Stop the Food Fight

I know this is a personal question, but how do you feel about your body?  What do you think when you look in the mirror?  Are your thoughts positive or negative?  What do you think when you see models and celebrities?  Do you envy their slender bodies or do you think that you would not want to work as hard as they do to maintain that shape?   How do you feel about your relationship with food? Is food the enemy?  Take a few minutes to think about these questions, or better yet, discuss with a friend or write them in your journal.

Thinking about these questions can be eye-opening for some or painful for others.  I bring this up because my goal for all my patients is to accept their bodies where they are.  Next time you are in a crowd of people, notice the vast difference in our bodies.  No one person is the same and that’s what makes us unique. Life would be boring if we were all the same height, weight, and shape. 

Do you think that everything you see in magazines and TV is real?  You would be surprised how some of what we see is not real.  Illusions are created by the power of technology in the hands of the beauty industry who wants us to believe that we are not good enough as we are (so we will spend money on their beauty products).  This illusion of beauty and “perfect” bodies are all around us. So much that we don’t know what reality is anymore. Want to know what reality is?  Go to the mall or other public place and people-watch.  Reality is every day people in all shapes, sizes, and colors; real people with real struggles and real lives.  In my Stop the Food Fight class I’ll be showing you a few pictures of air brushed celebrities that will surprise you.  I know we can’t change the media and beauty industry, but we can change ourselves.  We can remind ourselves and teach our daughters and sons that what we see in the media is not always real.  Beauty has nothing to do with your weight or body fat percent.  It’s all about what kind of person you are.

My hope is that you can get to the point where food is not the enemy and your body is not the enemy.  You can do that by what I call, “Stopping the Food Fight.”  That means you learn to accept the diversity of our body shapes, just as you accept the diversity of nature.  And second you learn to nourish your bodies by honoring your hunger and fullness. How do you do that, you may wonder? 

1. Keep a food log of when you eat and WHY you eat.  Notice how the foods make you feel. 

2. Consciously observe the people around you and say positive things about their bodies (not out loud!) and your body (you can say them out loud!).  This is a gradual process that I love to take my clients through. 

If you need more help with this and want to discuss this with like-minded individuals, join me for my June Master’s Group where we are learning to “Stop the Food Fight.” 

In the meantime, please share: how do you feel about your body?