Friday and Saturday nights, Sunday family dinner, the
holidays, girls' or guys' night out, date night, birthdays, anniversaries,
wedding/baby showers, reunions, after work Happy Hour, parties … everything in life revolves around FOOD.
For the busy working class, we look at all of the above
opportunities to eat as a way to have meals that we normally do not have time
to during the crazy work week. We
usually eat quickly as we watch the clock, others eat at their desks and some
eat in their car while on the way to doing more.
As we take a step back and examine at how we treat our
bodies we gain insight to the LINK that resides within us – and that LINK is
emotional connection to food.
Here are the following ways that we look at food:
- Sustenance
- Reward
- Celebration
- Security and Comfort
- Conversation and Connection
- Friendship
- Wound numbing
- Community and Commonalities for Inclusion
- Belonging
- Sharing
- Therapy
- Punishment
Food has a lot of responsibility in our lives. For everyone, it is more than just sustenance
and nourishment for the body.
How many of the above LINKS can you see that are healthy vs. unhealthy?
Can you pick them out?
How do you use food?
Are you guilty of using food in an unhealthy way?
How many of the above LINKS can you see that are healthy vs. unhealthy?
Can you pick them out?
How do you use food?
Are you guilty of using food in an unhealthy way?
You are if you are human... last I checked, everyone reading this right now is that (at least on most days, maybe not Mondays though). ;)
Utilizing good as a ‘coping mechanism’ for too long without addressing your other issues can lead to disaster where your body, mind, soul and spirit will crash into a place of pure destruction.
Everyone at some point has done this... E V E R Y O N E.
And for those who say "Nope, not me... I have willpower."
If you do, then you have this won.
But for the rest of the world...
You can have the greatest diet and discipline in the world, but sometimes even social graces have to be met. Sometimes no matter how tight your emotional boundaries are set for yourself, at one point you give into your grandmother or mother who says "Ah, just one more bite," or you may feel that 'breaking bread' with colleagues is essential to team building and so forth.
It happens. Even if you have limiting dietary restrictions, it happens... over indulgence, particularly if food represents the mood or the moment of whatever is going on within the festivities.
Utilizing good as a ‘coping mechanism’ for too long without addressing your other issues can lead to disaster where your body, mind, soul and spirit will crash into a place of pure destruction.
Everyone at some point has done this... E V E R Y O N E.
And for those who say "Nope, not me... I have willpower."
If you do, then you have this won.
But for the rest of the world...
You can have the greatest diet and discipline in the world, but sometimes even social graces have to be met. Sometimes no matter how tight your emotional boundaries are set for yourself, at one point you give into your grandmother or mother who says "Ah, just one more bite," or you may feel that 'breaking bread' with colleagues is essential to team building and so forth.
It happens. Even if you have limiting dietary restrictions, it happens... over indulgence, particularly if food represents the mood or the moment of whatever is going on within the festivities.
However, until we understand these LINKS, our relationship
with food can be an unhealthy one if we are utilizing it in the wrong
ways. What starts out as health and
well-being to live can turn into a dependency that is destructive, particularly
when it comes to the over-indulging and dieting merry-go-round cycles of life.
Life was not meant to be designed for this cyclical madness
and food did not originate to become all of the things that humans have turned
it into.
Food is meant to sustain, maintain, nourish, and heal – but only
in the way of the fully bringing the human body to optimum health, NOT as a
crutch, distraction or dependency for other LINKS that are meant to be
addressed.
Dieting can be a punishment as much as eating. It shows up in a reprimanding way for the
deeds that have already been done. No
one likes to be punished, which is why 90% of all dieting fails.
The psychological LINK of “Ooh, I’m going to be bad and eat
a hot fudge sundae, then diet for the next few weeks putting my body in
starvation mode to make up for my behavior” is not a good mind training or body
training either.
CHECK OUT THE VIDEO ON THE LINK TO SELF DESTRUCTION:
Your relationship with this kind of behavior is a LINK you
can change. Your previous conditioning has a lot to do with LEARNING SELF-DESTRUCTION as a behavior from the beginning of your life.
This education is NOT to point fingers of blame on your parents and how you were raised, but rather to give you insight as to how these behaviors were FORMED. Guess what? You can CHANGE THAT LINK! You no longer have to look at food and dieting the way you were trained to from the beginning.
