If you asked me this question weeks ago I would of said hunger is the reason I eat.
I don't know if now when I reach for food it is different reasons than it was before or if the very strict health diet and juice fast has just dramatically increased my awareness with food.
But I can tell you that the reason I eat is surely not because I am hungry.
I went 10 days without food and never really felt Hunger. I had cravings that is for sure, but I never felt real hunger. I definitely know the difference now between real hunger and cravings.
So then, why do I eat?
Well, because I want to!
But lets take that a little further........
A friend and I have been supporting each other in discovering and learning more about our eating and health habits with hopes to eventually get to the place where we make healthy choices all of the time.
My journey is slightly different than hers in the way that I am not trying to change any of my choices right now.
After my juice fast I have realized that I have the will power and ability to force myself to eat whatever I think I should be eating. Heck, I was able to not eat for 10 days. So then why is it that at the moment I eat all the "bad" stuff, at least one meal a day?
It certainly isn't a lack of will power or ability.
Let's see if you can follow this. I have a desire to be healthy, I just don't have the desire to eat healthy. And I want to have the desire to eat healthy but I am not willing to force myself to feel something or do something I don't want to do.
Therefore the change, the discovery, the shift must come from within me.
A natural motivation to choose to eat healthy is what I am after. Not forced, Not depriving myself, not restricting myself, but a natural inclination to choose healthy food.
I completely believe in myself and my ability to fix the symptoms. I can force myself not to eat the "junk". I have that ability and its not even as hard as I thought it would be. But I don't want to fix the symptoms I want to fix the cause, the reason WHY!
So why do I eat? What is the real reason I choose to eat even when I am not hungry?
I can tell you what I have come up with so far.
Boredom, Cravings, etc......
But let's take that even deeper to the level of awareness that I am at right now.
I eat because I feel overwhelmed and eating feels good, eating shuts everything else down for those few minutes, it slows everything down. I don't have to think, I don't have to think about what I should be doing, what I am going to do, what I need to do, about how out of control my life is right now, about how I don't have very many options of what to do, about how my body feels like crap, of how I feel useless, worthless, and out of control. For a few minutes when I eat that all goes away and I feel good! So it numbs me.
Now its not as depressing or as sad as it sounds.
Also eating makes me feel satisfied, at least for a few minutes. Something I don't know much about. My esteem survives only on achievement. When I am not achieving I feel like nothing, when I am achieving I feel wonderful! At the moment not only am I not achieving anything, I am not able to help myself or anyone else improve the situation, and I have no way of even trying to achieve anything at this moment... I feel lost, pointless and so unbelievably overwhelmed and stressed that the only way I know how to handle it is to eat.
Some people play golf, some people have a beer or two, some people smoke a joint, some play sports........ I eat!
Now I am not some crazy obese person. I surprisingly haven't even gained all the weight back that I lost since the surgery. I lost a total of 23 pounds, wow, if only I was able to keep that off. Ha ha, I gained most of it back but not all of it.
And when I talk about eating I am not eating like crazy, I am just extremely aware of my food choices now. I still have an extremely healthy green smoothie for breakfast. Drink green tea all day long with lots of vitamins and supplements. I am just very aware of the other choices I make and how they don't serve my well being.
But!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't need solutions.. I don't need another thing to try or another thing to try to convince me to force myself to do what is best for me. What I need is to continue down this path of discovery, uncovering what is causing the unhealthy choices and changing that.
I am no longer willing to try and fix the symptom. I have proved to myself I can do it and I have done it many times before. I'm tired of the back and forth. I hope to get to the root of it all. Will I gain some weight in the process, I'm sure I will. But I am no longer willing to punish myself for desiring "yummy" foods.
I love myself enough to give all the effort I would give in keeping myself on a strict diet to focusing on shifting the cause of my unhealthy eating habits.
So why do I eat?
Obviously I haven't gotten to the core of it yet otherwise things would be shifting and my habits changing, but I can tell you I am "pulling back the layers".
It is my intention to shift from a desire to be healthy but a desire for unhealthy food to a DESIRE to eat healthy food and feel good about it.
One should never do something that doesn't feel good, it will back fire.
I know most will not agree with me but in my opinion doing something that doesn't feel good or come naturally is not loving yourself either. We must find a way to LOVE loving ourselves. Until we are there, we have work to do on the inside not on our outer world.
The answers are within!
"Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without." ~Buddha
"Dig within. Within is the wellspring of Good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig." ~Marcus Aurelius
You can’t break a bad habit by throwing it out the window. You’ve got to walk it slowly down the stairs. ~Mark Twain
The greatest discovery of our generation, is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their state of mind. ~William James
You can outdistance that which is running after you, but not what is running inside you. ~Rwandan Proverb
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