Are you eating mindlessly, without choice, feeling deprived? Notice how you might be living like this, too! As a coach for emotional eaters, I’ve observed that as people evolve in the way they eat, they tend to evolve in the way they live! This can also be the case for you. As you eat in a more deliberate, fulfilling, empowering way, you will naturally live this way too!
When you savor your bites of food, you savor the moments of your life.
When you are fully present with what is in your mouth, you tend to live in the present moment where it is more peaceful. You are not carrying the baggage of the past or the worries of the future.
When you allow yourself the freedom to choose what to eat according what your body wants, you begin to notice how much choice you really do have in life. You feel your personal power to affect your life. You can also choose to make a little room for what you mind wants.
As you eat mindfully, you live mindfully. You are less likely to fall into the automatic and mindless energy of a habit. When you’re on automatic, you lose your choice. You will be more aware of your thoughts and choices and can choose a new path in that moment and start a new habit.
Practicing to pay attention to how hungry you are leads to periodically checking in with yourself. This way you can discover what you’re feeling and what you need in that moment. If something is bothering you, you’ll be able to pin-point the cause and how to deal with it to feel better.
By becoming attuned to your body and what it wants to eat and by fulfilling its requests more often, you give yourself a powerful message. “My needs get met! My desires are important and I am worth having them fulfilled. Someone cares to listen to me. Someone loves me and is always home to take care of me – ME!” Your self-esteem will rise.
Stay with yourself, while eating mindfully, instead of escaping yourself by overeating or binging. While staying with yourself, you can still escape the situation. This way, you can feel that someone is always there for you. You will feel supported in this world.
Eat according to your truth of exactly what and how much food your body wants, and therefore, live according to your truth. You will gracefully speak your truth and live authentically, remembering who you are at all times.
Listen to your inner signals to tell you what and how much to eat. You will trust your gut instincts or intuition. You will come to trust yourself to know what is right for you and have faith in your ability to fulfill your needs. Your confidence will rise.
Living from the extremes of “all or nothing” or starving or stuffed, is linked to perfectionism. It allows you to feed the belief of, “I’m not good enough.” Instead, eat from the middle ground, never letting yourself become too hungry or too full. You will live from a place of balance and begin to adopt self-acceptance.
Cheri Huber said, “The way we do anything is the way we do everything.” How do you want to eat and how do you want to live?
If you eat with restriction and deprivation, you restrict your view of yourself and deprive yourself of what might be possible in your life. When you appreciate the rich colors and flavors in the food on your plate, you notice what is rich and magical in life. When you see the abundance of food available to you whenever you need it, you see how bountiful the universe is and how generous it is to you.
When you eat a variety of pleasurable foods, then you make room for a variety of pleasures in your life. When you eat what you love, you give yourself books, clothes, activities and people that you love.
Routinely take a moment before you eat to breath in peace and calmness and ground yourself. You will find yourself able to do this in an instant whenever you need to de-stress.
These are all scenarios that I have witnessed in people along their journey to their natural weight, leading them away from emotional eating and toward their true hunger.
How do you want to live? With freedom to choose, truth and authenticity, trust in yourself, mindfulness, peace, pleasure, fulfillment, intuition…? You can start by eating this way!
