Chapter 7: Healthy Pleasure vs. Sick Pleasure

We can also call them partial pleasure vs. full pleasure. This is a very central topic that helps us understand how we become addicted in general, and how we become addicted to overeating in particular. This topic will help us recognize important nuances in the pattern of negative emotional eating and understand how it happens that we cannot stop eating or find ourselves preoccupied with food in an obsessive way.

It is useful to become familiar with the distinction between healthy pleasure and sick pleasure, or between full pleasure and partial pleasure. Over time, this distinction can give us many answers. At the same time, I want to emphasize again that the real answers are in the heart. The true reason we entered the cycle of overeating is in the heart, and the way out of it will also pass through the heart. We are only adding information to this heart, information that helps create order so that we will not remain in complete chaos inside the trap we have fallen into.

In both situations, healthy pleasure and sick pleasure, we experience some kind of enjoyment. But deep inside, it is not the same experience at all.

Full pleasure is a more authentic kind of pleasure. It is better for us and more nourishing. We know how to recognize it. It leaves a lasting impression. We feel calm with it and we sense that it is genuinely good for us. We have no doubt about it. We do not immediately run after it again the moment it ends. It makes us happy, fills us, nourishes us, and it is aligned with our real needs.

Sometimes a single piece of chocolate, sucked slowly and attentively, can be a form of full pleasure. In contrast, eating eight to twelve pieces quickly can be an expression of partial and unhealthy pleasure. Again, the question is not whether chocolate is healthy or unhealthy in itself, but what kind of relationship we have with it and what emotional pattern connects us to the chocolate.

Unhealthy pleasure, partial pleasure, nourishes us only partially. It gives some answer and some nourishment, but that nourishment is incomplete. It leaves us hungry. It leaves us unsatisfied on a deep level. It performs only a partial job. Because it does only a partial job, it leaves behind longing, lack and emotional hunger.

In the moment it provides a short break, but its effect passes very quickly. The same happens with cigarettes, with alcohol and with unhealthy emotional eating. We think these things calm us down, but they do not truly calm us. Food does not really calm. Alcohol does not really calm. Cigarettes do not really calm. They provide something partial, something very temporary, that is not truly aligned with our real needs and leaves us hungry and frustrated deep inside.

Because of this, we immediately turn to the next “dose”. Why? Because we received partial pleasure and not full pleasure.

This pattern exists not only with food but also in relationships. A person can be addicted to a relationship in which they experience partial pleasure. They know that there are sweet moments and “wow” moments in that relationship, but most of the time the heart is hungry. Often it is very difficult to leave such a relationship precisely because of those few intense moments of partial pleasure. The person is always chasing the next time they will receive attention, closeness or a pleasant gesture. When pleasure comes it is very sweet, but it is too short, too rare and not truly nourishing.

This is partial pleasure.

It may include occasional events of strong pleasure, but the pleasure does not last. It is not truly suited to us. The most difficult thing about it is that it is addictive. It becomes so addictive that we begin to imagine it is full pleasure. We miss it, we think about it, and we become preoccupied with it obsessively. Our longing grows stronger precisely because it is partial and does not satisfy us.

This does not mean that we cannot reach a deeper and more complete experience of pleasure. But in order for this to happen, we need to begin to distinguish between partial pleasure and something that is closer to full pleasure.

When we eat our meal, for example, we can come closer to a state of full pleasure. How? First of all, through presence. By being aware of each bite. By turning each bite into a complete experience, a rich experience, almost a spiritual one. We learn to enjoy each bite.

We slow down with the tomato that enters the mouth, with the flavors of the salad and the spices, with the steak for those who eat steak, with the juicy chicken, with the vegetables, with the soup. We take each bite slowly and allow it to be felt in the entire mouth. If we eat cake, we let it remain in the mouth a bit longer. We activate more of our senses. We do not treat the food as something obvious. We do not devour it. We do not swallow it in haste and with anger.

Instead, we turn our eating into a kind of making love. We bring the food closer, open ourselves to it and upgrade the experience until it becomes closer and closer to full pleasure.

In order for this pleasure to maintain its quality, it is important that we arrive hungry to the next meal. The more naturally hungry we are, the more the body truly needs the food, and the more fully it can enjoy it.

