Why do we eat?

Better yet, Why do I eat?


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

Surrender and discovering of lack of control in life.

 I think the subject of control over our lives is a paradoxical idea.

On one level you can not force someone to love you, you can't force a company to hire you, you can't force your body to be healthy, you can not make someone be in your life, you can make things workout the way you want, you can't force the car to work if its broken, you can't force your child to be who you want them to be, you can't force your parents to be you want them to be, etc. I'm sure you understand what I mean by this.

Although it may seem obvious but most people go through life trying to force things to be different every moment of their lives. I realized I had no control physical control over my life the other day when I was feeling overwhelmed and beyond stressed.  No matter how much I want my body to be healthy, I can't force it to be so.  I can take some actions and do my best to move in that direction but no one can FORCE their body to be healthy.

For example Cancer, AIDS, Heart disease, etc.  If you have these things you can take steps to getting better but you can't force the disease out of your body.

On top of that I realized once I am better and able to work again, I can't force my last job to allow me to work there and I can't force any other company to hire me. Whatever happens is what I have to work with.

However, the reason it is a paradox is because I do believe we create our reality with our thoughts and feelings. And I can control my thoughts and feelings therefore if these statements are true then we do have complete control over our lives.

Yet either way we can not FORCE things to be the way we want them.

And when things happen in our physical world the only control we have is how we respond to it, that is it.

My favorite quote by Wayne Dyer is "If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

Also I started reading a book this morning which said summed all this up perfectly with "We can't change anyone but ourselves, and many of us die trying. I could be in charge of only one thing: what I harbored in my mind and the actions that followed."

Therefore I can't control what is happening or has happened but I can control how I respond to it.

I really needed that reminder.

Let's see how far I take it!

Lots of Love

My experience with Byron Katie

Today I attended a workshop, "Loving What Is" with Byron Katie.

I have been reading about Byron Katie and doing her work for a while now.

I have to say if you are not familiar with Byron Katie, most of her work is free at www.Thework.com.

A lot of things she says are so profound yet so simple its like having multiple aha moments at once listening just by listening to her.

"It's your thoughts that make you secure or insecure." -Byron Katie

Here is an example she has given.  If when you were little you thought your father was in his room, while you were in the kitchen.  You felt secure.  Even though wasn't in the same room with you and you couldn't see him. When really he left to the store without you realizing it and was hit by a truck.  But you still feel secure because you are believing he is in the other room.

Its the belief he is in the other room which makes you feel secure.  Not reality.  It goes the other way around as well.  Its your belief about reality that makes you feel stress, not reality itself.

Byron Katie has said "You can have a heart attack, thinking about how your going to die and you can't believe its happening to you and all the bad things that will follow.  Or you can have a heart attack, thinking how interesting, I am having a heart attack I wonder what happens next.  Either way you are having a heart attack, but you get to choose whether you do it in peace or not.

The best thing we can do is to learn to love reality.  When you love what is, you never suffer, no matter what happens.

We can reach this point by questioning our beliefs and thoughts.

I heard a statistic once that we have around 60,000 thoughts per day and 99% of them are the same thoughts we had the day before and something around that same percentage are the amount of thoughts that are untrue.

Think about this, think about any thought you have.  "I should be..................." Feel in the blank (ex. I should be doing laundry).  And find all the ways his isn't true, why its not true (Well I wouldn't be writing this blog).  However this is just to show how your thoughts can be false.  This is not how Byron Katie does inquiry and I will post her four questions of inquiry below.

Our reality is created by what we believe.  So do you believe thoughts that cause you pain or create peace.  If they cause you any discomfort you can use Byron Katie's The Work, to inquiry and see if they are true.  To find the truth, to find peace.


The work has really started to reshape the relationship that I have with my thoughts and Byron Katie has the most serving way of helping, by offering the work for free.  She even has a support line for free in order to help people with inquiry.

It doesn't hurt to try it.

Lots of love.

Living Life With A Purpose

Do you know what the purpose of your life is?

In my opinion its what you make it. And if you don't take the time to create or define your life purpose, then your living a life for no defined purpose and with no direction.

I believe spiritually we have a purpose whether we are consciously aware of it or not. However, consciously choosing a purpose for your life can have huge benefits.

Most people without a purpose will fall into a routine of survival or just getting by. I don't know about you but but at least for me,I certainly don't want to live that way. I have bigger aspirations that "just getting by".

When we define our life purpose, it can change many things. Every time we make a decision, we make it based on a purpose rather than what mood we are in that day, or how secure or confident we feel that day, or any of the hundreds of other reasons our decisions vary from day to day.

When you consciously have a purpose for your life, it has an impact on your thoughts, decisions, actions, and creates motivation.

I believe that there is one more very important reason to have a life purpose!!!!!

Have you ever paid attention to how many thoughts you have a day? Our thoughts and beliefs create our reality! So if you give the power of your thoughts over to chance or whatever they default to, you have NO POWER in what type of life you create.

Here is the definition:

Purpose: An anticipated outcome that is intended or that guides your planned actions.

Even in this definition you can see how powerful a purpose is, let alone a LIFE PURPOSE.

Its easy to find a life purpose and it can change over time, there are many different exercises to help us clearly define what our life purpose is. It could be as simple as asking yourself what your purpose is? This is not what anyone else thinks your purpose is and its not what you have been told your purpose is. Its your life purpose that you decide and choose to live for.

