Steve Tyler says, "Life is a journey, not a destination." The problem with weight loss (and so many other things) is that we're so goal-oriented. Even practices like meditation and yoga that are meant to bring you into the present are about getting to the end so you can say you completed it and feel like you did your part in staying healthy. People go to school, not to learn, but to earn a degree. People make love, not to experience connection and sensuality, but to climax. People eat well and exercise, not to nourish and care for themselves, but to lose weight.
When you have a lot of weight to lose reaching that goal can be a long way off. So, what do you do to make your journey worthwhile until you arrive at your destination.
1. REMEMBER MORE IS AT STAKE THAN JUST YOUR WEIGHT - For emotional eaters it's not just our weight that suffers, it's our quality of life. If we are turning to food to comfort it means that we're not expressing ourselves honestly, that we haven't found an outlet for our passion and dreams or that we're staving off our dissatisfaction. Therefore, the more we admit our real needs and attend to them, the better our lives are and the less we need food as a crutch. On our way to our goal weight are many moments when we have the opportunity to be true to ourselves instead of eating.
2. EXERCISE & EATING WELL IS A WAY TO LOVE YOURSELF - It's been said that you can't love another person or be loved by another person until you know how to love yourself. But if you're like me that whole thing sounds like an abstract concept, in other words a potential load of bull. What does loving yourself actually mean? Well, each time you make a choice to eat well, to avoid junk food, to go out for that walk, to go to the gym despite the cold weather, to plan and cook healthful meals, you are loving yourself. For some people, who never had loving, nurturing parents, this is actually a way to re-parent yourself. Each choice becomes an opportunity to love yourself instead of it being a moment where you feel resentful of being deprived.
3. YOUR BAGGAGE GOES WITH YOUR WEIGHT - For many people who have been delaying their growth and development by overeating, each pound lost represents a step towards a more evolved self. When you eat instead of coping, you disable your best thinking. Over time you lose confidence that you can, in fact, cope without the comfort of food. By facing your demons, the old ones and the everyday ones, you get stronger. August Wilson, the playwright, said, "As my spirit got bigger, my demons got smaller." Your baggage starts to fall away with each lost pound. Therefore, your journey can be walked with a lighter step, both literally and metaphorically.
So many people that write in to us share that when they stop eating for emotional reasons they gain control of their lives, confidence in who they are and greater peace of mind. Those things are so vital that those same people often tell us that the weight loss is just an added bonus. They no longer need to wait for their goal weight for their lives to begin, instead they have learned how to join their lives already in progress.
Michelle Fiordaliso, writer and psychotherapist Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michelle_Fiordaliso |
No comments:
Post a Comment