Dream/Question

[Guest guest]

I had a dream the other night that I found interesting and wanted to share with

someone.

In this dream, I was participating in an eating contest consisting of

speed-eating a giant

bowl of spaghetti noodles (funnily enough, my dog was who I was competing

against...

don't know what that means!). The strange thing is that I not only remembered

this dream

(which I never do), but that I also remembered how I was feeling during this

dream - I've

heard your emotions during dreams can give you the most insight. Well, what I

remember

is feeling nauseated and sick as I was quickly shoveling huge forkfuls of this

pasta into my

mouth. This dream really resonated with me because I have heard discuss

during

her podcasts multiple times the importance of questioning if you would really be

happy if

you got what it is you think you want. I am currently struggling to overcome a

binge/purge

habit, and I just found it interesting that in this dream I was openly eating

massive

amounts of pasta (something I honestly don't let myself eat very often) as

opposed to

bingeing in secret, and I was still miserable. I had what I thought I wanted -

getting to eat

as much as I wanted (I was, in fact, actually being cheered on to eat more and

more rather

than feeling ashamed for it) - and it still didn't make me happy.

This leads me to my next thought and my question. A while back I started

counting

calories, which actually worked for a while - it was helpful to actually start

taking notice of

the quality of the food that I put into my body, and as a result I did lose some

weight.

Now however, I feel like the strict calorie counting ended up giving me my

unhealthy

relationship with food. The bingeing/purging actually didn't begin until after I

started

counting, which is something that didn't occur to me until recently. Now I can't

eat without

strictly analyzing it. Has anyone else experienced this? Does anyone have any

tips for how

to stop obsessing about what I eat?

Thank you to anyone who read all this and might have some insight for me!