Its been a while since I completed my juice fast, so I wanted to share some of my thoughts on my previous juice fasting experience.
Here is how I honestly feel about it now.
I absolutely believe in the benefits of a juice fast. The problem is that you don't only have to be able to get through the juice fast, you also have to end the fast correctly and control the cravings while introducing healthy food.
I had completed my juice fast successfully, all I drank was freshly made juice for 10 days. I never cheated, not once. Now where I went wrong was when I broke the fast, my first meal was a fruit smoothie but after that it all went down hill. Within a few days I was satisfying every craving I had had for 10 days!
So all the benefits from fasting were quickly gone.
The most amazing feeling I felt while I was fasting was a lightness that I haven't felt in years probably since I was a child. I felt so light and clear. The worst thing I felt during the fast was the intense cravings for food. I felt so deprived from what I wanted (not physically) and since that is a emotional trigger for me as well it was very difficult to deal with.
I don't regret doing the juice fast even though all that hard work went right down the drain once I broke the fast, I know I learned a lot about myself through the process of the fast and more than anything I learned to believe in myself.
A very good friend of mine just gifted Albert and I a juicer as a wedding gift, so I plan on doing a shorter fast this time and seeing if I am able to break the fast slowly and with healthy foods.
We move into our house in about two weeks and once we are settled in, I will do the shorter fast then.
I plan on educating myself more on juice fasting and proper ways of breaking a fast from now until then.
Enjoy!
Showing posts with label self love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self love. Show all posts
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
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
My desires!
Through out the last few days I have written down several topics in which I would like to blog about. Stuff I know I need to take the time to focus on and allow myself to write what comes up. Writing is very healing and therapeutic for me. But, for right now I don't feel like focusing on that stuff at the moment. Although I will state them now so that I feel more accountable to giving them some time then I will get to the real topic of today's blog post.
Future Topics
1. The idea of being considerate of others NOT being priority, that the number one priority is being authentic and true to myself. This comes from years of Abraham Hicks and Byron Katie's work. "How you react or feel because of me, is none of my business" - Byron Katie
2. The concept of control, regaining control, control over my mind, my life, my body. etc...
3. Taking the concept of control even further. Hopefully I can articulate this clearly. Usually I give in to what I want as way of "feeling" like I have control and I don't have to follow anyone's "should" list. (example I should eat a certain way) however I had this moment of clarity the other day that giving into a craving, a laziness, a dislike, etc.. is giving away my control over my body and mind. When I give in to "habits" it is my subconscious (trained behavior) that I am giving control too, it really isn't the conscious me. Therefore, giving into something (going against other people's shoulds) is still actually giving up control. I guess I am sort of admitting here that I have less control over my thoughts and actions than I would like or previously thought I had.
4. And finally I would like to be able to come to a clear conclusion of how joy and control mix together. I don't enjoy going to the gym but it takes self control to do it. It seems that most decisions that we would make in order to have control go against joy. This is important to me to clarify because my number 1 priority over anything is Joy. Abraham Hicks has taught me a lot in regards creating the life I want and what is important to me. When I allow myself to be anything but joy I am not serving anyone, not myself, not my loved ones, not my friends, not anyone around me. Joy not control is my priority, however I do want to have control over my mind which will allow me to control my thoughts to only focus on joy. Okay, if you can follow all of that I would be surprised. But I need to find some clarity in this area because they seem to conflict for me and I would like to align them some how. And for those of you who will say something like well just change your perception or you will learn to enjoy it, if it was that easy and didn't take a lack of joy and control in the first place I would have already done it. So it's not some simple "change" the way I am solution, its something in my beliefs and thoughts that needs to shift and align with each other.
Those are future posts, if not only for my own personal attempt to gain clarity and shift some limiting beliefs.
Enough of that!
On to the good stuff for the moment.
My desires! I had a few friends mention to me making what I desire very clear to Source. I even had someone tell me about something called "placing your order with the universe" not sure I am that confident in my asking yet but I thought I would take a few moments to put my desires out there.
1. A home for us (Albert, Joel, Myself, and hopefully babies in the future) that has at least three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two car garage, enough space to park all of our cars (Albert has quite a few), the house being at the very least 1400 square feet, central air, convenient washer and dryer hookup area, a big comfortable kitchen..... all within the charter oak school district at a price we can afford right now and within a timely manner (like as soon as possible). A home we enjoy and love and is perfect for all of us.
