Sunday, Aug 1, 2010Self Acceptance and Your Relationship With Food

Geneen Roth, an extraordinary understander in the genre of food, body and self acceptance, has said: “I believe that we eat the way we live, and that our relationship with food, money, love is an exact reflection of our deepest held beliefs about ourselves and the amount of joy, abundance, pain, scarcity, we believe we have (or are allowed) to have in our lives. Rather than pushing away the “crazy” things we do, my work proceeds with the conviction that our actions and beliefs make exquisite sense, and that the way to transform our relationship with food is to be open, curious and kind with ourselves-instead of punishing, impatient and harsh.”

Inside each one of you, my readers, is your very own Golden Inner Child.  She is the precise picture of perfection that you have always been, and have always wanted to manifest forth in this world. She might not have been nurtured to allow that perfect expression, but she is there none the less. She wants you to know her, to cherish her, to help her to express herself.  You can begin by understanding your relationship with food.

Many women obsess about the size of their body. It is not possible to both love yourself unconditionally and obsess about your body.  Only self acceptance allows any permanent bodily change. If you have been eating for any other reason beyond the simple enjoyment of food, there are things in your life that deserve your attention and  your solving.

Dieting can be both a curse and a blessing because it may hide the fact that self acceptance, self love and the body that results is not about the food. Dieting is like a band-aid that covers up a more problematic issue in your life.  It’s the issues that have to be addressed. The real driving force is deeper, usually hidden from your conscious mind. That is why it seems so hard to make a change. No matter how hard you try, no matter what diet you’ve endured, nothing changes. Obesity is not a disease, but rather a symptom of one or more underlying emotional issues, and those emotional issues can be resolved, without pills, drugs or surgery.

Remember that our thoughts create our reality…..  See your body as the miracle it is.
Love it and it will nourish your life

Why can one person eat so much more than another? Is it their metabolism and good genes, or do their thought patterns have an influence? If you are thinking how fat you are with every bite, with every waking moment, you are feeding your subconscious mind the idea, “I’m fat.” Your brain will gladly support that belief by driving you to desire more to eat, making it more difficult for you to follow through with your plan to make a change.

Your Inner Child needs to hear more gentle words from you.  “I’ll eat reasonably so you can lose the fat idea, honey” might be a better message.  And then you persevere in it.

You did not grow the body you currently have overnight, nor can you change it with one improved thought.  You need to persevere over the months until ALL the messages you send to yourself about your body are complimentary.

I find it helpful to picture myself at the finish line.  How will I look there?  Can I hold that image in my mind and think only as I would think at the end of my journey?  This is the work of perseverance.  If you do this work along with the diet of  your choice, you will have a permanent healing, because you will have changed both the Cause (the thoughts you think) as well as the effect (the food in your diet) and this will be a happy resolution for you.

Dieting alone without the Cause part – the changing of the thoughts you think about yourself – will always fail.  You can accomplish both if you will eat consciously and also work on your self acceptance.

• Consciously choose the foods you know will support your desires
• Consciously prepare them using healthy techniques
• Consciously eat them, focused only on your enjoyment of them
• Consciously tell them to nurture your body and fuel it well
• Consciously DO NOT eat if you are not hungry
• Consciously DO NOT eat if emotion drives you
• Consciously eat only when you are peaceful and focused

Once you begin down the path to reconnect your body with your Golden Inner Child by eating consciously and understanding your relationship with food, you will be amazed at all the good this magnetizes into your life.

“In order to permanently eliminate a condition, we must first work to dissolve the mental cause of it and replace it with a new pattern that is healthier and supportive.”  ~ Louise Hay