You are not a garbage disposal.

Meet Molly.  She’s a thoughtful woman.  A caregiver at heart, who always thinks about minimizing waste.  “Oh, you should just finish that,” you hear her whisper after you’ve eaten 1/2 your personal-pan pizza.  “Come on, there’s hardly anything left, you know you won’t eat the leftovers. There are starving children in Bangladesh!”  Yep, she’s your mother and grandmother rolled into one guilt-tinged voice reminding you to finish everything on your plate.

She sneaks in when you are cleaning up the kitchen, about to toss the 4-day-old chocolate cake you’ve been avoiding for the last 3 nights.  “Really, you are going to toss that? You paid good money for that cake.  You might as well just throw $15 in the trash right now. Go. Do it.  Throw money in the trash right now!”

And so you eat the rest of your pizza and mow through the stale cake.  Not because you are hungry or have no self control but because you feel guilty, wasteful and ashamed.

I hear this all the time from my clients.  Guilt is one of the main reasons they worry about eating out or attending parties with family and friends.  They believe they are untrustworthy with food and make up all sorts of rules when it comes to eating out.  One of my clients actually throws a handful of salt and a dirty napkin on her unfinished food to signal to herself and the world that she is D-O-N-E.  If not, she told me, “I’ll just keep eating to not be wasteful and feel guilty.  But then I feel guilty anyway for eating too much!"

There are a million reasons we eat when we aren’t hungry.  We eat out of boredom, stress, craving comfort, freedom, love, support.  However Molly and her magical way of getting you to pass your full point and eat out of guilt is a nuanced feeling.  She’s tricky, that Miss Molly, because when she chimes in it sounds like she’s right.  Who can stomach being wasteful when there are babies in need?  No one wants to be THAT person.

And yet while there are starving children around the world, unless you send them your leftover, half-wilted salad and congealed chicken, they get no benefit from you feeling guilty and eating on their behalf.

They are not effected one way or the other if you pound the rest of your pasta.   What’s best for you both if you really want to help, is send money to a cause that feeds needy children and then toss (or take as leftovers) the food you are too full to finish.

In other words NOBODY wins when you eat for others.

And of course, in an attempt to dodge the guilt of wasting, your now stuffed stomach signals the guilt of over-eating, which arrives, along with Brenda, to say you are an untrustworthy, eating machine who must now repent with spin class and no dessert for a month. Yep, Molly has got you on lockdown.

So how to do you stop being the tennis ball that’s slapped back and forth between these two ladies?

Simple.  Put your body first.  Honor the sensations she sends you when you are getting full.  When your body whispers, “Hey, I’m done,” listen to her rather than let Molly come in with the guilt and shame that keeps you eating.  As you begin to feel the sensation of fullness rise in your tummy, put your fork down and take a big deep breath.  Ask your body, “Hey sweetie, do you want more?”  Notice I said BODY, not your BRAIN (which has Molly waiting in the wings).  When your body replies, “No, I’m good for now, thanks for asking”, stop eating.  You then let the waiter take the unfinished food or have him wrap it up to go.  It’s that easy.

Remember, you are not a garbage disposal, so you can now stop acting like one.

All my love,

Jamie