Archive | March 2010

Forgiveness is Important for Food Addicts

Mar28

When food addictions take over your life, you can become very hard on yourself even to the point of self-hate. This only makes the food addiction worse.

We all do things that we regret. We can’t do anything about the past but if food addiction and emotional eating have become patterns in your life, there is something you can do about them now.

Before we can move from one state of being into another, we must be able to forgive ourselves for whatever we have done, or think we have done. Only when we do this can we move forward.

Children live in the moment, so they forgive easily. It’s harder for adults to live in the moment because there is always some past mistake or future possibility that we seem to want to focus on, taking us away from the moments in which we have the most power.

Food addictions and the agonizing emotional trauma that is always lurking underneath can keep us in a place that is sad, shameful, or just plain uncomfortable, for a long time.

When we have these feelings, we don’t like ourselves. When we don’t like ourselves, there is the tendency for the food addict to self-medicate or even self-destruct with food.

Self-hate, anger or even impatience with yourself can keep your heart closed, and if there is any time your heart needs to be open, it’s when you’re feeling bad about yourself.

So today’s tip is simple: Forgive yourself for not being perfect, for making some mistakes. That will allow you to let the past go and experience each moment fully without judgment and without regret.

Forgiveness clears out the negative feelings and lets you begin anew each day. Live each day fully, with your attention in the moment, and without persecuting yourself for something you cannot change.

Keep your heart open so that love can flow freely in both directions. The three most powerful words in the English language are said to be “I forgive you”.

Practice saying them daily in the mirror, and watch your eating patterns and your life change for the better.

Losing Weight Shouldn’t Be a Contest

Mar27

Contests are meant to be motivating. They motivate through competition. Consider the size of the viewing audience of shows like The Biggest Loser.

Contests always have winners–and losers.  Contests can be fun, especially if you win the prize, as long as it’s the prize you wanted. And that’s where trying to lose weight in a contest can trip you up.

If you are a food addict or an emotional eater, you probably have put on some extra pounds. That happened to me, and when I was in my thirties I decided to try a popular weight loss system.

The program worked well for me. The packaged food was palatable, and all I had to do was to follow directions and check in for meetings and blood work every couple of weeks.

What I was learning about my body and metabolism was helping me understand myself more, and my food addictions seemed almost non-existent.  And the pounds were coming off.

When I had lost 22 pounds, had my flat stomach back and was feeling on top of the world, my counselor reminded me of something.

One of the incentives to losing those last few pounds was that a member could win back half of their original investment if they could hit the weight goal by a certain time.

I chose a weight that was too low for me but it was a contest and I was sure that the $150 prize would be enough to make my body obey my will. Yeah………..right.

The contest did work for some, I guess. Maybe they weren’t food addicts who overate because of emotional stress. I don’t know.

What I do know is that I wasn’t able to lose those last two pounds because of the pressure I put on myself trying to win that contest, and so I didn’t get the money.

It left me with a sense of shame, and it took much away from the earlier success I felt from feeling so alive. Why could someone else do it and not me? What difference did it make anyway?

I hadn’t figured it out yet when a big blowout with my ex-husband, who frequently made me feel like a loser, sparked a two-week eating binge and that was the end of that.

I did get to enjoy my slimmer figure for a couple of months first, but that contest spoiled my success with the weight loss program.

Once I transferred my attention to the cash prize, I forgot what my goal had been–to learn how to eat so that I could reach and maintain a healthy weight and thus, enjoy my life more.

Motivation is important but when it comes to losing weight, making it a contest might put unnecessary pressure on you to go after something you don’t even really want.

Contests have time limits. Good health does not. It takes a lifetime, and every day you remain alive is another chance to live a better life in the best of health, or at least on the road to it.

Whether you are an emotional eater, a food addict, or just someone who overate too many times or got lazy and stopped being physically active, if you’ve gotten a little too fluffy lately, you might want to take off a few pounds.

The only thing you need to win is your good health. If you have that, you won’t have to worry about your weight or anything else. You will have it all. It really is true.

No contest in the world can promise–or deliver–more than that.

Healthy Eating Promotes Weight Loss

Mar25

Have you ever noticed how often the words “healthy” and “balanced” are used in the same sentence? When it comes to food, these are very important words.

Here is a short YouTube video with some great information about what foods you need to eat in order to have a balanced diet. I hope you enjoy it.

If you’re interested in learning more about raw foods and how they can help you lose the weight and keep it off, click here.

Another Name for Fat People

Mar23

Today I went with a friend to the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Florida. We went to see an art exhibit titled “The Baroque World of Fernando Botero”.

The docent who led the first part of our tour said that Botero painted “fat people”. I believe she said those were Botero’s words.

In that museum with 100 pictures of gigantic people, animals and musical instruments painted by a world famous, living artist, I was forced to see fat in a different light.

When we look at art, it’s hard not to make judgments since our perceptions are influenced by our preferences, prejudices, and paradigms. When we see art, we tend to see life as we know it.

Think for a moment about fat people, what those words mean to you, how you feel when you hear the term. What would it take to change your perception about fat people?

I thought about that today when the docent said the most extraordinary thing–that the people in Botero’s paintings weren’t really fat people, but people of “heroic proportions”.

When I heard “heroic proportions “the label “fat people” instantly disappeared. A paradigm shift occurred and I will never see large people as fat people again.

Even as I struggle with my own food addictions and emotional eating challenges, I know the power of words when it comes to food and labels.

Today, I got to take a different look, a new picture, and I liked what I saw.