The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself. ~Anna Quindlen
Here we are! It’s time to start off the year long series Becoming Me. I got the idea for the name from the Anna Quindlen quote I put at that top. I’m excited to start this process of digging a little deeper and getting to the heart of some of my esteem, body, and food issues.
If you haven’t had a chance, please go back and read this post from Christie Inge and this post giving a little (long) history of me.
This month’s question…
Do you trust yourself and your body? No? What do you think would happen if you did?
The honest answer is no. I don’t trust myself OR my body.
I’m not sure at what point I got this skewed sense that my WANT was more important than my NEED.
When I sit down to a meal, I very often eat way past the point of comfort. My stomach is beyond capacity, my mind is telling me to stop eating, and I look at the plate and think “It’s a waste to leave food there.” If I’m eating at a restaurant (which is much more often than I care to admit), I get the additional “I paid for the food, I should eat the food.”
Then, when dessert rolls around, my stomach is beyond capacity, my mind is telling me to stop eating, but all I want is sugar. How could it be wrong to want something sweet to end my day? I’ve had a great/exciting/awesome/bad/busy/crazy/emotional/stressful day, why shouldn’t I reward/soothe with something sweet.
I end up sitting on the couch at the end of the night, telling my husband “Don’t ever let me do that again.”
Because at some point it became HIS responsibility to get me to stop eating.
Now, that’s just the food side. When it comes to exercise, I’m just as bad. My mind is telling me to get off the couch. My body is telling me to move and stretch and lift. But I think I know better. There’s too much on my to-do list, I don’t need to work out right now. I could get hurt, I definitely shouldn’t push myself beyond my comfort zone. It won’t matter anyway if I did push myself because I am a slow runner and I will always be slow and why try to change it?
I don’t trust my body because it scares me that if I did, I might have to change the status quo.
I am comfortably entrenched in status quo, friends.
I think if I did learn to trust my body, I would very simply eat less and move more.
It seems oversimplified, but that’s what it really comes down to.
If I learned to trust my body, I would listen to its signals telling me to stop eating when I’m full. If I learned to trust my body, I would know the difference between real hunger and emotional hunger. If I learned to trust my body, I would know that answer to my problem du jour is not at the bottom of a peanut butter jar.
If I learned to trust my body, I would not take walk breaks during runs, knowing that the need for one is all in my mind. If I learned to trust my body I would know that exercising is more important than making the kids macaroni & cheese for lunch 2 days ahead. If I learned to trust my body I would push myself a little bit further out of my comfort zone.
If I learned to trust my body, fear of failure (or honestly, success) would not be an issue.
Beyond that, the sky’s the limit.
All questions for the Becoming Me series come from Christie Inge.
Christie Inge, HHC is an intuitive eating and body image coach and is the creator of The Body Love Alchemy Community. After years on the diet and binge roller coaster, she realized that the answers she was looking for had nothing to do with the size of her blue jeans or the food on her plate. She set out onto a quest to make peace with food, her body and her weight once and for all. She began sharing her experiences on her popular, heartfelt blog. Overtime, she found that her greatest gift was helping women, just like her, overcome their struggles, too.
She has taken what she learned in the school of hard knocks and coupled that with what she has learned in her professional trainings to create a system that has helped thousands of women to make peace with food and to stop hating their bodies. She offers support, insight, and real world tools for creating a body and life you love. You can stay in touch with by subscribing to her inspirational weekly eLetter or join the conversation facebook and twitter.
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