Aren't You Tired of Thinking the Same Things About Your Food and Body?

How many food rules guide your food choices?

Eat this, don't eat that. This is "good" or "bad." I "should" eat this.

I have stopped reading the newsletters even the health professionals I follow are putting out there because honestly, I'm bored. We're receiving the same message again and again even from health professionals striving to stray away from diet culture still put out rules around what to eat or not to eat. I'm tired of hearing messages that everything you eat, every way you move, every way you nourish yourself is either right or wrong.

Look I get it. Life is complicated and we just want one tiny thing to be simple. Ultimately, only your body will let you know what foods resonate with your system and what does not and even then those foods might digest in your system differently depending upon the day, the month, your stress levels, your environment, the thoughts you're thinking, the quality of that food, the quality of your sleep, the soil that food was grown...I could go on and on.

I've been asking myself lately how did we get to this place with our relationship with our food and body. How did something as natural as feeding ourselves become so confusing? We have, over time, layered new responsibilities onto eating of helping us to navigate our emotions, make us feel good, extend our lives, manage our pain, and create a body that some part of us believes will make us be more accepted and loved. That is a lot of responsibility for food!

Yes, food can be medicine and support us in healing AND studies have shown that we can be eating any food and that if we're eating in a relaxation response with full acceptance of ourselves and our body, our health markers can stay the same while those who go on a diet and lose weight their health actually declines after a period of time. The diet industry relays a message that losing weight will give us everything we're looking for but we have seen time and time again that it actually does not. Other studies have shown that as women pursue an idea of the thin ideal, they are more likely to become more dissatisfied with their appearance.

And where does this "thin ideal" come from? What we are seeing in our media. For example, television was introduced in the remote provinces of Fiji in the mid-1990s. Over the next three years, teenage girls began viewing their bodies negatively, and 74% thought of themselves as too fat, a thought that had never crossed their minds previously. Many decided to diet for the first time. This is a beautiful example of how affected we are by what we're taking in externally.

We have to start asking the difficult questions of why are we reacting, acting, and thinking habitual ways around our body image and our eating so that we can shape a very different culture that simply living in a body is celebrated and food, any food, is a way to support our aliveness in this body. What you have been taught around food and body has been shaped from centuries of experimentation, cultural changes, and the explosion of technology.

Here are some questions you can begin to explore:

What body part do you focus on the most?

What memories do you have around that body part?

When did you first start to judge that body part and what was going on at that time of your life?

When did you first experience a food as "bad?"

Where did you learn that food was "bad?"

How did that person or source know that food is "bad?"

When you look in the mirror, what is the first thing you think about myself?

What new belief would you like to feed your body?

What is your favorite meal?

What do you judge about that meal?

The next time you eat it, what could you say to yourself to embrace the pleasure coming in?

How do you know what you're thinking about your meal or your body is absolutely 100% truth? Do you really know that without any doubt what you're thinking is a fact? If not, and you could think whatever you want about your meal or your body, what would you want to think?

What have you done today to challenge your beliefs about food and your body?

The work needed to be done to shape different dialogues and different relationships with our food and body can begin with us. When we heal our connection with food and body, we become a role model for what that can look and feel like to others.

I'm here for you on this journey. Email me at support@stephaniemara.com anytime.