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Image courtesy of Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Imagine if your diet voice was on a job interview. Because sadly the diet and/or eating disorder hijacks the very qualities that probably could help us pursue interests and goals more fully

Think back to the standard questions about your interests, skills, long-term goals that are asked on many applications. What if your diet voice was the answering the questions.

(Diet Voice)My skills are disconnecting myself from signals of hunger and fullness, and calorie counting.

(Diet Voice) My passions include weighing myself every morning and comparing myself to others.

(Diet Voice) My mission is to pursue weight loss through eating less than my body wants in the hopes that my body will not want to gain weight back like research says it will 95% of the time.

OUCH.

None of this is said to be too in your face about what we struggle with when trying to let go of the obsession with food and weight. We just need to be compassionately honest with ourselves in how much energy, creative potential and well, life, that the worry about weight and food takes from us unless we really decide to take our power back!

For those of you who are chosen an attuned eating and body acceptance path, what have you been able to do with this energy, time and freedom? My freedom from calorie-counting and hating my body gave me the courage to leave a bad relationship, take time after college to figure out what was next, make a move cross-country then move back again to pursue intensive training to teach intuitive eating and body acceptance.

Keep in my this all this didn’t happen overnight, but was a process of building confidence by spending time on other pursuits besides wishing my stomach was flatter, even if I wasn’t totally happy with my body yet. I needed to keep eating with permission to see that my body knew how to manage itself and that people didn’t really care if it resulted in a bigger or smaller body but what they really were attracted to was how present I was when I was with them.

My questions for you are these. What skills would you develop, what passions will you let shine and what do you believe is your mission at this point in your life that you could devote your freedom?

Would love to hear about what you would want to accomplish from learning to heal your relationship with food.  And as always, please share with those looking for more encouragement in their journey towards freedom from food and body concerns.

Until then, Peaceful Eating!

Tracy