For women, learning how to care for the body is not just practical work.
It’s soul work.
Our challenges with eating, weight, and health are also realms of the soul.
If there were no deeper dimensions to health, eating, and weight, don’t you think all the practical strategies out there would have solved the chronic GI symptoms, the chronic dieting, the painful eating habits, and the ongoing pursuit for the ideal diet?
But still, “figuring it out” we try and try again.
With the aim of practicality, you will likely track your macros, write your lists, and choose specific things about yourself you’d like
to change.
And “advance” you may. Yet so often this way of doing things does not “take” for the long haul. Those who do manage to make longer term changes outwardly, often report dealing with the same struggles internally.
For example, you might lose 5 or 10 pounds yet find you still aren’t willing to accept yourself. Or you might eliminate certain foods from your diet and find you still feel anxious or still have trouble digesting.
Here’s the point in all this: Nutrition without soul is bereft of the substance that heals and transforms us long-term. It’s all performance and no transformation.
After many years, I am convinced that the journey toward the body and style of eating you want is just as psychological as it is scientific.
And of course….
Working with the body and diet is one of many empowering things a woman can do for herself due to the fact that there are loads of burdens women carry or at least have been impacted by.
(ex. comments from family members about our bodies in our youth, ageism, and fitness culture often demonstrating that herculean will and self-denial is the only way to feel gorgeous or self-appreciative or achieve physical goals, developmental traumas that get managed or lived out through eating habits, and much more…)
Without caring for these sorts of things we’ll find ourselves in our 30s, 40s, and 50s trapped in time, not knowing how to care for our bodies as grown women, but still attempting to do things like an adolescent.
So here’s to the courage to go into the places that drive your behaviors and choices and the will to stay committed to yourself and your deeper and most desired goals, with all the heart and soul possible.
As always, with love & respect,