationship, upgrading your education, learning a new language. No one wants to be a beginner again, that awkward phase where you think you should be better than you currently are.

But everything you have ever done has started from the ground up. As we get older we often develop a belief that we can't go back to the beginning, we can't start over, it's too much work to learn it all again.

But when it comes to growing and evolving yourself, those thoughts are not true. Those thoughts don't serve you. Those thoughts keeps you stuck.

Overcoming binge eating is no different. You simply cannot start where you intend to finish.

Learning anything takes courage, openness, practice, repetition, humility and commitment. And perhaps most importantly, it takes failing and making mistakes so that we can learn and move forward with more knowledge and experience.

But with binge eating it feels different. There's a rush to finally be free. There are dreams of waking up and just 'eating normally' like everyone else, and being able to control yourself around food, and not being so obsessed with the whole thing. There's the emotional struggle which feels so heavy that one can't bare the thought of being with it for any longer than need be. There are the wishes and wants, the pushes and the pulls.

But where is the openness, the humility, the practice, the freedom to make mistakes?

For most people, trying to overcome binge eating means trying to control what they eat.

I get it. I did that too for years, always planning what tomorrow would look like, making deals to not eat any binge foods until the weekend, deciding that I just wouldn't buy it anymore. And inevitably I was left asking myself why it wasn't working, why I couldn't control myself, why I needed food so much, and why nothing was changing.

But I never made any true progress until I finally accepted that where I needed to start was at the beginning.

I needed to accept that I didn't know how to help myself. I needed to accept that I was a total beginner at healing my struggles and that coming face to face with the unknown would be part of the deal. I needed to stat at zero.

From the day that I admitted I had a problem bigger than my own capabilities, I was starting from the beginning. I knew nothing about asking for help, about sitting with discomfort, about ending the quest for weight loss. All I knew was about trying to control myself. I was starting a brand new journey, which required me to be as open and curious and willing to try and fail and try and fail as needed until something finally stuck.

No one wants to feel like they're starting from zero, but when you're finally ready to stand at that beginning line and commit to your journey of growth and learning and evolving and failing and reflecting and moving forward, then you can be sure that you're standing at the right starting block.

It may be a long race, but you'll never reach the end unless you are willing to start at the beginning.

{With love and support to all those who are struggling.}