This has been a question that has made me very curious for a long time. I’ve known for a long time that it is well recognized that it happens, that food has a way to numb our feelings and that we use food for so many emotional and comfort reasons, but what intrigued me was, how can I adapt and live with my emotional and eating patterns, when I know what to do but help me I sometimes cannot control my cravings. They do not go away entirely, and as I clean up my diet they continue to show up and help me to be aware of my reactions and responses to situations and how I see myself. So I have to say a big fat Thank You to the fact that my need for comfort eating was in fact asking me to listen and see what I was and am actually doing.
A detox opens you up to yourself to be more aware of yourself.
A detox be that a juice fast, a colon cleanse, a raw food diet has cleaned you up raised your vibration and has taken away the heavy lower vibration foods that slow us down and slow down our mind. Food is used to numb our senses and detach us from our heart and what the body is desperate to let us hear and feel.
A detox including a short fast is the best way that I know of to get you to into a safe place where we willingly start to listen. When we stop digesting food we have the down time to re evaluate, re charge and reset all of our systems. It is one of the best ways I know to really take care of myself. And I have seen it over the past 7 years watching wildly different people get clarity and understand themselves better.
So when I was able to learn more about this I jumped at the chance to further my own investigations and to be of better service to you and have some more fun around food. I hear the same or very similar stories, time and time again. Questions and curiosities about food being your drug of choice, and how can we learn to live with it and overcome the overeating cravings. It’s all so, so serious out there, that I am happy to play with this subject for as long as it takes. I will experiment and continue to coach and run workshops around this subject and help you to get clarity for yourself about what food is calling you to really see and feel.
So to all us over eaters, binge eaters, controlled eaters and all the rest of the comfort eater types, I want you to know that I will be slowly leading you down a path of self discovery.
It is way bigger than the food we eat and how we eat and even bigger than the when and why we eat. It’s a huge subject that has got my attention and my passion rising.
Everyone has to eat, and so we cant avoid food all together. Even if we have found raw food and juices and are really healthy most of us still use food in some way and as a way to sedate ourselves, and that’s OK if we are first aware of why and what we are doing. This is just Step One.
Deeper would be to see that food and our relationship with food is a mirror of how we react in just about every relationship we have.
Its not enough to know where the patterns originated, but to go further still would be to re connect with your body so that it can personally tell you, and so that you can hear and feel when you are stressed and would normally use food as your only tool to de stress and comfort the situation.
But first wouldn’t it be great fun to suspend all of our beliefs around food, what’s good, bad, healthy, what he or she thinks are the best superfoods ever or the best diet for everyone. We are all different and we were all educated, and brought up differently, how to be with and around food, our understanding of etiquette and manners, and as we are all different we want to be fulfilled quite differently as well.
No one diet fits all.
So then we have to take responsibility for ourselves, our health, our own likes and dislikes, listen to what our bodies tell us when we eat something, or in a situation that is difficult or extreme. So experimentation and discovering is what’s called for, to go on an adventure with the food and the mood you eat in.
In daily life it’s common that we don’t ask ourselves how we feel at every turn, how did that affect me, how did that situation make me feel, so when we get a chance for the quiet time we begin to feel. For most of us that would be in the evening, when we are alone, for me when the children have gone to bed. We are alone at last and the body and heart are so happy to get our full attention, the information about the day begins to literally flood in. There is no volume control or speed control its just a huge Woosh, and its actually very difficult to take it all in, overwhelming is a good way to describe it. So to slow down this stored reservoir of information and feelings we choose an addiction. One of the safest is food, others are drink, gambling, shopping, any form of distraction that gets you to relax and not feel the situation. Workaholics are often not aware that this too is part of their addiction pattern.
The body wants to be heard and if we don’t take time to hear it then it will make us stop and listen, accidents happen, illnesses, viruses, burnouts and situations out of our control will manifest Into our lives.
I had a telephone client recently who was using food as her nourishment and comfort but she did not know why. She wanted help to shop her habit of emptying the fridge and a wine bottle once she returned home, as the consequences were that she had gained weight and wanted to lose it and she was exhausted all the time.
The discomfort for her had reached a pinnacle point and she knew she needed help. We resolved that when she was able to feel into her body and she recognized that she needed stronger boundaries. All day long she would help out and take on more work that was her job, and she was giving away her power.
We worked on her expressing herself better with some fun exercises that we did together and we worked on expressing her anger and frustration. She can now vent her anger in a really healthy way when her boundaries have been crossed, and when she communicates she can do so from a safe place and now she feels heard and respected and especially that she is able to articulate what she wants to say.
She explains that “I can now stand up for myself and I am so proud of the way I can tell someone what I want and need. I have never felt that I can feel into my body when it’s hurt or angry, I have learned how to relax and I know what I can do. I am still learning but I feel so happy with my experiment so far. My eating is much, much better as have realistic boundaries that I have chosen to respect, Oh and I am looking for a new job.”
A detox will open you up to be more aware and conscious of yourself. You have given your body a great and long-awaited opportunity to tell you and speak to you about what S/he needs. We need only to learn how to listen.