When the body gets used to receiving food even when it is not hungry, it gets used to partial pleasure.

Partial pleasure is frustrating. Partial pleasure keeps us dependent on the pleasure, creates an inner compulsion to repeat it.

Here we can begin our work. We can ask life to give us more examples of full pleasure.

The more areas in our life are based on partial pleasure, the harder everything becomes. For example, if we work at a job that suits us only partially and we cannot change it for a long time, we are living there with partial pleasure. There are pleasant moments, but a large part of the time we do not feel good. Deep inside a continuous emotional hunger accumulates. Gradually we may feel that something fundamental is missing. At some point there may be no choice but to leave that job and look for a different one that is more nourishing emotionally, spiritually and perhaps also financially. There we can come closer to full pleasure.

Partial pleasure is one of the main factors that fuel overeating. It becomes the basis for negative emotional eating. The partial pleasure that food provides becomes a temporary response to unpleasant feelings, to anxiety, to tension, to stress. Sometimes the partial pleasure we get from food is a reaction to another form of partial pleasure.

For example, when we are unsatisfied in a relationship and experience only partial pleasure there, and we are also unsatisfied at work and experience partial pleasure there as well, an internal emotional hole is created. This hole looks for an answer, and then we turn to yet another partial pleasure: another snack, another bite, another ice cream. This gives us a short break, temporary quiet. It momentarily silences the inner voice that says, “Something here is not right.”

We take a little more partial pleasure in the form of food, calm ourselves in a partial way, feel for a brief moment as if something has softened, and after a short time everything returns. The cycle continues.

It may be very helpful to start examining our life through the lens of full pleasure and partial pleasure.

We can ask: In which areas of my life am I living in partial pleasure? In which situations can I expand, address, or focus differently in order to come closer to full pleasure?

In one workshop I asked participants to experiment with full pleasure in a very simple way. I gave each person a small piece of watermelon and asked them to hold it in their hand and wait a moment before eating. I asked them to look at the watermelon, smell it, breathe it in and sense it with all their senses. Everyone was very hungry. Only after a while did I ask them to put the piece of watermelon in their mouth and leave it there for a minute or two. I said, “Now we are making love with this watermelon.”

That is what they did. Those who truly experimented with this felt an enormous pleasure, a different pleasure, a kind of pleasure they did not know before. For many, this encounter with the watermelon was an experience of full pleasure.

The soul received deep nourishment from this small act.

Quite a few people understood, following this experience, in a very concrete way how to work with the Creative Hunger Formula. They recognized their ability to generate a spiritual state of full pleasure and realized that they needed partial pleasure less.

This is our work. It is a process. It is not limited only to eating, but eating is one of the central places in which it appears.

From now on, we want to learn, explore and clarify where we are living in partial pleasure and where we can begin to come closer to full pleasure. To a pleasure that stays with us, that truly calms us, that truly matches our needs, and that does not require compulsive reinforcement every few minutes.

Self-reflection questions (to be answered in writing):

1. How do you feel about the concepts “healthy pleasure” and “sick pleasure”?

2. What kinds of healthy pleasure do you know how to give yourself or allow yourself to experience?

3. What kinds of sick or addictive pleasure do you know, besides unnecessary eating?

4. Are you aware of the special spiritual “bonus” that comes with healthy pleasure?

5. Are you aware of the illusion of physical and spiritual fullness that comes from consuming unhealthy pleasure?

Chapter 8: Making Love with the Food that Enters Your Mouth

Before I continue with this fascinating topic that connects different kinds of love to the things that enter the body, I want to pause for a moment and look again at the process itself. This process of withdrawal, this process of transformation, this process of change, is being offered here for you. You can use it at your own pace, in your own way and in your own time.

It is very important not to introduce unnecessary pressure. The psyche does not like change in any case, so there will be some pressure. There will be pressure as you get used to hunger, and at times there will be unwanted side effects until it truly becomes a natural part of your life, until hunger truly becomes something enjoyable. Many things can happen along the way. Various changes are waiting for you there.

