Stop choking and lose weight!

"A man begins cutting his wisdom teeth the first time he bites off more than he can chew." Herb Caen

We are supposed to learn from experience. Biting off more than you can chew means gaining weight, choking or feeling bloated after you eat.

Wisdom is slimming because it lightens life's burdens. This means when you take control of  eating by noticing how much food you're putting in your mouth, you will lose weight. It's easy to be wise.

Common sense is intuitive. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Use taste to enjoy what you put in to your mouth. Talk about the pleasure of it. Pleasure of taste and texture is much sexier than calorie count for dinner conversation.

So what's stopping you? Old habits. Habits are like old age. They creep up and bend us out of shape and dull our minds. A habit that chokes is a monkey on your back. Shake it off.

The habit of focusing on negative thoughts about eating during mealtime will actually cause you to gain weight! Instead, eat sensually:

• Look at the colors on your plate. If they're not appetizing, don't eat it.
• Smell the food on your fork before it enters your mouth. Does the smell make your mouth water? Your mouth is the beginning of eating. 
• Talk more. Feed your emotions and your mind by being social at meal time. Time is all we have. Don't ignore opportunities to feed your soul as well as your body.

You will stop choking on your food and choking on your life by taking smaller bites and noticing what you're putting into your body. Losing weight is easy when you stop the diet habit and use common sense to be wise.

Bite off exactly what you can chew and focus on personal satisfaction. Don't let habits choke you! Be wise for yourself and lose weight.

You're too young to be a victim of habit. Plus, the victim mentality is so yesterday. 

You're never old enough to give up on yourself.

Comfort Food Time Capsule

Everyone knows food is a kind of love. You've heard about food that nurtures or about aphrodisiacs or even love potions. Eating is comforting because it nourishes us physically, emotionally and spiritually. Everyone has food imprints connected with memories that help us feel better.

When you eat to find comfort, you want to experience those memories again. That's what you're looking for. That's when enjoying comfort food makes sense.

Comfort food is a kind of intuitive time capsule. It's the experience of bringing a 'taste' of well-being or comfort back to you from the past so that you experience it again. 

Wanting comfort is intuitive.  Protecting yourself is too.

The trick of intuitive eating comfort food is to use intuitive tools  to think with all 6 senses to keep clear about your priorities. Then, please, eat and enjoy a refreshing time capsule experience. 

Here's how to safely enjoy the comfort in comfort food eating:

• Accept that you are going to have a comfort food.
• Commit to enjoying it by savoring the taste and how it makes you feel.
• Limit the size of your portion to the size of your fist.
• Smile after every bite, whether you want to or not. 
• Come back refreshed.  

 Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Stress Eating

Stress eating is chronic eating that doesn't make sense. It's a response we learn and unfortunately adopt as habit.  Don't gain weight because of stress eating.

• It's not fun.
• It doesn't feel good
• You don't like yourself when you do it.

Stress is a natural response to protect yourself from danger and makes sense. Natural stress has a clear beginning middle and end: You're threatened, you avoid the threat and the threat passes.

Chronic stress is a habit of the 21st century that keeps us out of touch with our genuine priorities. It's a physical out of sync feeling we identify as fear, anger, anxiety or general insecurity.  If you're chronically stressed, eating food will prolong your suffering because it won't release the stress. Chronic stress eating includes:

• Turning to the freezer for ice cream  - This makes problems worse. 
• Jamming food down your throat without tasting - This is totally unsatisfying.
• Eating a huge mound of food because it's available but not because you feel a physical hunger - This is is like shooting yourself in the foot.

When you're stressed, your whole body tightens up and hormones tell your body to hold on to fat cells just in case you're about to be attacked! By holding on to a habit of allowing chronic stress around eating, you are holding on to fat.

Chronic stress is physically released by sleep, sex, exercise and laughing. Music is also a way to release and relax your body. Tune in to music, feel your body relax and tune in to yourself.

Stress is the opposite of relaxing. Relaxing tells your body it's okay to lose weight!

Eating is supposed to be relaxing. When food is tasted and enjoyed, eating becomes a prelude to other pleasures. It opens the doors to zero calorie conversations, self-affirming eating choices and mutual excitement.  This is how to eat to nourish your whole self.

When you eat, enjoy a nice relaxed meal. You'll eat less, talk more, feel better and look your best. It's amazing how treating yourself with respect works like a vitamin!

• Eat for pleasure, 
• Eat because it feels and tastes good and
• Be happy and relaxed with yourself.

On April 16th, I will be talking about How to Break the Cycle of Stress Eating at 9:30am central time streaming on www.wqqx1490am.com.  The show with former East St. Louis, Illinois Mayor, Carl E. Officer is called "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness", which is a good thought to focus on when you enjoy your next meal.

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.