Your LINK to food and dieting starts with examining WHY you
choose to put yourself through the torture and contortion cycle to begin with.
To further understand you reasoning for doing what you do,
you need to look at how you were trained to LINK to food from your childhood - for real.. THINK BACK and take a look.
If you were given a cookie “because you were a good boy or
good girl” or cleaned your room, you were automatically LINKING food to the
idea of reward.
This is no different than how dogs or performance animals
are trained. You were trained to respond
to food from a place of ‘doing something’ for it.
When you begin to UNLINK yourself from the idea that food is
a reward, you start to see shifts in your health – not just in your body, but
from your mind connection that food is a prize for ‘being good.’
How about ‘being good’ because ‘being good’ makes YOU FEEL
GOOD or OTHERS FEEL GOOD and not because you get a cookie when you’re done?
Suddenly this shift in itself turns into a new way of
looking at and LINKING to food.
Dieting LINKS in your psyche function similarly. If you were a trained as a child that you
could not eat dessert until you ate your vegetables, you are being trained to
think about food the same way.
In other words, it is REVERSE mind training. You are being told vegetables are like
homework, something you have to get through.
Dessert becomes the goal you wish to attain for being good.
Ultimately, you are being told in the dieting world that if
you behave and adhere yourself to the healthy diet, you GET to have dessert.
If you were told instead if you ate your vegetables, you get
to grow up to be big and strong and smart and you’d have fuel to run faster in
P.E., your psychological conditioning would be a lot different. The reward here is being healthy and strong
and optimizing your physical performance and enhancing your ability as a
human. It does not ‘depend’ up on the ‘dessert’
prize.
As adults we are reminded of this mind training through
work.
When you see a homeless person on the street holding a sign
that says “WILL WORK FOR FOOD” – you are being reminded once again that you ‘have
to do something in order to eat.’
Suddenly, the psychological training begins to shift to
SUCCESS at work because you don’t want to ever be that person who is not be
able to eat.
What happens then, is you work harder to eat better and the
reward for working harder is to eat healthy, organic, higher-end foods instead
of GMO, processed, unhealthy choices.
The mind shifts to GREED and then OVEREATING once again –
because you consume more so that you don’t have to be punished with the thought
of holding a sign hoping for a scrap consuming something that makes your body
sick, unhealthy and then have to diet….
If you are stressed, you are carrying what is known as 'WARRIOR WEIGHT'... where you are shielding your body (literally) with extra pounds from the internal and emotional psyche wounds. You believe 'food' is your medicine, only most of the food you are eating is not healthy...as it is usually "reward" food .... which is usually sinful and toxic.
If you are stressed, you are carrying what is known as 'WARRIOR WEIGHT'... where you are shielding your body (literally) with extra pounds from the internal and emotional psyche wounds. You believe 'food' is your medicine, only most of the food you are eating is not healthy...as it is usually "reward" food .... which is usually sinful and toxic.
Therefore, what happens then – is you have to diet anyway,
because you’re automatically overcompensating to ‘avoid’ the other way of being
that you don’t want.
Once humans start to understand the LINKS in their lifeline
to their relationship with food and dieting, a shift can happen. This really isn’t about food and it really
isn’t about dieting.
What?!
Yes, it’s true. The LINK is all behavioral
conditioning.
Can you change this LINK?
YES. But up until now, you’ve been doing it all wrong. That’s right – I said it. Read that again.
YES. But up until now, you’ve been doing it all wrong. That’s right – I said it. Read that again.
You’ve been doing it wrong.
Address the internal issues to how you label your connection
with food and dieting and what it means to you.
Start to examine WHY you depend on it the way you do and HOW you think
about it.
HERE'S HOW... LET'S START BY LOSING 20 LBS... from your mind, heart and soul:
Start with the LINK OF Forgiveness:
HERE'S HOW... LET'S START BY LOSING 20 LBS... from your mind, heart and soul:
Start with the LINK OF Forgiveness:
When you begin to realize that you’ve unknowingly applied
your ‘mind-trained’ ideas from childhood to how you view it today and have a
relationship with it, you will begin a new pathway of having control over your
lifestyle choices. From here you will
begin to honor the place from where you sit with food and dieting and look at
it from an entirely new and healthier perspective.
It is with this LINK comprehension, you can change your life
and choose to UNLINK your unhealthy applications to what food and dieting
really are.
Namaste.