As we move forward and free ourselves from the spin of unnecessary eating, things will open up. Life will reveal itself anew. New possibilities will appear, because we will create space. In the places where we used food to suppress inner noise, our creativity, our adrenaline, some of our desires, our anger and our inner truths, in these places there will be more room. A new space will open.

We need to come prepared to that space. It can be stressful. It can be a space we do not yet know what to do with, and we may immediately feel tempted to return to eating. It can be a space that, over time, renews and changes life and even leads us to several important inner revolutions.

We want to move toward this horizon, toward this “promised land”, slowly, with inner support, with as much self love as possible, with as much self liking, self affection and compassion as possible for who we have been until now and who we are today. We need empathy for the fact that we will fall and rise again and again until things really settle, until we truly withdraw, until we switch between unnecessary emotional hunger and creative hunger.

This switch will happen. When we feel comfortable with the growling of hunger in the stomach, we will know that we are already on a safe path home. But it will take time. That is all right. We are in a learning process, a process of remembering, a process of awakening. Each person needs her own time. Each person needs her own space.

Not everyone has a supportive environment that encourages this process. An unsupportive environment can disturb the path of change quite a bit. There may be people who love us as we are now, who love to eat a lot together with us, who are attached to our familiar complexes and usual habits. Suddenly we begin to set boundaries, to say no, to initiate new things we would not have done before. We will change, and we need to be prepared for that.

So at this stage we want to take one step at a time. A little more each day. Each day another listening, another exercise, another video to watch. To walk with me, hand in hand, at a pace that suits you. Not to push yourself, not to pressure yourself when things do not always work. That is okay. We are in a process of withdrawal. It takes time, and it will take time, and that is okay.

This time has value. It must be respected. Every minute that passes in this journey is a precious minute, a sweet minute, a minute of healing, a minute of recovery and growth. We need every minute to unfold as it can, without extra pressure.

Now, after this introduction which is very important, I want to speak about making love with the food that enters your mouth.

This program is directed mainly toward women. It was built for women for various historical reasons that we do not need to go into now. Statistically, of course there are men who struggle with overeating, but it seems that women deal with this topic more. Perhaps because how they look is more important to them, perhaps because they have stronger self awareness, and perhaps because eating is an act of bringing something into the body, which in its essence is a feminine kind of energy.

In contrast, putting things outward often characterizes masculine energy. In any case, I am currently addressing a woman. A woman whose essence, both in intimate relationships and in relation to food, includes the act of taking something inward. Receiving inward and holding it inside.

You have a womb. Not only does sperm enter it, but within it the fetus develops. You bring in, and you also hold within. This raises a big question. Are you doing this correctly? Are you doing it in the right way, with the right energy?

Are you making love with the food that enters your mouth?

What is your relationship with the apple you are biting into, which is entering your body and being integrated into your body? How do you treat it? What feelings do you have toward the food that enters your body, your life? Do you see it as something nourishing that you can thank for? Do you feel that you are in interaction with it? It comes to nourish, and you come to receive this nourishment. It is a win win situation. You are making love with the food.

Or are you in a relationship of dependency, where you feel that you must have it, and when it is not exactly in the right taste or in the right amount you are frustrated? Is there a possibility of being in a kind of partnership with the food, of being partners with it? Is it possible to make love with it?

I mentioned this earlier, and now I want to focus on it more. I spoke about healthy pleasure, full pleasure vs. partial pleasure. When you treat food as something that enters your body, and you make love with it, when you define your relationship with food as a relationship of love and gratitude, you will probably eat more slowly, with more attention, with fewer conversations during the meal, with a stronger connection between your eyes, your sense of smell and your taste. You strengthen the experience of the senses.

In this way you love the food more and make love with it more.

This may sound like a minor detail, but it is not minor at all. When we make love with the food, we create something we may not have known about before. We create emotional satiety.

This is different from the emotional hunger that is often discussed. Now we can speak about emotional satiety. I emphasize the words emotional satiety, not physical satiety. When we eat out of emotional needs, there is no direct link between the food and physical satiety. We often come to food from emotional hunger.

How can emotional hunger be satisfied by something that enters the stomach? The hunger is emotional, not physical.

But if emotional satiety exists, this can be very relevant for us.

