Many people try to lose their weight but many fail. The biggest reason they fail is because they fail to control their appetite. If you look into how you have meals and snacks over the course of a day, you would know what type of appetite you have. Write down a list of the food that you had yesterday. And check the food that you had because you felt hungry. We eat snacks even though it is not the time for meals and also eat together with others as we see them eat next to us. Why do we eat even though we feel full? There is an answer that is found through our emotions. The organ of feeling hunger is actually the brain, not the stomach or intestines. Satiety signals by the central nervous system are affected by emotions; therefore, when your body and mind feel comfortable, the system feels satisfied. However, when negative emotions, such as rage, loneliness, sadness or compulsion, arise, appetite surges. Even in situations when we are very satisfied with something, we commonly use this expression, ‘I am already full without food!’ Likewise, hunger that arises from emotions is referred to as ‘emotional hunger.’
Then, how would you distinguish the real appetite from the false one?
First, when you suddenly feel hungry, it is likely to be the false appetite. Physical hunger does not come all at once. It rather persistently goes throughdifferent stages, such as a growling stomach or heartburning.
Second, if you feel like strong-tasting food, such as sweet or spicy, or some certain food hits your mind, it is 100% false appetite. Physical hunger can be filled with any kind of food.
Third, if you unconsciously eat more even though you are full, that is also the false appetite.
Fourth, what if you feel hungry within less than 3 hours after your meal time? Drink a glass of water. If you still feel like eating something, that is the false appetite.
Fifth, if you feel guilty after eating, that means you have filled the emotional hunger. Hunger that you physically feel is an essential part in your life, and therefore, you never feel guilty about it.
In modern society, we live exposed to a lot of stress. We even think that stress is a part of our daily routine. Stress causes psychological deficiency and the easiest way for people toremove that deficient feeling is to ‘eat’. However, eating does not help to get rid of that feeling. After eating, we instead feel guilty or more stressed about dieting. This becomes a vicious cycle. Even though we know, we cannot control this false appetite. If its root cause is stress, the fundamental solution would be stress subtraction. Stress is the mind stored in your mind from the experiences that you have had in your life. However, they are like ‘pictures’because they are not real. Because they aren’t real but illusions, it can never ever be filled even though you try to fill up your mind with even more minds. This feeling of incompletion causes hunger. Fundamentally because humans live having the mind of illusions and holding onto the self,who is false, they feel incomplete by themselves and their yearning for becoming complete cannot be satisfied. Then, what about a solution? In contrastto your expectations, it is simple. Wouldn’t you be able to know what is false and what is real if you throw away ‘pictures’ that are false?
Well, here is an example. Let’s imagine the world-best chocolate cake from your mind. Right at this moment you can bring up in your mind about this image and you maysmell the sweet smell of chocolate and as well as the sweet taste. Your mouth waters and you start to hunger for it. You are almost about to eat; you get to the stage right before ‘the action of eating.’Let’s stop there and acknowledge that the chocolate cake that you have just brought up is an illusion only in your head that doesn’t exist in the world. If you did not have that ‘picture,’ you could not have felt the need to eat that chocolate cake. And, let’s even suppose that the chocolate cake was really in front of you. Would the taste of an actual choc cake be the same as the taste of ‘the world-best choc cake’ in your imagination?
Like this, we live every moment being deceived by so many pictures. We believe that they are ‘real’ and have become a slave of these pictures. The pictures make us feel a void and more hunger. However, if we could throw away the pictures, if we could do our best and truly be satisfied at this moment, that would be the real diet. It is a diet of your mind, and consequently, it would be a diet for your health, also. A majority of the people who have experienced the program of Meditation, in which one can actually throw away pictures, say that unnecessary appetite arisen from stress disappears quickly and that food intake has significantly reduced. The false energy is taken away and it is replaced by the real energy instead. Therefore, their diet becomes balanced as they only intake food to supply energy to body, not just false images into their mind.
If you have had eating habits that you could not change, I would recommend you to ‘throw away pictures’. This is more of an effective and efficient method than any other diet tablets, isn’t it? You get to throw away your stress so you can have peace in mind, but also, your body also becomes healthy. There is a miraculous method that allows you to truly enjoy the ‘chocolate cake’ that is real.
Visit: www.meditationusa.org
