Feeding your body is mind, body, and soul work. It is the result of your thoughts, your choices, and your connection.
You have a relationship with your body. How would you describe yours?
Are you nourishing and supporting your body?
Do you love and pamper your body?
Are you grateful for ALL it does for you without you even thinking about it?
Is it your best friend?
Take time to think about how you treat your body. How you talk about it. It needs to be loved and cherished. It needs your positive attention.
Your body needs different things depending upon the circumstances, the time of year, or your age.
One of the best things you can do for your body is listening to what it needs.
Food is the foundation. Food is medicine. The right foods support you to having a healthy life. Think about having a diet that supports the life you desire to live.
If you are an athlete, you need more of certain types of foods to keep your muscles working at their best.
If you are more sedentary and aging, your body is asking for something different. For example, as you age, you don’t digest as well. Your body stiffens and needs you to move and stretch it.
If it’s aching and you have lots of inflammation, notice the foods you are eating. Dairy could be a culprit.
If you have a muffin top, your liver might not be functioning at its best. Your hormones might be off. Try an elimination diet – take out sugar, gluten and dairy.
Think about your macronutrient balance – the protein, complex carbohydrates, and essential fats you are choosing each time you eat. Dr. Mark Hyman talks about your meals having 75% non-starchy veggies. He likes you to think about eating from the rainbow – red, orange, yellow, green, and purple veggies and fruits each day as you make choices.
Your body knows what it needs.
If you are wanting comfort foods, what if instead you realized your body is asking for you to comfort it. It’s needing some attention, loving.
Our need for food is more than nutrition for our body. It is psychological, too.
As Vernon Howard says, “We must try to see the vast difference between factual knowledge and intuitive wisdom. Facts are useful for the Outer World, but wisdom serves eternity.”
When you are eating, who is eating? Is it the rebellious teenager saying I want to eat what I want? Is it the disciplined you desiring to maintain a healthy body?
Notice who is coming to the table. Recently, I realized my spoiled brat wanted a voice in what I was choosing. What parts of you want to be at the table?
Those parts of you that you deny will come to sabotage the choices you make unless you allow them to be a part of your life.
Think about your choices.
What is your relationship to your body? Do you embody it or do you see it as separate from yourself?
Self-care is important to keeping your body fueled and operating at its best. Rest, meditation, or pampering.
What pleasures do you give and allow yourself? You might be trying to get those from food. See how life is calling you to shower yourself with things you love to do.
What thoughts are filling your mind about your body and life?
Do you have a brick wall of shame, guilt, disappointments, and resentments that are causing you to be carrying a heavy load?
Do you spend time looking in the mirror and telling yourself, “I love, adore, and accept you exactly as you are?”
Do you spend more of your time and energy on what’s not working rather than being grateful for the 90% that is providing you with a good life?
Life is giving you back what you are feeding it.
Is your life what you want? Notice where you’d like it different. Notice what you are feeding it in that area.
What does your body need? Is it some attention, affection, or acceptance?
Spend some time in nature and listen to what your body is saying to you.
As the Dalai Lama says, “The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your actions will be.”
What fuel are you feeding your body?
Your body is your vessel to a happy and prosperous life.
Pay attention to what you are feeding your body. It’s your best friend. Treat it like that.