When we eat correctly, with love, patience, attention, observation and sharpened senses, the emotional system receives much more from the act of eating. It receives extra nourishment from it, the real nourishment that it craves.

When we do not do this, we provide only partial nourishment. Food becomes just an object that we push into our mouth. It is similar to having physical relations without love. Sometimes it can even be harmful to the body, not in line with our true preference.

We want to learn what emotional satiety after eating feels like. We can do this, and it is our task to do so. The more we finish a meal with a sense of emotional satiety, after we have made love with the food, the easier it will be to move into the hours of hunger afterward.

We received full pleasure.

Full pleasure lasts much longer than partial pleasure. The emotional system has been filled with sensory pleasure. We made love with the food. This is a very significant gain, even if it was just a slice of bread with peanut butter and jelly. Each bite, each taste, was felt slowly and fully.

The difference can be enormous for our learning of creative hunger. It is truly a huge difference.

From now on, it is our role to try to build emotional satiety through our behavior toward food. Food is now something we make love with. It is no longer just something that calms hunger or something we attack and devour.

It is something we approach gently, something we listen to, something we play with, something we treat as sensual and nourishing.

Over time the difference will be dramatic.

This difference will help us deeply internalize the ideas of creative hunger.

Self-reflection questions (to be answered in writing):

1. What does “making love” mean to you in general, not necessarily in a sexual context? How does this concept resonate with you?

2. In the long term, what do you think will happen in a positive sense when every bite you eat includes love and listening?

3. How does it feel to consider the possibility of forming a deep and pleasant friendship with the food that enters your mouth, any food, whether it is “fattening” or not?

4. Does it seem paradoxical to you to cultivate love for food while you are learning to withdraw from unnecessary eating?

5. Do you see the connection between loving the food that enters your body and your ability to choose to remain without food between meals?

Chapter 9: Eating Less in Order to Preserve Pleasure

This is a very important topic and also a very beautiful one. It is a topic I enjoy speaking about and one that gives broader meaning to the work we are doing here.

Before we go deeper, I want to repeat something: this process requires patience. This is a change process, a withdrawal process, a process of freeing ourselves from very deep habits. From time to time there is a “click” moment, and it will happen. It happens because we are connecting to truth, to a path that the body knows and wants to follow together with the psyche in cooperation. But until this connection becomes stable, we have a way to go.

On this way there are obstacles. There are falls. There are misunderstandings. There are moments when we want to rebel against the program and return to the old habits. There is pain, and there are unexpected changes. We need space, we need compassion, and we need patience. I am here to accompany you. We have time. We are not in a race. We want to succeed in this change, and this process can reach one hundred percent success when we fully commit to it. But we also want to arrive at a place where we can truly commit, and sometimes even this takes time.

Slowly, slowly. It is also quite normal to be a bit skeptical. That is part of the natural resistance to change.

Now I want to return to the main topic of this chapter. It is a very meaningful topic on our path. When we truly understand it and internalize it in many areas of life, far reaching changes can occur.

We will talk about the role of pleasure in our lives. This is a topic that many people do not understand well, and sometimes it is even controversial. What is the place of pleasure in my life? How often do I get to feel full pleasure? Pleasure that I have no doubt about? Pleasure that really fills me? Pleasure that wraps around me? Pleasure that does not immediately leave me hungry for another round? Pleasure that is the right nourishment for me?

How often do I get this kind of pleasure? Once a day? Twice a day? Five times a day? Once a week? Once a month? Once a year? Is this kind of pleasure even familiar to me? Or am I only imagining it, fantasizing about it, thinking about it in my mind but not actually meeting it in my real life?

Does such pleasure even exist? Yes. Or at least something very close to it. It exists. The question is whether I am aware of it. The question is whether I insist on it. The question is whether I actively look for it. The question is whether it is important to me.

Do I think I can receive full pleasure in a larger number of areas in my life? Or do I make a separation, saying “Here is work, there is no pleasure. Here is parenting, there is no pleasure. Only later, with friends or alone, there will be pleasure”? Or am I aiming toward a state in which I gradually come closer to full pleasure, to different forms of full pleasure, deep satisfaction and essential joy in more and more areas of my life?

