When you finally tap into your inner energy, you have this feeling – embodied – of “I am enough”. This happens when you complete your goals and overcome obstacles and resistance. It comes when you find your purpose and discover the inner fire that drives and motivates you on the journey.
This journey is about discovering what it truly means to love yourself and listen to your body. A wonderful secondary effect is that you will release what you have been storing and carrying around as extra weight. But not because you are on a diet or a strict exercise regime.
As long as you are on a diet, someone else has control. Not you. You have a sense that you aren’t responsible – because someone else is taking responsibility for choosing what, when and how much you eat.
I want you to discover that place where you are perfectly in touch with yourself – all your body, mind and emotions. Where you discover the source of your inner energy and learn how to fan the flames.
Do you enjoy your meals and eating? Or are you busy counting calories and carefully choosing what you can and cannot eat? Do you feel energised after eating or sluggish and tired?
How in touch are you with your body and its needs? What is the source of your inner energy and motivation?
Choice is Power!
Let me challenge you with this wisdom of inner energy:
Whoever makes the choices holds the power.
Whoever is calling the shots – the person that created the diet, the person that you are accountable to for what you ate – that’s the person that holds the power.
So… if that person is not you — the message that you are telling yourself, over and over again is
“I cannot be trusted.“
- “I can’t take care of myself.”
- “I can’t make good decisions for myself.”
- “Someone else needs to be responsible for making these decisions for me.”
Of course, one of the results of this: the moment you stop the diet, the weight returns.
Until you become empowered to look after yourself and to tap into your natural inner energy and decision-making power, you will continue to battle.
Diets are simply an abdication of power to the external world. You keep looking for an external source of control – rather than deciding and choosing for yourself at each eating occasion.
Simply a mirror
Eating is simply a mirror of your relationship with “self”.
When your relationship with your “self” is healthy, your eating is healthy. You eat to satisfy physical hunger and enjoy the moment.
Food is not the problem – or the enemy. Eating is simple.
We complicate eating and our relationship with food because we use it for comfort, avoidance, stress-relief, to stave off boredom. We pack and store all the other issues we aren’t dealing with into “eating”.
Mealtimes are no longer about nourishing the body and providing enjoyment to the taste buds and eater – they become a panacea for all ills.
Alternatively, we care so little for ourselves that we eat on the run, never taking a moment to sit down. We forget that our bodies require that we “rest & digest“.
Most of us are busy believing that the “next diet” will be the right one – “the one” that solves all my problems.
In Shirley Billingmeier’s book, Inner Eating, we find this wonderful quote:
A diet is something that people do until it works, until it fails or until they get tired of it.
They then return to doing what it was that made it necessary for them to go on a diet in the first place.
Fighting my food & body:
Unfortunately, many women (and men) have lost touch with their bodies – especially with differentiating between the physical feeling of hunger and “brain hunger”. Many people call these “cravings”. Others refer to this as “emotional eating”.
We can recognise physical hunger by the sensation in our stomach, the grumbles, feeling a little faint or nauseous. In fact, it’s those moments of “I don’t know if this was really, really good – or whether I was just really hungry”. When we are hungry, any food will satisfy us.
So, today – I invite you to ditch the diet and face the feelings – reconnect with your inner energy.
Instead of fighting against food and your body, I invite you to embrace your inner choice. A new space where you get back in touch with your inner energy, your strength, wisdom, self-revelation, respect, clarity & freedom!
Taking the temperature:
This coaching modality invites you to use eating as a thermometer.
Through various exercises that we will do, we look for your personal patterns of “this is when I eat, even though I am not actually hungry.” Sometimes your pattern will be to wait until you are hungry to start eating, but then to continue eating even after you have had enough. For others, the pattern will be to eat when bored, or anxious, or sad.
What we seek to address is first to notice the patter, and then address the real issues that arise.
This isn’t about eating, counting calories, doing more exercise or losing weight. Most likely, of course, those will all be additional benefits that you will reap by addressing the underlying causes!
Now, the next time they are buckled in their car seat and they want to get out, they see an ice cream truck and they start to holler. They have begun to associate it with freedom. This time, unfortunately, it’s raining. So you give them the ice cream to eat in the car.
Eventually, like Pavlov’s dog, they – like all of us – get conditioned to using food as a replacement for “that” desire.
Getting down to the cause: face the feelings
So, instead of treating “eating” as a problem – let’s use it as a measuring stick! If you are eating when you are not hungry – then let’s treat the cause, rather than the symptoms.
We’ll find the causes in all areas of your life:
- personal & professional
- relationships: family & friends
- physical health & well-being
- emotional & mental
- stress & boredom
- hungering for security, love, comfort and even novelty or new things in life
If we are honest with ourselves, most diets that we have ever been on have not worked for us. Sure – we may have successfully done a crash diet. But then, a few months later – we’ve put the weight back on again!
Why? Because you never addressed the underlying issues!
External or internal
If we consider, for example, counting calories: this is just another external limitation. There is no internal connection to “self”. It’s the same external measurement as weighing yourself, taking your measurements each month, calculating the grams & ounces of each portion.
Sure – you need guidelines. But you don’t need external controls.
Guilt does not motivate us – in fact, it typically works against us! Feeling deprived or punished by your food? Feeling like “I failed” – or “the diet failed”.
Emotional eating:
Have you stopped to consider that all emotions and circumstances – those situations that we give power to that “make me eat” – have no calories? The calories are in the food that we eat!
So, if we would simply separate the emotions and the event or situation from our eating – what difference would that make in our lives?
Are you truly healthy and whole if you continue to ignore and “stuff down” the uncomfortable feelings & emotions? Where do you think those feelings or emotions will surface?
And… if you were to address those emotions or those situations and events – how much different would your life be? If you actually faced the situation & emotions – if you learned how to work through it – what would happen in your life the next time you were faced with such emotion or situation?
Listening to your Inner Whispers is all about peeling off the layers – exposing everything that is not actually physical hunger – and then working through each one of those layers! In order to make eating simple, we will have to work through everything that is not eating that you have associated and tied to food! We will celebrate “Total Choice”, so that you can eat whatever you want when you are hungry! And we will deal with the rest!
Are you beginning to understand that eating is merely a symptom, not the cause?
Health, wholeness & inner energy
As a coach, my role is not to teach you how to eat again or to put you on the latest fad diet!
I will invest my time with you in the following areas:
- providing you with tools that allow you to reconnect with “self”
- figure out what your personal health & wellness issues are & how do these issues intersect and affect you holistically
- identify the emotions and situations which affect your eating occasions – coach you through those
- support you as you regain the power over your choices
- reintroduce you to “total choice” – so that you can begin to enjoy eating again!
Together, we will look at what health and wholeness mean for you! It will be a journey on which you will discover how you can be both healthy and tapped into your inner energy & vitality! This shift of focus will lead you to a place where you practice wholeness & health – physically, mentally & spiritually.
Discovering your passion for living: Thriving!
If I’m honest – the most important thing that we will do is take the focus off eating – and put the focus back on living!
When you discover that it’s not really about the food – that it’s really about your passion for living – then I will truly have achieved my purpose!
We can either do this over three or six months: the choice is up to you how much you support you think you will need to adopt a new lifestyle where you are in touch with your inner energy, motivation and moving forward!
