Robert McLune:
Fair enough. It's disappointing though. As I mentioned, my reasons for meditating now go much further than weight loss, but it was one of the reasons I got started. Ah well.
Hmm. Yeah.
I would withhold disappointment. There are a lot of experiences one can have doing all This, and they can change a person in a variety of ways. Many of them are subtle, the majority are unexpected, and almost all of them are deep. To paraphrase someone who was probably paraphasing Bill Hamilton: I couldn't tell you exactly why, but it's worth doing.
But see that's the kind of thing that really intrigues me. I have a friend who relates the same story. He'd tried and failed several times to give up, but he says that one day he just got up and "decided he wasn't a smoker any more", and never smoked again. Like you, almost no cravings or withdrawal. He doesn't know what it was, nor how to re-create it, but it was undoubtedly real. In the weight loss arena, John Gabriel's experience as related in "The Gabriel Method" sounds similar. My own experience of occasional bursts of enthusiasm for weight loss also feels like how you guys sound. It's just that where you, my friend, and Gabriel appear to have had the effect "stick", for me it turns off again after a month or two.
In my case, quitting had a definite cause, and it was reproducible: I know four or five other people who quit using the same method.
My own story is amusing, so I'll reproduce it. I smoked about two packs a week, but I was definitely hooked. A friend of mine read the book, quit, and gave it to me. I wasn't interested in quitting, because I was in denial about being hooked, so the book sat on my bookshelf for about six weeks. Then one night I was looking for something to read on the can, so I grabbed the book and accidentally opened it to a middle chapter talking about "social smoking". I was impressed with the humorous way in which Carr unraveled the logic of social smoking. He saw right through my bullshit, but he showed it to me in a way which was really light-hearted, unassuming, and humorous. So I got interested in the book, and two days later, I smoked my last cigarette. I had had no interest in quitting, but Allen Carr got me to stop cold turkey and to be absolutely
thrilled about the decision. Even now when I reflect upon the fact that I no longer smoke, it fills me with happiness. The method worked that well.
Looking back on it, the method is very similar to mindfulness. He doesn't try to scare you with medical statistics, and it's not a plan for cutting back. He insists you continue to smoke while reading the book. This part is important. And then as you're smoking, you're reading the book, and what he's saying is really getting you to tune in to the phenomenon of smoking. Not just the physical sensations of it - those are important too - but all the reasons you smoke, all the reasons you think it's enjoyable, all the supposed pleasure you get from it, all the emotional satisfaction, and all the image issues you have tied up with it. He cuts through the web of things we tell ourselves about smoking - mutually exclusive things such as "It calms me down" / "It gives me energy" and "I love my brand" / "I need a fucking cigarette, NOW" - and then has you look directly at the experience of smoking and realize, directly, that it in fact is not enjoyable, never has been, never will be. You desperately want to stop smoking by the middle of the book, but he won't let you. You can't quit until the last chapter. By the time you finish the book, putting out the last cigarette becomes one of the most enjoyable actions you ever take in your life. The effect really is that strong, and it's accomplished with nothing but reasoned argument with a good sense of humor.
Food is a bit different, because obviously you can't stop eating, but I'd be intrigued to know if the method works for overeating. You would probably find the method compatible with some of the methods that go into vipassana, so it might be worth a shot.