2. A tight healthy body.
3. Two babies in the near future.
4. An enjoyable abundant career.
5. For Albert and I to continue to grow closer and stronger as a couple for what we have to evolve and go deeper and deeper. (I have the relationship I want with him already, now I just desire it to continue to be this way and for us to grow together in this very fulfilling and loving manner we have now.)
6. For all of us (Joel, Albert, and myself) to continue to get closer and closer. For us to be a close, respectful and strong family. To trust each and support each other.
7. For my son to love himself and his life. For him to be successful (whatever that means to him) and for him to know and feel he is capable of anything he desires. For us to continue to be very close and loving for the rest of our lives. For him to feel very loved, cherished and special and that he knows I will always be there for him no matter what. I just want him to be happy!
Wow, that is a lot to ask for but someone told me I don't have to choose. I don't expect to have everything but it doesn't hurt to get clear about what I desire in life.
I plan on looking back on this post to keep my focus on my desires and what I want instead of worrying about what I don't want.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be motivated to give some of those others topics some attention.
Good Night!
Future Topics
1. The idea of being considerate of others NOT being priority, that the number one priority is being authentic and true to myself. This comes from years of Abraham Hicks and Byron Katie's work. "How you react or feel because of me, is none of my business" - Byron Katie
2. The concept of control, regaining control, control over my mind, my life, my body. etc...
3. Taking the concept of control even further. Hopefully I can articulate this clearly. Usually I give in to what I want as way of "feeling" like I have control and I don't have to follow anyone's "should" list. (example I should eat a certain way) however I had this moment of clarity the other day that giving into a craving, a laziness, a dislike, etc.. is giving away my control over my body and mind. When I give in to "habits" it is my subconscious (trained behavior) that I am giving control too, it really isn't the conscious me. Therefore, giving into something (going against other people's shoulds) is still actually giving up control. I guess I am sort of admitting here that I have less control over my thoughts and actions than I would like or previously thought I had.
4. And finally I would like to be able to come to a clear conclusion of how joy and control mix together. I don't enjoy going to the gym but it takes self control to do it. It seems that most decisions that we would make in order to have control go against joy. This is important to me to clarify because my number 1 priority over anything is Joy. Abraham Hicks has taught me a lot in regards creating the life I want and what is important to me. When I allow myself to be anything but joy I am not serving anyone, not myself, not my loved ones, not my friends, not anyone around me. Joy not control is my priority, however I do want to have control over my mind which will allow me to control my thoughts to only focus on joy. Okay, if you can follow all of that I would be surprised. But I need to find some clarity in this area because they seem to conflict for me and I would like to align them some how. And for those of you who will say something like well just change your perception or you will learn to enjoy it, if it was that easy and didn't take a lack of joy and control in the first place I would have already done it. So it's not some simple "change" the way I am solution, its something in my beliefs and thoughts that needs to shift and align with each other.
Those are future posts, if not only for my own personal attempt to gain clarity and shift some limiting beliefs.
Enough of that!
On to the good stuff for the moment.
My desires! I had a few friends mention to me making what I desire very clear to Source. I even had someone tell me about something called "placing your order with the universe" not sure I am that confident in my asking yet but I thought I would take a few moments to put my desires out there.
1. A home for us (Albert, Joel, Myself, and hopefully babies in the future) that has at least three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two car garage, enough space to park all of our cars (Albert has quite a few), the house being at the very least 1400 square feet, central air, convenient washer and dryer hookup area, a big comfortable kitchen..... all within the charter oak school district at a price we can afford right now and within a timely manner (like as soon as possible). A home we enjoy and love and is perfect for all of us.
2. A tight healthy body.
3. Two babies in the near future.
4. An enjoyable abundant career.
5. For Albert and I to continue to grow closer and stronger as a couple for what we have to evolve and go deeper and deeper. (I have the relationship I want with him already, now I just desire it to continue to be this way and for us to grow together in this very fulfilling and loving manner we have now.)
6. For all of us (Joel, Albert, and myself) to continue to get closer and closer. For us to be a close, respectful and strong family. To trust each and support each other.
7. For my son to love himself and his life. For him to be successful (whatever that means to him) and for him to know and feel he is capable of anything he desires. For us to continue to be very close and loving for the rest of our lives. For him to feel very loved, cherished and special and that he knows I will always be there for him no matter what. I just want him to be happy!
Wow, that is a lot to ask for but someone told me I don't have to choose. I don't expect to have everything but it doesn't hurt to get clear about what I desire in life.
I plan on looking back on this post to keep my focus on my desires and what I want instead of worrying about what I don't want.
Hopefully tomorrow I will be motivated to give some of those others topics some attention.
Good Night!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
