Intuitive Eating = Our Guide To Health
It seems that so much of our INTUITION has been lost in a sea of dieting and over indulging in things we KNOW don’t serve us.
What I have experienced is when you really start paying attention to your BODY, it will lead the way.
When we eat things that aren’t serving our HEALTH it shows up in our BODY somehow. From a disease to bloating or gas, and a million things in between.
So, to EAT INTUITIVELY WE NEED TO START PAYING ATTENTION TO THOSE SIGNS.
Personally I often have chosen ease and pleasure over FEELING GOOD.
That’s the truth of it.
Even more than that I have chosen IMAGE over HEALTH.
It’s a challenge to change that mindset, but exciting.
FROM AN EMOTIONAL PERSPECTIVE
Growing up I always thought of my body as the bad guy. The villain.
How dare it look the way it looks, how dare it betray me like this. If only it looked differently I would be more loved, popular, liked… and so on.
To resolve this internal dialogue is an ongoing effort in love and gratitude.
Because really if we think about it, our bodies are our greatest ally. They constantly give us feedback on what we need, if we’re lacking in nourishment: emotionally, physically, or spiritually.
It’s always telling us what we need. Maybe it’s a nap under a tree, a big bowl of soup, or a walk with a friend. The possibilities are endless of course, but we never learned to pay attention.
Learning how to listen has been something entirely new for me. Something that feels like good medicine.
Our body does nothing but love us… it’s our mind and thoughts that mess things up.
Our body tells us how to take care of ourselves. It constantly tries for us. It shows up every day we’re alive, giving to us endlessly. It wants us to live, be healthy, feel great…
The trouble is we don’t learn to listen, and instead we ignore the signs. We punish it.
Our mind gets lost in a swamp of pressures and opinions, and stops hearing what our body is telling us.
Listening for those thoughts, noticing them, and replacing them with ones of love or gratitude has been a powerful practice in learning to reconnect to what my body needs to feel and do it’s best.
I don’t always get it right, in fact, I am just beginning. Always, over and over again.
Beginning.
QUICK TAKEAWAYS TO PONDER
It seems like it comes down to BUILDING TRUST with ourselves. Trusting that we will make choices that will serve our body what it needs.
This seems and sounds easy, but after a lifetime of ideas and opinions being pushed on us about HOW WE SHOULD LOOK, it takes EFFORT to shift into EATING for how we FEEL.
It seems that if we ATE to make ourselves FEEL our best instead of LOOK a certain way we would start to create TRUST in ourselves.
And that seems like how we would create the dynamic of listening to our instincts when it came to what to have for dinner or a snack.
Find JOY and ENJOYMENT in food and the process of preparation and eating it. No matter what we’re eating or how we’re eating it, food is meant to be ENJOYED.
Make the effort to CONNECT to our food our health and our digestion.
TO ME INTUITIVE EATING is about checking in to see if the food we’re eating is serving us and our health. If it’s bringing us joy, enjoyment, AND making us FEEL GOOD. Truly good.
Then USING that information to guide us.
Creating a GRATITUDE practice around your meals and snacks is the easiest way I can think of to make that connection. To take pause and be MINDFUL.
It only takes a moment, it’s wonderful to do with your family, and it has been proven to increase and optimize digestion.
If we start to view our body as an ally or a source of wisdom, we open ourselves up to the endless information it provides.
We learn to be in sync as a whole person.
No longer living in a battle ground with our mind telling us to be a certain way, and our body reacting in opposition.
Doesn’t that sound nice?
If all we did was shift from being focused on eating and living to LOOK a certain way, to being focused on FEELING our best — we would most certainly begin to heal as a whole person.
Kindness,
Gwen