Do I know that the path to self realization and happiness passes through having more healthy and full pleasure in my life? And from the other side, do I know that the root of many addictions and deep frustration lies in the fact that I do not have enough of the full kind of pleasure that I really need?

Am I aware of these things?

We are here in order to ask these questions, because they are essential for the process. They turn the process into something much larger than its declared goals. There are “secondary gains” of tremendous value when we internalize the values of the Creative Hunger Formula.

Because the whole story of hunger is ultimately intended to give us more moments of grace of full pleasure.

One of the ways to do this is to teach ourselves to eat less so that we can enjoy more. When I eat less, my senses become sharper. When my senses are sharper, I can enjoy more.

When I eat too much, I dull my senses. I become less able to enjoy. When I am less able to enjoy, I lack the ability to generate what we will now call emotional satiety.

We need emotional satiety. Just as there is emotional hunger, we also need emotional satiety. Emotional satiety is created when we eat correctly, when we give ourselves full pleasure.

This is what will allow us to wait more easily until the next meal.

So when I eat a bit less, I can enjoy more, because instead of focusing on quantity, I focus on quality, on taste, on the senses. I will be physically full to a similar degree even if I eat less, but when I eat less, the chances are much higher that I will also feel emotionally full. I am introducing into my system the value of real pleasure.

Not fake pleasure. Not partial pleasure that is grabbed on the way. Real pleasure.

The more you eat with attention, with fewer conversations during the meal, the more you make love with the food, as we discussed in the previous chapter, the more you create emotional satiety for yourself.

And the more you eat slightly less at lunch, for example, and reach dinner naturally hungrier, there too you will have the potential for a more complete pleasure.

A fuller pleasure.

This happens because you ate a little less. Notice what we are gaining here. We are not only gaining weight loss, if there is a need to lose weight, because we ate less. That is the aesthetic gain, which is important in itself. A person with excess weight generally wants to lose weight.

But we are gaining something greater.

We are gaining a higher quality of life. Not only because the body will be lighter and more pleasant, and not only because we have returned to an ideal weight and have pleasurable control over the body and the weight. We are gaining this also because we have created for ourselves a foundation and an ability to experience greater pleasure.

This is not just “no less important” than weight loss. In my eyes, it is even more important.

The more a person can generate full pleasure for themselves, the more they become a happier, healthier and more festive person. Life rewards them more. They are calmer.

Life becomes better for them. They are less caught in a constant chase after something that they will never be able to obtain in the way they are trying to obtain it now. They are more pleasant toward those around them. They give more of themselves to others. They become a better person to themselves and to others. A healthier, more relaxed and happier person. A person closer to self realization.

A person who knows themselves better and knows how to reach real satisfaction.

This is a great gain, and this gain must occur within the program. If it does not occur, the program will not really work. The change will not succeed.

This gain is part of the inner agreement of the Creative Hunger Formula. The Creative Hunger Formula works because it is holistic. It relates to our real emotional needs. That is why it succeeds. That is why it can reach one hundred percent success when it receives space in our life.

When we learn the value of real, non partial pleasure and insist on it, we will no longer agree to overeat, because overeating will damage this need.

Full pleasure will become a primary goal. It will be more important to us than eating more and more. Full pleasure will be more important than quantity. When this shift happens, we have won. When this happens, we have succeeded.

We are now learning about full pleasure and about the fact that in order to achieve full pleasure, we want to eat a bit less. This is an excellent technique to experience greater pleasure.

When this happens, we have an excellent “deal”. We gain full pleasure, and at the same time we gain lighter eating, in a quantity that is appropriate and accurate for us.

This is how it works. That is why it succeeds.

Self-reflection questions (to be answered in writing):

1. What feelings accompany slower eating with more attention to tastes, smells and overall sensations?

2. Do you know other situations or experiences in which a relatively small “taste” actually allows for greater pleasure?

3. How does it feel to transform food from something that calms emotional hunger into something that provides healthy pleasure?

4. Do you notice that eating a lot and eating quickly takes away your ability to feel the eating and tasting process deeply?

5. Do you think you can improve your ability to slow down, feel and enjoy a smaller quantity of food that is actually of “higher quality” in terms of pleasure and awareness?