I wanted to post about my using ICES for reprogramming my eating habits.
When I was growing up, I had a lot of food allergies and chemical sensitivities and ended up throwing up or passing out a lot. Things like berries caused me to throw up. MSG on salad bars and Asian food caused me to violently throw up. I called it projectile vomiting because I was afraid I would injure myself from throwing up and found out that you can actually have a stroke from it. I would pass out if I ate green grapes and found out that I was highly allergic to the sprays they used to package them to elongate them and I was highly sensitive to RoundUp and there weren’t the selection of organic foods which we have now. I stopped eating fruits and vegetables and it definitely contributed to a breakdown in my health. I could eat junk food without getting sick, but threw up for 7 weeks in a row every time I tried to eat meat, so I ended up being a junk food vegetarian and that was all I ate. Breakfast would sometimes be a Double Gulp soda or donuts or Hostess cup cakes. I ate a lot of cheese. Lunch would be pizza or macaroni and cheese. Dinner would be pasta. Snacks would be junk food.
Anyway, I had such strong food aversions and read on PubMed that people changed their emotional responses to foods by stimulating the vagal nerve. I was looking at Whole Food Plant Based and wanted to try it, but it didn’t help that I didn’t eat any of the foods. Worse, I had such strong aversions that I had sentences going through my head like, “I hate blueberries.” (On top of hating it from throwing up, I got creeped out with Willie Wonka and by people’s tongues turning blue from drinking it.) I had, “I hate broccoli” and “I hate cauliflower” and “I hate cherries” and “I hate strawberries” and “I hate apricots” and “I hate raspberries” and “I hate spice” “I hate turmeric” “I hate pepper” the "I hate list kept going on and on.
I started pairing the ICES with videos from NutritionFacts.org on the specific foods.
I will use blueberries as my example. I would watch all of the blueberry videos and would use ICES on TMS setting for 30 minutes or 60 minutes and during that time, I would meditate on the health benefits of blueberries. I didn’t start eating them right away. I started with changing my confession from “I hate blueberries” to “Look at all these benefits blueberries have” and eventually, I started buying them and I would sit at the table with some blueberries in front of me and the first few times I still didn’t eat them, but I focused on “I don’t hate blueberries. They have so many health benefits”
Because I still wouldn’t eat them, I ended up making superhero characters out of them and wore the ICES for that process and started celebrating them.
Then, I looked for what to combine them with and chose organic green grapes and I put one organic green grape in my mouth and chewed that and then I put a green grape with a blueberry - using the green grape as a training wheel and the blueberries tasted “green grape-ish” and it worked. The first try, I only ate 3 blueberries, but by the end of the week, I could eat a whole cup of blueberries as long as I also ate a cup of green grapes. Now, I can eat blueberries by themselves. That took a while, but I have an emotional sense of “I love blueberries” now. I have even eaten some which were sour or sickeningly sweet and didn’t regain my aversion.
Turmeric would be another good example. I hated turmeric the first time I tried it and had that same aversion and I did the same process and for turmeric, I chose tomato paste as the training wheel food and at first I just put so little turmeric in it that I couldn’t even taste it, but I used the ICES and watched the videos and when I made a lentil loaf, I graduated from a sprinkle of turmeric to just pouring it in because lentils are so bland that they made the perfect training wheel for all of my spices.
Now, I love turmeric and go through bottles of it.
I found the ICES so effective. I love so many healthy foods now. I eat vegetable wraps for dinner and berries for dessert and I make spicy chili and use things like curry powder.
It worked so well and I am so grateful.