Food Fight!

Is every meal you eat a food fight?

You can throw food into your mouth, but not be fighting. You can throw your hopes away, but not be eating. The point is, you are in control of what you fight with, what you eat and how you socialize.

Ever been so frustrated at meal time that you would rather throw food than eat it? Food fights are usually emotional, but eating is always physical. Some people don't know how to connect with what they really want.  The next time someone throws food at you, give them a gentle kind hug.

Stop throwing food. Make love, not war the next time you eat. When you reject your body, you're fighting with yourself.  It's the kind of food fight you can't win.

If you're in the habit of food fighting, here's how to get juiced instead of junked around food.

• Before you start a meal or snack, be honest with yourself, Do you really physically feel like eating? If not, then leave the food fight and do whatever you want - as long as it's not eating.
• If you are genuinely ready to eat, look at what's on your plate and decide you will taste every bite. 

Leave emotional fights out of eating. Learn to connect with your body by eating intuitively.  Your common sense solution is sensual.

• Be determined and tenacious. Do not let yourself down.
• Don't take food for granted. Be grateful that you are able to eat.
• Really taste your food. Make tasting a priority.

To really taste your food there are rules:

•  Eat only for physical pleasure and the opportunity to socialize.
• Let people you eat with know that you will probably be eating slower and as a result, eating less, because you are going to really taste every bite that goes into your mouth.
• Chew with your mouth closed. This way, your taste buds can give you real physical taste satisfaction. 
• Swallow before you add food to your mouth.
• Do not talk with food in your mouth. Even if someone asks you a question, keep your mouth closed and taste your food. They can wait for you to speak.

When you're fighting with yourself,  zig-zag thinking makes you look at your body when you eat as if it's alien. Eating intuitively keeps you in touch with your body, because it's a response to physical cues like hunger. You'll feel satisfaction.

Take your time. When you respect your choices, you will notice that others do, too. Don't let a food fight block common sense.

 

Parting quote: When you rise in the morning, give thanks for the light, for your life, for your strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason to give thanks, the fault lies in yourself. Tecumseh

Self-Empowerment for Losing Weight

How can I help myself lose weight?

The easy way is: be true to yourself. That means be honest with yourself. Only by being honest can you have the kind of self-discipline that is empowering. It's intuitive to take control of what matters to you.

When you honestly want to lose weight,  use the drive of determination and be patient with yourself.  Self-discipline's a natural way to connect with yourself and have the pleasure of feeling good. It's worth the effort if you honestly want to like your body.

Patience is the secret of real satisfaction. I don't get satisfied when I give up. The truth is, I want my body to be healthy. I don't feel good when I ignore my truth.

When I hold my stomach in and stand up straight, I already look like I lost weight. Try it and look in the mirror.

Do you have the courage to live your truth? If you truly want to be your healthy weight, follow these tips:

• Eat Less; chew more.
• Put your sandwich down between bites and don't pick it up before you swallow.
• Put your fork down between bites and don't pick it up before you swallow.
• Notice how your food tastes. Learn what tastes too sweet or too salty.
• Notice how your body feels. Learn what fills you up and what causes bloat.
• Wait at least 15 minutes before you have dessert to make sure you really want it. Then, if you do, eat only half - and enjoy every bite.
• Drink water while you watch TV.
• Eat a hard-boiled egg or a handful of walnuts or almonds before parties to take the edge off your hunger. Then, socialize more while you hold your stomach in.
• Talk More; eat less.  Feed yourself emotionally by socializing at mealtime.

Self-empowerment begins with being true to yourself. 

• Don't abuse yourself by binging.
• Don't punish yourself emotionally. It's a vicious cycle you can end.

Self-empowerment happens when you trust your truth. Being patient means you respect yourself and what matters to you. You have the power. Use it!

For more answers, tips and tools for self-empowerment, get a copy of: Am I Really Hungry? 6th Sense Diet, Intuitive Eating.

Lose Weight - The 2 Minute Solution

This is not a dream.

The one way to lose weight consistently is to be in tune with your body. You can connect with your body by daydreaming for 2 minutes before you eat. Take that time to tune-in to your dreams and rediscover with the big picture of who you are.

Daydreaming helps you stay in touch with how you want to see yourself.

• It's body image power. 
• Allow yourself to visualize how you want to appear and how you want to feel.

