I have this a helpful belief that our past is not our future.
Affirm right now that you are willing to forgive your past eating behaviors and let
them go. You move forward choosing
loving, life affirming, eating habits.
Now honestly we know that old habits are hard to let go of. If I have the habit of eating too many
pistachios when it is a rainy crappy weekend like last weekend, I have to find a way to sneak up
on myself and think of a new way to under eat pistachios.
Now, I believe in gateway foods. I have them and I bet you have them
too. Those are the foods that contaminate
my intention to eat less than I can! It
seems that once I give myself permission to eat them, I’ve opened the door, and
it takes a divine act to get me to stop from repeating that behavior. I wonder how quickly I can accept that
Divine help! Instead, I start with guilt,
beat myself up awhile, then I reason, I give in, I start over----blah, blah, blah. My latest thing is I tell myself my body is
craving this for a reason that it must need something that pistachios
provide. Really? Pretty
creative.
I wonder what it would feel like to not have a habit of
overeating pistachios or any other gateway food?
I’ve found that I have to treat certain foods differently (I stay
away from those foods and tell my brain and body, it is just for awhile so I
can get myself on track and in touch with what my body really needs---it likes that need thing.) It allows me to delay my overeating behavior
and gives me more choices. My brain also goes happy crazy with more choices!
Let’s talk about successful people who have lost weight and
kept it off---one of the number one things that they have in common is that
they don’t diet. I find that so
irritating somehow but the research is pretty solid. Even if what they are eating I would call
a diet, they call it healthy lifelong eating habits that include eating less and moving more.
They no longer see themselves as people with an eating
problem or a habit of overeating. They
aren’t trying to fix anything, especially with a diet, they are simply moving forward
toward a healthier body.
What do they do when they want to eat or drink something they
know they shouldn’t? Well, everyone has
their own strategy but a commonality is that they already have a plan in place
for avoiding traps and then a plan for getting back on track if they blow it. They simply think about it and plan ahead. You know that planning is important because
when you get a plan, your mind goes to work to implement it. Your mind wants you to be successful and now it has the task of finding
a way to make you successful. When we
plan to succeed, something inside us wants to lead us and get us to our
goal.
So we can ask ourselves how do we best handle a situation
where we want to make a healthy food choice?
I wonder how powerful and successful we will feel when we have a plan to
take back the power certain foods have over us. I wonder how quickly we can learn that
saying “yes” to our health and “no” to
certain foods shows our bodies that we truly love and care for them?
Breathe, meditate, do your yoga practice, eat less than you can and love yourself.
Namaste,
Dean
