A comment on my last post got me thinking about what I"m trying to do here with this blog. In order to do that I have to give a little bit of the history of my background with food and how my attitudes towards it is(was)screwed up.

In all my dealings with the diet industry, all of the diets I have tried, one important part, the most important element I think, that has been missing is the "why" we overeat element. I am sure the reasons we overeat are wide and varied however I think for a lot of us we have some sort of disordered eating. We don't eat for the normal physiological reasons of hunger but for many other reasons. We grew up in a household that ate a lot, we grew up with parents who forced us to clean our plate, we have been on multiple diets to lose weight that set in motion a deprivation feeling that caused us to want to over eat and then the failure of the diet causes us to go into a negative spin and we go "What the hell" and eat again. I guess if any and all of this is your pattern of eating then this applies to you. It applies to me. The message we've accepted all our lives as the one that are true about diet and weight are not true at all and I'm going in a completely different direction here, away from anything status quo.

I do want to point out that I'm trying to problem solve this issue for myself. Losing weight is secondary to gaining back what I've lost over the years, a healthy attitude about food and about my body.

If you are overweight and you have a healthy relationship with food and you are well physically then you don't need me, this blog or any other weight loss advice. There is nothing wrong with being a bigger person in size in and of itself. It's much more important to be in touch with the person you are than the size you are. My body will always have fat on it. It should. It's supposed to as a woman's body. My goal is to fix my relationship to food. Losing weight will happen but that's secondary and irrelevant in many ways.

As a secondary benefit of approaching this from the aspect of trying to fix my disordered eating I've discovered I don't care so much if I actually lose weight. It's nice to fit in my clothes, I'm doing healthy things like Yoga and walking and all of that is beneficial to my health and well-being. I'm still confident I will lose weight, it's just not the main focus of my life anymore.

So, I'm trying to take the focus off the actual food and focus on the behaviour if that makes sense.

I'm not worried about sugar addiction or white flour or the intricate balance of carbohydrate, protein, vitamins etc. because common sense tells me that the closer a food is to its natural state the healthier it is. I eat a lot of raw food, I eat some cooked food, usually unprocessed except for the cooking and occasional refined food(flour and sugar. I rarely eat chemicals having given up artificial sweeteners quite a while ago after coming to the conclusion that moderate sugar intake was a better choice. For me that's an ideal balance and leaves deprivation out of the equation. I can eat anything I want whenever I want. I'm just trying to change what I want.

This message, this affirmation below is likely the biggest step I've taken in this journey to date.

Affirmation: I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want and I trust that the new messages in my subconscious will limit me so that the amount I want no longer negatively impacts my health.

Namaste