Me, Myself and I

Three Ways to Change the Way You Eat

It's Friday night and time to think outside the box. Decide to co-create your healthy shape with your body. Benefit by eating less and getting more energy from the food you eat. The way your body responds to food is a "team" effort. Think it as "Me", "Myself" and "I". Think of your body as a co-creator of your appearance and health and tune in to what you sense. Relax when you eat and feel your food transmitting energy and vibrance. Listen to the whisper of your body.

Be your own best friend. (ME)

• Commit to doing what you want.  Whether you want to lose weight or not, there is no reason why you can't still be your own best friend.
• Sounds like a no-brainer, but how often have you overindulged for some momentary pleasure, only to regret it the next time you put on your favorite pair of skinny pants?  
• "Me, Myself and I" is all you've got. Be your own best friend. You need a best friend who loves you. Look out for yourself by tuning in to what isn't obvious.
• Use Dignity and Courage to be your own best friend.  Let ME feel some satisfaction.

Trust your 'new' best friend. (MYSELF)

• When you commit to trusting that you want to eat to look and feel your best, you will discover that your appetite shifts. Once you commit, the next time that the huge portion of pasta with meat sauce beckons your taste buds, your heart and stomach will join forces to honor your commitment to eat less. They will rebel.
• It's "Me and "Myself" saying to "I", "ENOUGH!"
• This is Foresight. Foresight is looking ahead at the consequences before you do something.
• You will notice this as a slight turning feeling in your stomach. You will feel a little 'off'. That's your body communicating with you. Work with your body to look and feel your best. Don't fight yourself. You will feel younger!

Put destructive habits on 'lock-down'. (I)

• "I want" is the spoiled child who is tired, stressed, bored and self-destructive.  Reasoning doesn't work with "I". We all have an "I" who is emotional and spoiled.  Nobody likes a spoiled child.
• Tough love is true love. Tough love is doing what is right, instead of what is easiest. That's what a best friend (ME) would do. 
• Keep your sense of humor intact. Laugh at the old ways and manipulate your "I" with real love. Tune in to what you feel and listen to your heart.
• When you put "I" in its proper place often enough, you feel a whole new level of satisfaction.

Every bite of food you eat is you co-creating your health, appearance and state of mind with yourself. Listen to the whisper of your body. Eat with your senses first.

• Use your eyes to see what you feel like eating. 
• Let your nose begin the digestive process so that it's more efficient. 
• When you get that gut feeling, trust it. The gut feeling is your best friend. Together, you can do anything.

The payoff for being your own best friend is connecting with naked truths about who you are and what deeply matters in your life. When ME, MYSELF and I are in sync, all choices are easier. Get into the habit of using intuitive tools like Dignity, Courage and Foresight to keep the truth on the table. You will discover that you have amazing potential!

#janebernard

Satisfaction

What does satisfaction feel like? What does it taste like?

How do we know when it's real?

Inner dialogue sabotages satisfaction. That's when we confuse bad feelings with hunger, and overeat or binge to find satisfaction. Be curious about what's pushing your buttons. 

It's natural to experience dissatisfaction that has nothing to do with eating. It's good to know what's wrong.  Sometimes we are satisfied by a meal, but not satisfied with other things going on in our lives. That's when we confuse bad feelings with hunger, and overeat or binge. Be curious about what's pushing your buttons. Most important - be honest with yourself.

To find satisfaction with ourselves and eating, we have to tune-in to what we sense when we eat. Otherwise, we miss physical signals that increase stress, and that leads to cycles of binging. Intuitive eating is not about how much to eat or what we are 'supposed' to eat. It's about eating types of foods our body needs. That's where to find eating satisfaction. Think with your senses.

Every meal is a fresh start and a new chance to find satisfaction. Be flexible about what you eat because physical needs change. When a meal is not satisfying, be curious. Pause for perspective and examine options to recognize what's causing frustration. Life isn't fair, but that doesn't mean we can't be fair with ourselves!

Every kind satisfaction connects with self-respect. A person not honest with herself has lost her best friend. Be kind to yourself. Satisfaction is a feeling of achievement.

Inner dialogue is a trap that sabotages satisfaction. It's a glass half empty attitude that fuels defeat by creating fear or doubt. If you're not sure about where your dissatisfaction is coming from, the best solution is to pause for perspective. Perspective is a feeling that things are balanced. Find surprisingly easy ways to trigger your perspective in my book, Am I Really Hungry?, in the chapter called, Create Your Plan.

It's satisfying to protect ourselves from destructive eating. Be more sensual around food and eating. You will discover new kinds of satisfaction. The next time you're in a funk and need satisfaction, treat yourself like a celebrity.

