Catch Spring Fever and Connect with Your Body

Catch Spring Fever. Let it lift your spirits and ground your commitment to honor and respect your body, mind and heart. Spring Fever connects with vitality and new beginnings.

Spring's a time of heightened emotional response. When Spring's in the air, suddenly there's a spring to your step. Colors are more intense and daylight lingering makes evenings more seductive. It's exciting. Spring is a time we naturally re-connect with our 6 senses.  Go with it. Get excited and lose weight intuitively.

When your senses are alert, eating habits become obvious.  Emotional eating is a disconnect from your body. Spring is the time to reconnect with your body. Connect with your senses and what feels good to you. Only eat when you're hungry. 

Balance emotions with common sense. Find nourishment for all of your appetites with your eyes, ears and heart. Spring is a time of renewal for every living creature. Renew the commitment to having a healthy body by embracing all 6 senses. Resolve to move forward by staying in step with Spring.

When you connect with your body, Spring Fever really takes off!

It's a new season so try new foods that are seasonal. Go on an adventure with your nose: inhale perfumes of flowers, aromas of your meal and the scent of fresh air. Use your eyes to really look at who you love and to love your Life. This sort of emotional nourishment is surprisingly satisfying.

Everything we do burns calories, including getting excited.. who knew? Yes, it's that easy. As you depend on your intuition, you feel in sync with yourself. It feels good. Spring is a time for renewal and re-connecting. Renew your commitment to being true to yourself.

Enjoy!  :)

Keeping momentum and dropping pounds

Sometimes when you're achieving an intuitive breakthrough you won't notice it's happening. Habit is to focus on what isn't happening and how bad you feel about yourself which puts you in a fog.  Use your senses to wake up to what's real- You are a work of art in progress. Be open to your natural momentum and you will drop pounds.

Susan planned to go to her brother's anniversary party knowing that it would hit all of her emotional buttons. Filled with self-doubt, she felt fear, anger and stubborn. She imagined standing by the buffet eating one piece of cake after another and hating herself for doing it, for being fat and feeling awful. Doubt was pushing her into a corner of self-defeat. 

Taking an intuitive pause, Susan connected with her senses and her heart and realized she was repeating old unpleasant habits. She used dignity and determination and changed her mind-set.

Susan loves cake so visualized herself slowly eating one delicious piece away from the buffet - while sitting down enjoying conversation with her family. She even visualized putting some icing on her finger and enjoying licking it off! Susan used the tool of foresight to eat a light protein dense dinner before the party so she wouldn't feel starved. This was taking control of the situation. An instant later she felt a lightness of contentment and comfort. Momentum and self-control feel like the same thing.

April is the time to start thinking about looking great in a bathing suit.

Working hard to lose weight can feel disappointing because it's easy to lose sight of change as a process not a moment. Instant gratification is not enduring gratification. Eating intuitively is a long-term weight maintenance plan. Stick with the plan and get ready to look great in a bathing suit this summer.  

You're doing a great job right now! It's intuitive to protect your body by keeping it healthy. Breathe in and out and keep the momentum going.

The Blame Game

Do you play the 'Blame game'?  

Jessi is a dieter who is becoming an intuitive eater. She decided to have a healthy snack and opened a bag of carrots. She took a bite and the carrot tasted strange. The inside of her mouth felt tingly, even fuzzy. Jessi ignored her senses and decided it was her fault for buying the carrots in a bag instead of fresh. Because she 'knew' that carrots were 'good', Jessi assumed she was 'bad' and the source of the problem.

Her mouth was practically screaming that the carrots were unhealthy. But the diet mentality is to blame yourself and ignore your body, and so she did.  She ate 5 carrots and then grabbed a cupcake to get the taste out of her mouth. No one wins the blame game.

When you play the blame game you stop noticing what you notice with your senses. Ignoring your senses betrays your inner dignity. This feels really awful. 

  

Forcing your body to eat what it rejects is not intuitive.  

Eating intuitively is to respond to your body. 

As soon as you respond to your body, you are in control. 

That's all it takes!

Jessi is learning to notice messages from her senses. Her tastebuds told her the carrots were bad. But the habit of diet programs told her she was bad. This blame game had become her habit. Once Jessi realized it was a habit and that she could take control, she felt like a different person. 

Notice what you notice. Habits are hard to break. But self-defeating habits are worth breaking. It is never intuitive to 'blame' yourself. The intuitive choice is to look for options when your senses give you a heads up.

The Myth of Self-Control

Change happens inside us. 

'Self-control' imposed by ideas or rules can feel like a threat to your body. Feeling threatened puts your body in the survival mode. 

Your body :

              - is genetically programmed for survival. It can force you to eat, breathe or sleep to survive. 

              - will be fat any time it decides that being fat is the best way to keep you safe. 

              - decides how much you weigh, not your conscience or a book you read. 

That's why self-control is a myth. Since our body controls itself, it has complete control over how fast we burn fat. Because it's intuitive to protect and empower your body, trusting your intuition keeps your body feeling safe. 

Tune in with your senses and notice what you notice. Your 6th sense will kick in to enhance your observations and what is right to eat to be your healthy shape will be automatic.

Intuitive eating feels like self respect. Your body relaxes, you enjoy eating and the pounds fall off! That's what's happening with people doing my IntuEating program right now! It's easy to talk about, but letting go of self-control is a challenge when you are used to dieting. Be patient with yourself.

Begin this way:

            - Nourish your body every day by only eating what you really want.

            - Listen with your senses to your heart and body.

            - Visualize your healthy fit body, exactly the way you want to look and feel before you get out of bed in the morning and before every meal. Feed that body.

