Discover Love.

Love is in the air. Can you recognize it? It feels like tenderness and passion at the same time. It's a combination of wanting and expecting and it's a signal to be good to yourself.

It's time to feed your soul by honoring your body. You honor your body when you respect it.  Notice what you sense with your eyes, ears, nose, mouth and heart.

"April showers bring May flowers." Everything you do has a result. The result of being good to yourself by honoring your body is: liking the way you look and feel. Flowers of satisfaction bloom when you're true to yourself.

Intuition is about satisfying yourself. Dieting is about denying yourself. When you satisfy yourself, you respect your body. When you deny yourself, you ignore your body. It's April - stop denying yourself and start respecting yourself.

Satisfaction connects with self-respect. You can't have one without the other.  Eat for satisfaction and discover love. 

Love, Respect and Satisfaction are all intuitive. Think with your senses, feel with your mind and be true to yourself. Eat and dance to the music in your soul. You will like the way you look and feel in the morning.

Here's Aretha Franklin singing R-E-S-P-E-C-T. 

What are you craving now?

Cravings are personal. They hit emotionally and physically and can feel confusing.  We're hungry for more than food. We feel:

• hunger for comfort
• craving for love
• passion to understand who we are
• thirst to protect ourselves and live well

When you ignore these appetites and just eat instead, it causes physical and emotional stress. The reason is because you're ignoring what you sense from your body and your heart! Using your 6 senses reconnects you with with feelings of self control.  Self-control feels like balance.

Why not protect yourself by using your 6th sense - intuition - to know what you're really craving?

Your body and senses are designed to relieve stress by focusing you on the present. This keeps you in control of choices.  Here's how to do it:

• Notice what you see, smell, taste and hear. This puts you in touch with your body.
• Notice how your body feels. Your body tells you when it's tired and when it's hungry. Your heart tells you when you're frustrated or lonely. Although the clock may say dinner, your body may not be hungry. Don't enslave your body to a clock. 
• You are not always hungry. Never force yourself to eat. When you feel full, you feel comfortable. Use your senses to notice what feels comforting. What you need to feel satisfied could be a good nights sleep, or you may need to call a good friend and vent, or just hear the sound of the voice of someone you miss. 

Use your 6th sense to respond:

• Are you craving love or companionship? Do something social.
• Are you famished for sports or excitement? Watch a game or find someone to play with.
• When was the last time you ate a relaxed satisfying meal with a friend? Maybe sharing the pleasures of eating and communicating will bring you satisfaction.     

Intuitive tools make it easy to recognize what you're craving and get it: without having stress. Your 6th sense always leads  to what's good for you. What's good for you, feels good, and will satisfy that craving.

Use Spring Fever to Lose Weight

Spring is a time of enthusiasm and new beginnings.

You feel Spring fever in your body. Use that feeling to change the way you eat.

Begin to taste every meal,  savor every bite in your mouth,  share the enjoyment of it with others and stay connected with your body. Get sensual and lose weight with enjoyment, instead of diet-stress. De-stress means:

Don't Eat Simply To React. Eat Sensually and Slower.

Do Eat to Satisfy, Taste, Relax, get Energy and Satisfy yourSelf.

Stress is in your head. Digestion is in your body. When you're stressed it inhibits your body's abilities to get the most nourishment from what you eat. Stress impacts your ability to think clearly and it can release a hormone into your body telling it to hold on to fat!

De-stress and eat less. Forget diet dogma and tune into your body and your personal priorities. You know what feels good.  If you want to lose weight, make a commitment to yourself to trust your body and be honest with yourself about what matters, before putting something into your mouth.

Feel Spring. Let the enthusiasm of new beginnings free you from old regrets and old self-defeating habits. Today is your day to begin the rest of your life. Do it with dignity and self-respect.

Use intuitive tools to get liberated from extra weight and old patterns that are so 'last year'.

See yourself in summer clothes looking happy, healthy and feeling fit. Feed that person! She's as real as you allow her to be. Go for it, it's Spring! 

Nature is forgiving, it begins anew each year. Forgive yourself for bad decisions and shed them with your weight by eating intuitively. Spring fever is a time to feel light with joy!

Start now by smiling. There's a billboard in Texas that says: "If you see a man without a smile, give him yours."  Do it and spread the fever.

