Weight Loss as Spiritual Practice: Making Conscious Choices
Last month I wrote about healthy attitudes towards weight loss. This month, I’ll take a closer look into the psychology behind our relationship to eating. To truly know what our bodies need, we need to get below our addictive cravings to what our body truly yearns for. This means deepening your awareness of the difference between what you crave and what you need.
Addictive Eating
Addictive eating often offers a burst of psychological relief, but is often followed by disappointment, guilt, and fatigue. It is when we eat to satisfy our taste buds and emotions, taking pleasure in the flavors and momentary sensations of food, while being quite disengaged or in stress. The foods we eat in these situations are often junk food: rich in highly processed food, loaded with sugar, salt, and bad fats.
We know this: foods that are alive and optimally nutritious are fresh, organic, and mostly plant-based.
Self- Reflection leads to Conscious Choices
I have compiled a list of questions to support you in better understanding how to mentally and emotionally approach eating. Take a minute to reflect on each question and write your feelings and thoughts as they arise:
Do you rush into eating to satisfy your hunger?
When you prepare food hurriedly, do you feel anxiety, guilt, or shame? Other?
Do you ever find yourself getting overly hungry? Low blood sugar can be experienced as feeling light headed, fatigued, edgy, anxious, or off balance.
Do you eat as a way of dealing with stress? How about loneliness, disappointment or to avoid feelings?
While eating, are you involved in something else such as entertainment, work, conversation, or other activities?
Do you rush into eating to satisfy your hunger?
- What do you feel when you do? Which physical sensations and emotions do you experience?
- What foods do you generally eat when you’re rushing?
- What do you learn from this?
- What choices are you making right now with this knowledge.
When you prepare food hurriedly, do you feel anxiety, guilt, or shame? Other?
Do you ever find yourself getting overly hungry? Low blood sugar can be experienced as feeling light headed, fatigued, edgy, anxious, or off balance.
- How often does this happen?
- Is it a specific time of day?
- Is it during stressful and/or busy times?
- What choices are you making now with this knowledge?
Do you eat as a way of dealing with stress? How about loneliness, disappointment or to avoid feelings?
While eating, are you involved in something else such as entertainment, work, conversation, or other activities?
I encourage you to develop a deeper understanding about your habitual eating behaviors; this will naturally help you make more deliberate dietary choices.
Learning to Listen
To learn what your body wants for nourishment, follow this simple process when you feel the first hint of hunger:
This practice of listening is for each and every time you feel hungry. Unlike fad diets, this approach applies to both the short-term and the long-term. It’s a lifestyle choice that will serve you by assisting you in providing your body with exactly what it wants and needs. You will create a deeper, more trusting relationship with yourself so you won’t need to diet, you’ll just need to continue to listen.
- Slow down, put a hand on your belly and take a deep, relaxed breath.
- Ask your body, as though speaking to your best friend, “What do you want?”
- Then, ask yourself “why?” and LISTEN. You may be surprised to learn what your body really wants.
This practice of listening is for each and every time you feel hungry. Unlike fad diets, this approach applies to both the short-term and the long-term. It’s a lifestyle choice that will serve you by assisting you in providing your body with exactly what it wants and needs. You will create a deeper, more trusting relationship with yourself so you won’t need to diet, you’ll just need to continue to listen.
Healthful Reverence
We spend more time making money for food; purchasing, preparing, and eating food; and cleaning up after our meals than any other activity.
I invite you to consider your relationship to food as a sacred act. You’ve heard “we are what we eat”. On a physical level, that makes perfect sense. But, what about what we reflect on while preparing food and eating it?
I lived in an ashram for many years. The food was prepared with sacred music or in silence. We often ate in silence, too. This lifestyle prepared me to receive the most nutrition while savoring each bite. I experienced my meals with a healthful reverence.
As you read this next list of questions, I encourage you to write about the emotions and physical sensations you feel.
I eat a big salad daily. I know this fresh, organic, and live food gives me major nutrition. When I take that first bite, I feel a huge YES! It’s as though my digestive system recognizes the aliveness of this food and responds with a burst of energy.
I invite you to consider your relationship to food as a sacred act. You’ve heard “we are what we eat”. On a physical level, that makes perfect sense. But, what about what we reflect on while preparing food and eating it?
I lived in an ashram for many years. The food was prepared with sacred music or in silence. We often ate in silence, too. This lifestyle prepared me to receive the most nutrition while savoring each bite. I experienced my meals with a healthful reverence.
As you read this next list of questions, I encourage you to write about the emotions and physical sensations you feel.
- Do you enjoy preparing your meals?
- Which foods give your body an enlivening feeling (a YES!!!!)?
I eat a big salad daily. I know this fresh, organic, and live food gives me major nutrition. When I take that first bite, I feel a huge YES! It’s as though my digestive system recognizes the aliveness of this food and responds with a burst of energy.
- Do you have healthful snacks available to meet your hunger between meals?
- How well do you sleep when you go to bed with a full vs. an empty stomach?
- How do you feel on the days when you drink lots of water?
- Do you eat in silence?
The Art of Savoring: A Guided Meditation
As a hypnotherapist, I use guided imagery to support clients align with their innate capacity to listen deeply to their body. I invite you now to give yourself the gift of this 5 minutes of relaxed imagery.
{link coming soon}.
I wish you health and deep listening,
Sahar
{link coming soon}.
I wish you health and deep listening,
Sahar