 

#janebernard

3 Little Tricks and Temptation

Because temptation is part of being human,

We all have little tricks.

 Temptation is an experience we may enjoy, but in the case of overeating, it's something we fear. 

Temptation is best managed with tenacity. Tenacity is making a commitment to be true to yourself when you eat. This will require making an effort. Decide that you are worth the effort. These three little tricks are a simple intuitive connection to maintaining awareness of purpose and confidence in our choices. The results are impressive!

At mealtime, some of us use these little tricks to remind ourselves how lucky we are to have food on the table. Here are ways this happens:

• A silent prayer of appreciation before each meal.
• Eating one bite at a time to savor the flavor and make the meal stretch out.
• Sharing food with others by working at soup kitchens, helping the needy or inviting friends for dinner.

Some of us have these little tricks to remind ourselves to eat less. We do this because we want to see our body reflect a vibrant, sexy ideal we see in our head. Here are ways this happens:

• A silent prayer of appreciation before each meal.
• Eating one bite at a time to savor the flavor and make the meal stretch out.
• Sharing food with others by working at soup kitchens, helping the needy or inviting friends for dinner.

Common challenges that can be overcome with these simple tricks include: rushed convenience eating and changing emotional eating patterns. If you are scratching your head right now because these lists are both the same, then start using the little tricks and you will learn secrets about who you really are.

Additional easy tricks to help maintain the body you want include:

•  Have your main dish on a small plate.
• Order roast beef instead of tuna or chicken salad for lunch. Tuna/chicken salad is often full of fattening mayonnaise.
• Order fajitas without the butter poured on at the end. You won't miss the taste.
• Eat dessert with a teaspoon.
• Stop eating before you feel stuffed. The way to do this is to put your hands in your lap between bites. 
• Doing this, you will notice your stomach with your hands. This will be a heads up.
• You will give your system time to recognize how much you've eaten, and ultimately, eat less.
• You will be able to maintain a clear perspective of your priorities and take pleasure in taking control of how you eat.

Tenacity is an intuitive muscle for beating temptation. The more you use it, the stronger you become. The result is, temptation won't taste so good.

"Food plays an important part in proper nutrition, but what you do to your foods and what your body does about them is the final answer." ~ Dr. Hazel Parcells
This flower will turn into a strawberry!

#janebernard

 

The Flavor of Patience

Eating is about more than food.

That's why losing weight is about more than eating.

Patience is the taste of connecting with what we really want. That's self-respect. When we ignore what we want physically, mentally or emotionally, we develop a habit of resentment. No one can move forward to achieve their goals with resentment.

Eating is about taking care of ourselves. To lose weight permanently, we have to acknowledge and feed what we care about within ourselves. Because love, conversation, sleep and relaxation nurture us, these are all ways we feed ourselves.

Approaching mealtime with an attitude of patience brings a gentle fresh perspective that we can taste with our spirit and inhale with our hearts.

• How does that happen? 
• When we're patient with ourselves, our spirit connects with hope; it's naturally soothing.
• Our heart feels efforts acknowledged, which is uplifting. 

• How does that help me lose weight?
• Self-respect reduces stress. This reduces emotional eating.

•  Seriously?! How can patience stop binging?
• We are born to enjoy our bodies. Our body is the home of our heart. When we ignore what feels right, we sabotage ourselves. Binging is a confused way we try to soothe ourselves. It's an effort to cover pain that instead, causes the pain to implode. That's why we feel badly about ourselves after a binge. 

Patience is a big part of self-respect and key to the natural power of self-control. The flavor of patience is satisfaction. Being patient by taking a deep breath before digging into our dinner is a stress buster in our busy lives. You may think, 'I don't have time for patience when I eat', but the opposite is true. Patience is an intuitive tool that prevents abusive eating.

To learn more ways of using patience and other intuitive tools, download a copy of Am I Really Hungry? 6th sense diet : Intuitive Eating.

#janebernard

Eat less; taste more.

Stop struggling with your body to lose weight.  Why not love yourself, eat less and taste more instead? It's much easier.

Taste is personal and so is our body. Our bodies are designed to be part of a flow. Just like our hearts, internally everything has a rhythm. Ignoring who we are inside doesn't change it. It's easier to identify with who we are and then be good to ourselves.

Starving, binging and overly ambitious self-discipline are all hostile to our body. When we do these to our selves, instinctively our body feels physically threatened. This releases a protective hormone that signals our system to grab a layer of fat for survival.  It may sound crazy, but that's what happens.

From a sensual intuitive perspective, the point of eating is pleasure and satisfaction.

Eating for pleasure is all about taste. Besides enjoying that moment when the perfect taste of your choice explodes on your tongue, taste includes sharing that sensual experience. We are all sensual beings. Eating is a perfect time to let that part of us shine. Find someone whose tastes match yours and split your favorite meal. If you're really close, feed each other. Be sure to include eye contact because this makes the taste experience even more amazing.