The reason the new iPad is Sexy.

Have you seen it yet?

It's sensual, a visual orgy. The new iPad will literally enhance your vision by stimulating your eyes. Anything that massages our senses, and doesn't tell us what to do at the same time, is sexy.

We are so used to media bombarding our senses and telling us what to do, that we absorb it emotionally and ignore it physically. The result is we experience a kind of intuitive shutdown.

The iPad gives us the opportunity to see intimately and draw our own conclusions. The allure is sensual. Using your senses connects you with your body and your intuition. Intuition is the 6th sense. Like our eyes, we take it for granted. It's not intellectual, it's physical. The new iPad is an opportunity to recognize your intuition. It's a feeling.

That's why the new iPad is sexy.

When you sit down to a meal, it should be a visual orgy. Why not look at food and draw your own conclusions? If it doesn't excite your senses, there's a reason. Something's out of focus; things aren't what they seem. Use your eyes, and see if you like what you're looking at.

Eating is intimate, personal and sensual. You should like what you're feeling. The goal of eating is to refresh your body, mind and soul. It's normal to feel intuitively drawn to your food. The body is your source of stamina and strength; the mind is your hard drive, and intuition opens a connection with your soul. Healthy eating includes feeding all three.

Why not get in focus when you eat and notice what you see? It's time to start thinking with your senses. It will relax your body and free your mind, and you can draw your own conclusions.

1 Day a Week Challenge

One day a week, use your 5 senses with the intuitive tools when you eat. If you do this for at least 1 month and write a comment  about it, then, for a limited time, you can receive a free copy of Am I Really Hungry?

If you want to be an intuitive eater for bathing suit season, try eating intuitively every other day. Watch what happens. Buy 3 copies of Am I Really Hungry? for your friends and spread the word.

Morning After Binge

Recently, I've been asked:

• Why do I feel so hungry in the morning after an evening of non-stop eating? Shouldn't I feel full instead?

You feel hungry because the food you binged on was not what your body needed for nourishment. When you eat because you're stressed, frustrated, angry or bored, it has nothing to do with nourishing your body. Imagine if you put the wrong gas in your car, even if you overflow the tank - it won't run.

• Why does my body feel so sluggish and bloated? What happens physically?

Physically, you've clogged your pipes. When you eat without noticing how your body feels, you're abusing yourself. Even though your body is efficient, it still has to sort through, digest and get rid of the evening's onslaught.

• Why does this affect my mood, outlook and self-esteem? I feel like I'm a failure, have no self worth, and that this negative downward spiral seems to be my destiny - a life of self-inflicted ups and downs - all caused by abusing food.

It's frustrating to feel out of control. Your mood, outlook and self-esteem are not the result of abusing food. Instead they are the result of abusing yourself.  Your body is not an object, it's a very real connection with your heart and psyche. The first rule of intuitive eating is to protect yourself. It's part of your survival instinct. 

Use the intuitive tool of patience to give yourself grace. When you're patient- instead of angry with yourself, you can understand what pushes your button and how to protect yourself against it the next time. Once you use patience, you will discover you feel more peaceful. Then use the intuitive tool of foresight for self-defense. Make a plan to protect yourself.

• Why do I want to punish myself by abusing my body and my heart?

You don't! However you have been programmed by diet programs to believe eating certain foods is "bad" and that you are "bad" for craving them.  Programming whether it's from our parents, media or programs is inner dialogue that runs like a script in our heads. Your inner voice is your intuition. It may warn you with a gut feeling but it will never lead you to punish yourself. Read the sections Am I Really Hungry that explain how to know the difference between your inner voice (intuition) and inner dialogue (media/parents/programs). Use the index and get in-depth answers.

•  Why is so hard to regain control after several days of overeating? 

You may have all kinds of chemicals and sugar in your system keeping you out of touch with your body. If you're finding you're uncontrollable, treat food like a drug. If this drug is screwing with your body, it's destroying your health. Without your health, you cannot live.

Confusion caused by a chemical imbalance is hard to deal with. It's time to use tough love which is doing what is right instead of what is easiest. Read the chapter called Satisfaction in Am I Really Hungry to get some clear ways to do this.

• How can I get back in touch with my intuition and break this cycle?

