Keeping it Easy by listening to your body

Our eating choices were never really ever choices that we consciously made. Sure, as a baby we may have spit up some of our food and shown a preference for others...but our parents, in particular, for most of us our mothers, made the decision on what choices we got to pick from.

And eating came to be a bit of a control game with rewards and punishments.

But to chance upon food as a discovery and most importantly, as a feedback process...listening to how our bodies and moods responded after eating them, was a skill most of us were never taught.

We were taught to suppress our feelings in the name of politeness and guilt--all the starving children in Africa, blah, blah, blah.

Eating until we were full, eating enough, eating when we wanted to and were hungry and not according to someone else's eating schedules.

This post is so going in a direction that I really didn't sit down and intend to write it as, but what really prompted today's post what about the ease I feel with the raw lifestyle.

So many dieter's and people attempting to eat healthier have an absolutely hateful relationship with food. The LOVE certain foods, while they punish themselves with eating WELL---inwardly, they associating eating healthy with deprivation and eating foods they hate.

Why?

Because they are listening to someone else's idea of how and what they are supposed to eat. They are in their heads.

In the same breath I write this, I am mindful of how divorced I was to my own body's needs by being ignorant of what it actually needed. Once my head overrode the other voices from outside and my cravings from within, and I started feeding my body the nutrients it really needed, LO! and behold, I actually started craving those foods. My body and mind started associating those foods with getting their actual needs really met rather than with deprivation and punishment. My mind started associating the fake, empty foods with deprivation and punishment.

For instance, I used to hate broccoli. I never ate it. When I saw how much nutrition was in it, however, I forced myself to eat it. I noticed that after I ate broccoli and cauliflower, my moods and energy were noticably BETTER and clearer and more stable. I liked feeling that way. So, I started looking for ways of putting those foods in pleasant-tasting recipes that looked, smelled and tasted great and once I started eating those regularly, this whole white-nuckle struggle internally of staying on track just melted away and I realize now the futilility of fighting against the internal signals my body was intuitively and intelligently giving me all along.

Folks, the body needs certain nutrients in order to do it's job. When it doesn't get those nutrients, it sends out signals to EAT and to eat MORE in order to get those nutrients. When we eat nutrient dense foods, our body knows when we've gotten enough and we are satisfied and satiated. When we eat empty foods, then we can't get enough and we keep on going back for more and more gasping for air as it were.

Take the time to intelligently figure our what it is that you are deficient in and then give your body what it is crying out for. You will watch your struggle to maintain your weight or resolve your health issue just melt away.

Your body will give you feedback when you are out of balance. Your mind will verify the information signals that your body is giving you. Finally, you will just KNOW that your snarly mood is caused by not enough B vitamins or calcium or whatever, and you will know that once you give that to your body, you will feel better again.

Eating shouldn't be so hard. It should be easy. When you are eating REAL food that is RAW and hasn't had the nutrients destroyed by heat, you are giving your body the FULL requirement and not a half empty or three-quarter's empty serving.

Eat a variety. Eat raw, Eat real. Eat regularly.

Simple.