When you force yourself to lose weight, you are violating your bodies natural laws and it rebels by holding on to fat. The real path for self-control is to connect with yourself using dignity and your senses to be clear about what feels right. Take a deep breath and realize that your body is talking to you.

Listen to your body and trust yourself.

Enhancing Your Sex Life with Food

Intuition is your 6th sense. Right now you are reading this but of course you are not thinking about using your eyes!  You use your senses automatically.  Right now - you are using your intuition.

The more you notice what you see, taste, smell, hear and touch, the more aware you will be of your sensuality and your intuition. The essence of great sex is great sensuality. When we really taste, touch and smell our food, arousal is heightened. Turning a meal into a sensual experience is intuitive eating.

In the film "Tom Jones" Albert Finney licks chicken bones and Joyce Redman looks like she's making love to an apple. What makes this scene really 'hot' is that the entire time these 2 eat, they give each other eye contact. Eye contact while we're eating can feel incredibly intimate.

When you enter a bakery and inhale the aroma, or bite into your favorite meal- the sounds you make are "o-oh", "m-mm", "ahh" and those are also the sounds of happy sex. Smelling, tasting and listening can become suddenly intimate while you're eating, just like eye contact.

When you want to enhance your sex life, notice little noises aroused by the pleasures of eating. Lick your lips and let your tongue poke and taste your food. Chewing well not only helps you eat slower, digest better and manage your weight- it also connects you with the pleasures of eating.

The 6th sense is our arousal sense. It takes what our 5 senses experience and pushes it up a notch so the experience is heightened. We can access it anytime.

Mixing pleasures of the senses with pleasures of the heart and mind is the kind of pleasure that is the difference between flying first class or coach. Sure you get there either way, but the difference is the quality of the trip and the ultimate pleasure of your ride.

Intuitive eaters choose food that satisfies hunger by pleasing the senses. Staying in touch with your senses keeps you in touch with your body. You won't over eat, other things will be on your mind.

This week I'll be on these shows talking about eating and sensuality.

The Mancow Muller Show    Improving your Sex Life With Food
Morning Madness Talk Radio
www.talkradioinsiders.com
3. 15. 2011

NY NonStop, All Night with Joey  Tuning, Diet, Sex and Intuition

NYNBC, WNBC TV

3. 16. 2011

Morning Show    Turning a Meal into a Sensual Experience
92.9 The Big Cheese
WECL Eau Claire, WI
3. 16. 2011

The Eating Challenge, Take 2

Intuitive eating is knowing that what you need for energy and health is what you want to eat. It takes courage to maintain your intuitive connection through challenging eating situations.

You may need to eat bread with your meal, or protein, or you may just feel like having yogurt. You may decide that you had such a big lunch that you will just have an appetizer for dinner. Sounds simple, but it takes courage. Courage is when you recognize what you know, and you respect who you are. Courage is following through with what you know and doing what you respect.

Words make it sound easy, sure. Doing what sounds easy just may surprise you. The real eating challenge is to trust yourself to be good to yourself. 

Challenging eating situations happen every day. We feel tempted or starved, or like there is no choice, or like pleasing others. The challenge to be true to physical needs, while feeling pressure from stress or from exhaustion is often the result of not trusting what you intuitively know your body needs.

Take the eating challenge and observe yourself around food. Use your eyes, your ears, taste, touch and smell. Notice messages from your stomach and notice how you feel in your heart and your head. Fine tune your senses. Listen to your intuition, and recognize habits that end up making you feel badly about your self. When it is time to eat, use your senses to smell, taste and see what you are eating and think about how your body feels and what you want for your self. Give your self a chance.

Intuition is a kind of natural courage. Connect with your intuition, and eat only what you know and feel is right. When you tune into your body, and your hunger with courage, you start to recognize your eating needs. Then you trust your self and take control of feeding your hunger. This is not easy because it's probably not something that you thought about before. So, give yourself a chance to think. Take a deep breathe in and now breathe out really, really slowly until there is nothing inside. Good.

It takes courage to recognize and trust your self.

It takes courage to stand up for your self.

It takes courage do what is right.

It takes courage to acknowledge what you need.

It takes courage to recognize habits, but if you don’t, you will never be happy with your weight. Ignoring your senses, your body, and what you know, creates a vicious cycle when you eat, and all it takes to stop, is connecting with the courage to follow your truth.  Ah yes, that is the eating challenge.

 

If Your Body Could Talk - an exercise

Trash talking your body makes it shut down. 

Eating intuitively keeps an open honest connection with your body.

What would you do if your body could talk?

This 2 part exercise is powerful. It helps for losing weight , and importantly, this is good for putting your head back on track with your heart.   Doing the exercise opens up a different way of trusting your body/mind intuitive connection. Try it. Let us know what happens.

1. On a blank sheet of paper write a letter to your body: 

Start with Dear Body. Take a breath and tell your body whatever you want. Be patient, and let the words stream. No one will read this but you.

2. Give your body a chance to reply. On another sheet of paper, use pencil and write yourself a letter from your body to you:

Use your other (non-dominant) hand. Start with Dear and your name. Take a breath and start writing.  If your body could talk what would it tell you?

Using your non-dominant hand forces you to connect differently with your body. I ended up printing.  It will take effort to use your other hand and be hard to read but, do it and see what happens. 

In an eating situation where you feel emotional or pressured to act, you may find that you stop listening to the intuitive connection with your body. Stress can put you in a self-destructive place where you are mean to your body. When you're in an eating environment that pushes your buttons, take and breath and use your senses to connect with yourself. Give your body a voice.

It takes effort to remain open. This exercise is worth the effort. I saved it and found reading what I wrote the next day moving.

You will discover it's intuitive to be kind to yourself. Intuition is subtle in the beginning. Write yourself a letter from your body and feel the connection.