Life is always going to have unexpected stresses. Forgive yourself and allow yourself to get back in sync with your body and mind. Focus on using your 5 senses when you're around food. When you feel an emotional drive to binge, take control by giving yourself 3 minutes to use foresight and patience. Make a commitment to honor yourself. Every day, every meal is a new opportunity to recommit to protecting yourself.

Listen to your body. Ultimately your body has a 'mind' of it's own and is clear about what feels satisfying and what foods make you physically at peace. 

More great tips and easy answers to eating challenges when you download: Am I Really Hungry? 6th sense diet : Intuitive Eating.

The Inner Game of Eating

Imagine you can eat what you want, know when you're hungry and be happy with your body and yourself. It's all part of the inner game of eating self-control. The inner game keeps your head in tune with your gut feelings and your body with simple intuitive tools.

• Your head is the hard drive where you store experience and where your values connect. 
•  Your gut feeling is the connection that protects you by staying clear about what you sense and your long term priorities. 
• Your body is the source of energy, health and pleasure. Naturally, you want to tune in to that! 

Intuition is having an open mind and a flexible attitude. Sitting down to eat without a plan is having an open mind. This arms you with an awareness that you drives you to feel curious about your choices. Part of the inner game of eating is realizing that you always have options.

Having a flexible attitude gives perspective. For example, If I eat this whole pizza, will I like what it does to my body?, If I slam this sandwich down my throat without even tasting it, will I feel satisfied?  The inner game of eating puts you in charge of what you do.

• Perspective is how you know yourself. 
• It allows you to get out of your own way to see where you're going. 
  
  
  
  The inner game of eating includes checking in with your body with all 5 senses before you put food in your mouth. Doing that is your intuitive way of showing self-respect. Your senses give you an intimate reality check. What's real is not a plan or a number on a scale.  What's real when it comes to the inner game is how you feel, what you sense and your personal priorities. 

Listening to your 6th sense teaches you about yourself. The better you know yourself, the easier it is to be good to yourself by maintaining eating self-control. It's surprisingly natural to get through the maze of eating challenges and diet stress to discover satisfaction with yourself by knowing the inner game of eating self-control.  Intuitive tools that keep you in touch with eating self-control include:

• curiosity reminds you to notice what you notice with your senses and your mind
• prudence is the reminder that you always have options and the ability to choose what feels best
• foresight reminds you to think about the results of your choices so there are no regrets.

The inner game of eating connects with what you value long-term in your life. You stay clear about what gives you pleasure and away from what fills you with regret. It feels like common sense.

On Thursday, March1st at 1PM EST, I will be doing a teleseminar about how to re-invent personal dieting by connecting with your inner game of eating self-control with Holistic Nutrition Coach, Nancy Desjardins. Registration is free. Sign up and get some answers! See you there.

Intuitive Magic

A gourmet who thinks of calories is like a tart who looks at her watch. ~George Bernard Shaw

Curiosity is intuitive. It's something you feel, not something you think. The more curious you are, the more satisfaction you will discover with yourself and in your world.

Working to live intuitively is going to change the way you eat and feel. Trusting your intuition is being true to yourself. It's respecting your body, listening to your heart and not letting your head be bulldozed into someone else's thinking pattern.

Eating is about pleasuring your body - not in a lewd or sexual way, but in a way that fills you with the excitement of living. A satisfied body feels vibrant and alive. Real satisfaction around eating is nearly sacred. That's why there are so many rituals around food and eating.

When you diet, you develop damaging rituals around eating. These lead to bingeing and purging. They  create a mind-set of defeat. It's subtle until you realize you've gained 20 pounds or worse. Stop eating to fit in a mindset and start eating to fit in your own mind and body!

There is a simple ritual around eating that's intuitive magic. It opens your eyes and your heart. Doing it feels like common sense. The intuitive ritual around eating that I urge you to use is the ritual of Gratitude - before, during and after you eat. It will change everything.

Right now, stop looking at your watch and start looking at what you're doing. If you're offered a serving that's huge, there's no pleasure in packing food in as if you're a box to fill.

• Instead, savor the flavors. 
• Take a deep breath between bites and allow your body the space it naturally needs to relax and let the digestive juices flow.
• Pamper your inner health so that you can depend on it later.

Don't think of calories; think of the pleasures of great health. Don't look at the clock; be in the moment. Tune in to the magic.
Try it!

Bon Appetite!