My favorite way of finding life's purpose is to write about it until you almost want to cry or you get emotional about it. Some people have a specific question to ask over and over again until you feel emotional, etc. However I think just writing about your thoughts and feeling in regards to your life purpose will eventually lead you there.

What drives you? What excites you? What would make you wake up everyday with a smile on your face? Think Big! And remember to be Authentic.

Life purpose's can evolve and they will. At first it might not be too clear or defined and as you start making choices according to your purpose and follow that path, the purpose will evolve and become more and more clear.

Give your thoughts a direction, take some responsibility and power in the life you create!

What is your life purpose?

What do you use your mind for?

Do you use your mind to bring you pain or do you use it to bring you joy?

When focusing on what we don't want, not only are we in ego, fearing something that has not happened yet, you are using your mind to create pain for you as well as produce a life of undesired manifestations.

Or you can choose to focus on what you want to create, align yourself with how the creator would think (which remember with God all things are possible) and enjoy your thoughts, which will produce a life of desired manifestations.

It's that simple of a concept.

Think of your thoughts as workers. Are you using your workers to produce things in which you want or things in which you don't want.

You attract that in which you ARE. You ARE what you think about.

Taking the time every day to contemplate and consciously redirect our thoughts to things we wish to create, not only helps us create a life more desirable but it also is more pleasurable in the moment of the thought.

Either way we don't know if either thought is absolutely true. The one in which we desire or the one in which we do not desire. However it makes sense if one of these feels better to think about and also puts us closer to attracting it into our lives, to choose that thought. It makes no sense to choose the thought that makes us miserable and only attracts more in which we do not desire.

It's about making a conscious effort to keep redirecting our thoughts onto which we wish to create. And it helps to remind ourselves that with God anything is possible (as I wrote about in my last blog). Helpful questions to realign our thoughts are, "What would God do?" Or "What would God think?" or "How would God feel?", etc..

Aligning ourselves to the way God thinks... Anything is possible, Focused only on Love and Understanding, Knowing everything is perfect, etc. immediately gives us a more joyful life.

And if you doubt this fact, think about this, "Tomorrow is going to be a very bad day."

How did that make you feel?

Now think, "Tomorrow is going to be a Wonderful day."

Now how did that feel?

The effects are IMMEDIATE. Why would you choose anything different?

I said it was simple, not easy. But sooooo worth the practice!

5 simple ways to make powerful affirmations that work

After working with affirmations myself for several weeks now I can tell you that they can be very powerful.

Remember every thought you have and thing you say you are affirming something to yourself.

Now lets make some powerful changes in your life, you are affirming things every second of the day as you think. Why not make sure those thoughts are helping you instead of hindering you!

Let's get started!

Here are 5 ways to have a powerful start with affirmations.

1) Write them in present tense.
- This one is very tricky. I suggest you write them all out and then have someone check them for you. I had created a list of about 100 affirmations and I double checked them. I then had someone else check them and they found several affirmations that were still not in the present tense! This is very crucial, you want to STATE THEM AS IF THEY ARE ALREADY TRUE!
Example - I will lose weight! or I will no longer eat unhealthy (WRONG)
I am losing weight! (OK)
I am at my perfect weight! or I enjoy eating healthy food! (PERFECT)

2) Write them with "feeling: words.
Anything that invokes emotion or passion when you state it or hear it will work that much better.
Example - I bought my own home (NON EMOTIONAL)
I enjoy living in my new home. I love my new home, it's beautiful! (EMOTIONAL)

3) Focus mainly on changes about yourself or perception
Example - Instead of saying something like "My house is organized" say " I am an organized person". Focus on you and your perception not your environment. If you would like to find a different job. Do not say " I found a new job." Say "I am making money doing something I love." or "I enjoy my job, my job is fulfilling and rewarding."

4) Record them in your own voice and listen to it daily
If you don't want to hear your own voice yet, there is plenty of software that allows you to enter text and they will create it for you. However it is much cheaper (could cost you nothing) to do it in your own voice. You can just make a short 5 minute recording at first and listen to it on your way to work.

Later you might want to record affirmations for different situations. I have different tracks, one for work (which I listen to before work), one for my relationships (which I try to listen to before I spend time with my boyfriend or even a lot of time with family), one for when I am on my way to the gym or I am hungry and craving fried food when I know I want to be eating something healthy, etc..

You can play with this but start out slow, don't overwhelm yourself or you might not end up doing anything at all!

5) Pick one main affirmation and write it everyday for 21 days.
This might seem small at first but it will make a huge difference. I will give you the first one I used. "I love my life". That affirmation has so much emotion behind it, it is very quick to write and say but is also very very powerful.

Write it 10 times a day for 21 days. Remember it takes 21 days to create a habit. You are not creating the habit of writing it, but the habit of your subconscious mind thinking it. That is our ultimate goal.



Remember don't worry too much about the details, I will show you ways to fine tune them later.

And remember as soon as you hear yourself thinking negative things, repeat one or two of your affirmations to yourself (doesn't have to be out loud). You want to affirm the good things and cancel out the negative things you think or say.

Just thinking the affirmations will change the way you see life.

Also you can leave a comment or message me if you have any specific questions.


"What we think, We become" - Buddha