The kind of satisfaction our body gets from eating is finding more energy, physical comfort and good health. None of these can be forced. Instead, eat less and taste more. When we really taste our food, it takes less food for us to feel satisfied.

Be kind to you. Decide to give yourself the chance to lose weight naturally by enjoying food more! While your body is personal it is also an efficient, independent machine with systems, connections and it's own way of keeping you alive. Work with yourself and watch the results!

#janebernard

Results from Eating Tiny Bites

Tiny bites are the secret to eating less. But is it practical to eat in tiny bites?

3 Results from Eating Tiny Bites

(1)      We absolutely eat less.  

• The physical reason we eat less is that we give our body time to signal us that we're full. 
• We don't have time to eat as much, but we do have time for enough.
• The emotional reason we eat less is it feels good to pamper ourselves in ways that are good for our body. It's good to indulge the need to take control. Tiny bites is you taking control.

(2)      We get more pleasure from eating. 

• More physical pleasure happens by putting less in our mouth, because we allow our whole tongue to experience the flavors released when we chew. This also has the physical benefit of letting digestive enzymes that naturally exist in our mouth begin breaking down food. Eating tiny bites creates more efficient digestion, so we get nutrition out of what we eat. 
• The emotional reason for more pleasure is we're taking care of ourselves. We're nurturing our health, our self-image and our state of mind. 
• If we're eating with a partner, a sexy benefit of small bites is the tease, sharing the taste sensations and going back for more. It's especially fun with dessert!

(3)      We eat what we want.

• Physically this is intuitive eating. Because we're taking tiny bites and tasting them, we can tell if our body is pleased. We can also tell if the food is too greasy, salty or sweet to be really enjoyable. If you eat tiny bites and don't like the taste, don't eat it. Listen to your body.
• Tiny bites allow us to tune into our priorities. We're more comfortable with our choices. When we're comfortable, we savor our food. It's good to be good to you.

Tiny bites and savoring our food are sexy and time-consuming. When you don't have time for all the fun, here is how to take control when you eat tiny bites:

• When rushing, take control by dividing your portion, eating only 1/2, but still take tiny bites. You will discover you feel satisfied and not 'loaded down' when you continue your day.
• When watching TV, don't put the whole meal in front of you. Put food on a small plate or in a tiny bowl instead. When you want more, get up and get it. The act of getting up between bites burns calories. If you're too busy watching your show to get up, you're full. Stop eating and enjoy TV.
• When starving the way to take control is to remove the temptation to gorge. 
• Eat with a teaspoon or small fork. 
• Do not stuff your mouth under any circumstances. Put your hands in your lap between bites.
• Cut a sandwich into four pieces and then cut each piece in half. Eat one piece at a time. Put your hands on your lap between bites. 

After eating tiny bites you won't get that 'full' feeling. Instead you will be filled and happy. Best of all you will have taken control of your choices, your time and peace of mind. You decide if it's practical.

#janebernard

Independence and Eating

Today is independence day. We can flip a switch in our minds to connect with eating independence by tuning-in to what we sense, how our body feels and what makes us happy. Sound simple? It is!

• Independence feels like freedom and self-respect. 
• Tuning-in connects us with intuitive signals.
• Intuition is the source of our self-respect. 
• Self-respect keeps us safe, happy and in tune with our heart, mind, body and soul.

The pleasure of being in control when we eat feels like freedom. Convenient intuitive signals help us recognize what feels right every time we eat. It's convenient to be curious. We take control of our personal fate by being curious.

• Curiosity is looking closer and hearing more. 
• It includes looking closer at how we feel physically and emotionally.
• Food choices based on curiosity are a spontaneous response to what we sense.
• Curiosity is keeping a flexible attitude and open mind. Forget rules. Trust your gut.

Use independence to imagine your ideal, healthy, body image. Make a commitment to notice and respect your personal boundaries. Use the inner intuitive signal -- tenacity -- to work with this vision and connect with your dreams.

• Tenacity is power that is easy access.
• Use it with curiosity to stay focused on eating choices that feel good to your mind, body and heart.
• Tenacity creates momentum that builds inner strength. The more we depend on it, the stronger we become. Independence becomes a way of life.

Celebrate your independence by being your best self. There is always something exciting, admirable and inspiring about a person who's committed to doing what feels right. Don't be surprised if your choice to trust your gut inspires others to join in. It's not always easy to be the best we can be. But since we only get rewarded when we refuse to give up, it's worth the effort! 

"Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile and sometimes your smile is the source of your joy." ~Thich Nhat Hanh

#janebernard