A handful of weeks ago, my beloved Michael, walked into the kitchen to warm up his morning coffee, leaned on the kitchen counter behind him, and casually said, “I think I’m gaining weight.”
Looking up from my laptop from the adjoined room, I asked, “Hmm, how do you know?”
“Well, my pants are tight. My shirts are getting too tight to button.”
Matching his energy I followed up with, “Is there anything you notice you’ve been doing differently over the last handful of months, sweetheart?”
He paused to think.
“Oh yeah, the cupcakes!”
(oh yes, the cupcakes…)
———————–
Flashback to about a year ago…
It’s a Friday on a warm summer evening and we’re heading out for a nice dinner in town at a restaurant we frequently visit, Woodfire Grill. It’s the one place in town where I can get some decent seafood and this great minestrone soup I like with big chunks of freshly chopped tomatoes, celery, and yellow squash.
We’re early to our reservation and decide to head a few doors down to the new bakery that opened. It’s a simple place. Two walls are lined with high-top barstools tables and there are a few small clusters of low tops tables. As far as I noticed, it’s empty aside from the two cheerful baristas behind the counter at the very back of the bakery. There’s a smallish glass case of cookies, cupcakes, and pastries and a display of two elaborate mock wedding cakes just to the right. I peer into the glass case with him, happy to spot a gluten-free coconut macaroon which I order. And Michael decides on a yellow cupcake with vanilla frosting (later reporting this is one of the best cupcakes he’s ever had).
So good in fact, the following day, he comes home with a half dozen of the very same frosted confections.
Fast forward to the present…
———————–
Basically, Michael has been getting half a dozen of these cupcakes nearly every week for the past year.
In addition to other sweet treats he was eating on occasion.
So he decided to stop eating the cupcakes…as an experiment.
And wouldn’t you know it? He started to drop the weight he had gained.
That’s it! That’s the end of the story. What do you think?
I’m laughing a little bit because I find this type of thing can confuse and frustrate women to no end.
…hubby stops drinking pop and loses a couple pants sizes …cousin stops eating as much cereal and makes more “real meals” and seems to get fit as a fiddle …best friend starts paying more attention to satiation and body changes ensue
Yes, it is absolutely true that simple adjustments changes can offer big changes.
Depending on how you relate to your body, you however may feel a push and pull tug on the changes you’d like to make.
You want the chocolate. You don’t want the chocolate. You have oatmeal for breakfast. Should you have pasta for lunch? Too many carbohydrates? You’re hungry in the morning but have been reading about intermittent fasting. Your vegan friend seems to be pretty happy with her diet. Your pants happen to be getting tight but you’ve got other valid priorities. You want to stop caring about your body so much. You want to treat the body as the Goddess herself.
Something as simple as eating can truly be a crazy-maker for women.
You might feel like a walking contradiction.
The Healing Agent
What I noticed in the examples I mentioned with Michael, the hubby, the cousin, and the best friend is a base level of curiosity and neutrality (not panic).
When you can approach your body with the right dose of these, just about every dietary experiment is back on the table, without much of a heavy, burdened feeling.
I once believed I could never have nearly a glimpse of this kind of neutrality. I will say, as a woman whose history involved a good deal of struggle with eating (link to my story) the neutrality doesn’t just come overnight. It happens in stages I can quite accurately track with clients. Different people enter this work at different stages. There are several stages and none can be skipped, and sometimes a stage must be revisited.
The curiosity and neutrality I speak of is available to all humans. It’s an open, innocent, and accepting kind of energy. It’s the real healing agent in any sort of self development you’re up to.
For any woman who wants to cultivate the sort of open neutrality and curiosity that allows her to explore any and all dietary possibilities, without feeling panicked, pressured, self-critical, or resentful, this stronger, wiser Self must be cultivated.
It’s likely, there are a few internal burdens or patterns that are getting in the way and they must be addressed and healed.
I have exciting news coming. That will address exactly how to do it.
I will be connecting again shortly to share a new aspect of this work that can help you work directly with any inner processes, the “little devils,” as C.G. Jung calls them, that sabotage our best efforts (in eating, relationships, and more!)
With love,
コメント