You can choose to eat a carrot because you love eating carrots and you love nourishing your body with vegetables.
You could also choose to eat a carrot because you're terrified of gaining weight and it's low calorie.
You can choose to run 5 miles because you love how it makes you feel. You enjoy pounding the earth beneath your feet and the heart pumping and the body humming.
You could also choose to run 5 miles to burn off the calories you just ate - or will eat - or as a means to manage your weight or to try to lose weight... or because you feel bad about your body.
Same actions.
But the energy behind it is completely different.
And it matters.
If you're looking to live a life with more freedom in food and body... this conversation is essential.
Are you spending your time running away from what you don't want?
Or, moving toward what you do want?
Are you making decisions with an energy of fear and dissatisfaction with yourself and your life?
Or, are you making decisions with food and exercise with an energy of love. Love for yourself. Your health. Your life.
I was with a client this week who has made significant life-changing strides in her health + life over the past year working together.
She'd spent the past 4 decades playing the proverbial food games of:
>> the weight / eat >> guilt / shame >> deprive cycle
>> restriction and skipping meals to "make up for" the last meal
>> managing weight with food
>> calories in, calories out as the way to manage weight
>> labeling food good and bad
>> eating "bad" foods followed by a hard workout or restrictions on the next meal in order to "manage weight"
>> a number on the scale dictating the kind of workout she'd "need" to do or the kind of foods to eat or not to eat.
And it wasn't working for her.
Her food and exercise decisions were coming from a place of fear and dissatisfaction of herself.
She made decisions to get rid of an unwanted behavior, feeling, or number on the scale...
...as a means to run away from how she didn't want to feel or look.
Every decision was a reaction to do something that had her running away from what she didn't want.
I don't want to weigh this much so I'll do these things to try to "run away from" this number.
I don't want to feel this bad about myself, so I'll eat a certain way or workout harder to "run away from" this feeling.
I don't want to deal with this hard thing that happened so I'll "run away from" it by distracting myself with alcohol and emotional eating.
And this created 4 decades of negative self talk, food badgering, overeating, mindless eating, emotional eating, buffering, and managing her emotional life with food and over exercise.
Which all contributed to her being overweight, in poor physical health, suffering from inflammation and pain, high levels of stress... not to mention the exhaustion of keeping up with the mental game of it all.
It's all different for her now.
A year ago, she began to imagine the possibility that she could fall into her natural weight with ease.
No food games. No dieting. No exercise games. No counting calories and points and steps.
It started with asking her: how are you drawn to taking care of yourself?
It's like she never gave herself permission to live into the answer of this question.
She was too busy carrying around other people's opinions, ideas, and beliefs about what it takes to lose weight and feel comfortable in her body.
She never gave herself a moment to look inside herself.
And her version of care for herself looked different.
So she decided to change her focus from spending her energy running away (aka trying to "fix" the problem) to instead...
>> taking steps to move toward how she desired to care for herself.
Moving toward...
How she wants to feel.
How she wants to feel after she eats.
How she would prefer to talk to herself.
How she loves to move her body.
How to take responsibility for her emotional life / how to handle conflict.
How she wanted to be in relationship with her stressors and her body and food.
To the point where a year later she's drawn to want to do those things.
She's not compensating for a number on the scale. And yet she's losing weight with ease. Slowly but surely.
She's more gentle with herself.
She's redefining "the rules" for herself.
She's clear about how these habits and foods and behaviors support her future.
She's being drawn to what she wants... not running away from what she doesn't want.
While the actions can be the same sometimes... the energy behind the two of these postures is entirely different.
And it matters.
One evokes a stress response on the body (fear and worry).
The other does not (love and care).
How about you?
Think about where you "run away from" versus "move toward" ...
Are you making decisions about your food and exercise from an energy of fear and dissatisfaction or an energy of love and care?
How are you drawn to taking care of yourself?
How is it different than what you're doing now?
Consider the possibility (and freedom) available to you when you lean into an energy of love and care.
That’s my weekend wish for you.
~Jill