Reconnect with simple daydreams and your self-esteem will change. You will  respect yourself differently.

• You'll discover a new found patience with who you are. 
• The result will be a new relaxed way of eating

Remember the art of leisurely dreaming when you were young, a time of innocence, of privately listening with your senses to the rush of your life. Noticing what you're looking at and smelling is normal. It’s still important to do this. Appetites are personal.

• Do this for 2 minutes before every meal and watch emotional habits and your body change.

Binging as a physical "solution" to emotional stress is like putting a band-aid on a  broken heart or rubbing butter on a burn.  It's a mountain of tension with nowhere to go.

• Allowing yourself to daydream relaxes tension. 
• Get ready to be surprised.

According to diet and nutrition experts, an apple a day can help fight being overweight.  Other experts publish lists of healthy snacks. Experts everywhere are telling you how to stop binging or start dropping pounds. Obviously, there are so many experts because there is no one answer.

• Daydream to relax and regain your perspective. 
• Then tune-in to your body.  
• You'll recognize what's right for you.

Your senses have always been the way of being in direct touch with your world. Listening to intuition is not daydreaming. It’s staying in touch with the present. That's where your appetite is.

Binging- Getting Intimate

Let's get personal and talk about intimate relationships. The most intimate relationship you have is with your own body. 

• You sleep with it every night, dress and feed it. 
• Your body gives you pleasure and physical power. 
• You wash it, touch yourself, use your body to get places and use it to be noticed.

Maybe you work out or maybe you hide your body with certain clothes. Everyone has an intimate relationship with their body. It's an emotional connection. 

Classic diets insist you focus on a plan and ignore physical messages from your body. 

• That's why people binge. 
• When you ignore what you feel physically, you stress out your body. 
• The result is an unhealthy emotional relationship with food. 

Binging happens because you lose your natural connection with physical satisfaction. It's the result of an emotional sense of confusion and isolation.

• When you binge, taste is not on your mind because you are thinking with your emotions, not responding to physical hunger.
• Binging is a desperate, very personal plea for comfort.

Your body is the power source of your mind, your heart and your soul. Pay attention to it. 

• Eating intuitively is a natural connection with satisfaction.
• Use dignity and courage to respect yourself.
• A healthy emotional connection is protective, not abusive.

Eating intuitively is relaxing when you eat, so you taste your food and notice how your body feels. Stay intimate with yourself. Stay connected with your body.

Get off of the diet dogma treadmill of emotional isolation and notice your intimate needs. You can use your senses to connect with your body.

• Stress around eating impacts every physical pleasure you might enjoy. 
• It's not good for intimacy in any part of your life.

Being intimate starts with respecting yourself. Honor yourself by forgiving binging and then, give yourself a chance to listen to your body.

• It's a skill you can re-learn.
• Enjoy your body; don't abuse it.

Make Love

Making love is not abusive or thoughtless.  Everybody wants love and lots of us eat to get it.

The truth is, no amount of food will satisfy emotional needs.

Be bold and imagine eating is making love to your body. In fact, when taste is the focus at mealtime, emotions that sabotage eating choices go away Try it. Nobody has to know about it. But, you will feel thrilled because you will be honestly relating to yourself when you eat.

Tuning-in to the taste and flavor of what you're eating, relaxes your whole body. It's a secret of good health and weight control. You digest food more efficiently and get a new perspective about why you're eating.  This keeps you in control.

• F stands for fulfill. Fulfill your physical needs by tasting what you put into your body. This will spare you the pain of overeating.
• O stands for occupy. Let eating occupy a place of pleasure in your life. Don't rush or force it. Pleasure is another word for relaxing. Tense eating makes you gain weight.
• O stands for overcoming old habits that disconnect you from your body. Habits are a sign of aging. Let go of what hasn't worked and taste your food instead.
• D stands for discovering your determination.  Do it. Make the taste connection with your body and respond to it.

Savor flavor.  Emotional eating is the result of losing this important connection with your body.
It's old news that food is Love. But it's still the truth. Share what you taste with others; savor the pleasure together. Stay young in your mind by connecting with your body.  Tune-in to the pleasure of being in sync with yourself.

The next time you eat, make the love connection with your body. Take control of how much you eat by tasting your food and be sure to have some fun.

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