One of my clients was sharing an experience she had at a wedding she went to. During the cocktail hour a friend of hers refused to eat the baby carrots and cucumbers set out as hors d’oeuvres and instead pulled a small baggy filled with meat slices out of her purse.
Why this “inconspicuous” baggy of meat do you ask?
No, she wasn’t faithfully supplementing a major iron deficiency.
She brought the bag of meat because she was pre-occupied with her body weight (reported by my client) and was following a ketogenic diet, diligently tracking her 20 net carbs or less.
If you know nothing about the ketogenic diet, simply know that it requires a person to eat very, very low amounts of carbohydrates (yes this includes cautiousness around carrots and cucumbers) and relatively high amounts of dietary fat. It’s been used to treat drug-resistant epilepsy for some time and research is pointing to possible efficacy treating other neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, sleep disorders and more. (source. source. source. )
This friend of my client had none of these health conditions or any other major health challenges.
A Sideways attempt at Personal Power
Many women are trying very hard to regain some sense of personal power through their eating or changing their body in some way.
By power I mean:
Power Within – the power of connecting with the forces of life and your own spiritual center
And…
Power To – the power to do something because you say so
These are very different than, Power Over – which has to do with domination over something or someone
Power Over, which is an damaging and distorted form of power, is a very popular strategy women use against…THEMSELVES.
(What Marion Woodman would call the Power Principle, the wounding aspect of “the Patriarchy”)
How does it show up?
CONTROL
Controlling the body: by cutting calories, dragging the body to the gym through fatigue or injury, denying real feelings of physical hunger, emotional flow, or intuition.
Overpowering or Overriding what’s happening in the body: by reaching for stimulants like coffee, sweets, extra portions of food, or alcohol.
It’s important to make this point: Asserting ‘power over’ can be a symptom that points to an injured sense of personal power.
So please take heart, here…loss of power is a wound that needs healing.
Power Retrieval
The medicine for a loss of power is Retrieval of Power, (real power – the Power Within) through specific conversations, acts, and practices that empower my clients and help them become an active participant in creating their own healing and well being.
This type of work aims to restore a sense of personal power so you can enter the wild, wild terrain of eating, nutrition, body, relationship, and challenging symptoms with a stronger and more resourceful sense of self.
It means eating in a way and taking action in a way that’s no longer in reaction to a hole or injury you’re trying to fill or fix, but inspired by a feeling of personal empowerment.
Sometimes we can’t see these “power over” patterns so clearly. The programming can run itself.
This is why we get support… an act of power!
So wait…what about the Keto Diet?
Ha! Ok. Ok.
For those that are still not sure what to make of the ketogenic diet, it has a therapeutic value in the right circumstances. It’s also important for women to know there are other, far less restrictive, ways to support the body in reaching fat metabolism, which is in fact a very healing metabolic state for the body – something I teach my clients about when they’re interested. This may have been useful information for the keto-conscious woman in our above story!
Alright, those are my thoughts for today.
Thanks for reading.
With love & respect,
Laura