The Impact of Payoffs
Jun 1st, 2009 by Giselle
Now that we have listed the payoffs that feed the negative behaviour in our lives, let’s get present to the impact of these payoffs. As discussed previously, weight gain is not something that happens in an instant, it takes perhaps year or more to put on 25% of your body weight. It takes special commitment to behave our way into being consistently big. This article examines the impact of our desperate commitment to our short term toxic payoffs.
In the last article, we asked the question, “Why do logical, rational people keep repeating negative behaviour over and over again that they desperately want to stop?” In this article, I attempt to answer this question. Hopefully this gives you a way to stop these behaviours. Let’s examine the payoffs and impacts of uncontrolled fast and furious binging.
Let’s have a look at the table below:
| Payoffs | Impact |
| Explosion of delightful sensory effects. You simply love to have a party in your mouth as often as possible. | You feel guilty and ashamed. Bad feelings lead to isolation. You are lonely. |
| Relaxation. Food literally changes your body chemistry causing production of endorphins (feel good hormones) that lift your spirit. | You put on a massive amount of weight. You loath yourself. |
| Self-medication. Self medication for comfort when feeling sad. | Weight gain leads to depression, anxiety and low self esteem. |
| Belonging. To keep my friends, I have to celebrate with food. | In being sick, you are a serious liability to society and yourself. |
| Protection. Being fat protects you as you have an excellent alibi for not participating in life. | You live a life of quiet desperation. You have no life. |
| Safety. You are excused from not having to attain any of your life’s goals or experiencing any grand failures because you are fat. | You risk nothing and you get nothing. You are bored senseless. |
| Victimhood. Fear leads to anxiety. Anxiety leads to binging and anger. Anger leads to ugly emotional outbursts. You are constantly in crisis mode. Your family abandons everything to rescue you. You re-enact the drama over and over again with adept precision. | You make others wrong, create separation and feel isolated. You loath yourself and others. You are lonely. |
| Secrecy. You eat enormous amounts of food at night when others are asleep. | You rebel and make others wrong with your “you-can’t-get-me” attitude. You feel disconnected. |
I have listed all the negative addictions above. Take a moment out to stop and think. Contemplate how you could now turn those negative addictions into positive ones.
In eating yourself sick, you are killing yourself socially, emotionally and physically. Who amongst us wants a slow and agonising death coupled with depression, anxiety and low self-esteem? What is less painful? Making healthy food choices or this? You choose.
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Dear Giselle,
I am struggling with my “payoffs” big time! Yes, and I am bigger than I would like to boot! Reading the IMPACT list has made me rethink some of my actions. Thank you for impacting at least this one life in such a positive way… I will focus on making more positive choices that will hopefully lead me and those around me that I love into a more healthier (and hopefully longer) future!
Dear Raphael,
I am delighted to hear that this article is making a difference to you. Now, to really get the impact of your actions you have to feel it at the very core of your being, by that I mean at the emotional level. Merely glossing through it at the intellectual level will not cut it for you. Imagine every day of your life, struggling with feeling quilty, ashamed, disconnected, anxious, depressed, bored senseless and generally living a life of quiet desperation. What is your life worth? Time will pass with certainty, unless you make a Herculean effort to transform the impact, your most probable almost certain future will be that you will get more of the same and more of the same. Just think of the movie “Groundhog Day”. The moment to restore power is now. Give yourself permission to claim your right to live deeply and live the life you absolutely love. Congratulations for taking the first step toward transforming your life!