8 Week Series: Thought Shifts for Food
I'm excited to bring you this 8 week series on changing your thoughts about food. The use of food as a way to cope, check out, relax, and buffer from things that were going on in my life created some very negative thoughts around food. My hope with this series is that you can begin to change your thoughts and create new thoughts.
There are two different thoughts that you can have "How much food do I get today?" vs. "How much food do I need today? For years, I lived in the space of "How much food do I get today?" What amount of food could I consume and still stay with in my calorie limit. How much crappy food could I eat to try relax, go unconscious for a second to what was going on or check out and still remain within this number I wanted to.
Well first of all if you have struggled with emotional eating you know that once you start using food as a way to check out; it only last a few seconds so you have to continue eating if you want to stay "unconscious" for any amount of time. (I use the term "unconscious" frequently; it is purposefully negative because I do not what to go unconscious with food to a life I love.)
When I'm thinking the thought "How much food do I get today" This immediately creates feelings of anxiousness in me, it creates feelings of scarcity, and not having enough. Those feelings then create the action in me to eat. To prove to myself that there is enough, to go unconscious for a bit to the feelings of anxiousness I'm feeling. You will start to identify the feelings that create the desire to check out, relax, stress eat or go unconscious. The action of eating to go unconscious then creates negative results. I gain weight, I continue to overeat, I have negative self talk...the list goes on.
But when I shift my thoughts to "How much food do I need today?" I get a whole new set of feelings, actions, and results. Thinking the thought "How much food do I need today?" Immediately makes me look inward. I start asking myself questions like "Am I hungry?" "What do I feel like eating?" "Why am I eating?" I start feeling in control. I feel mindful. I feel there is an abundance and I get mindfully decide what my body needs to fuel itself. These feelings are going to create completely different actions in me. By my actions now being mindful and coming from feelings of abundance. My results will be are going to be supported from those action.
Today instead of focusing on how much food you get. Focus on how much food you need. When you feel yourself going to a place of scarcity and the anxiety coming; take a moment to shift the thought to what do you need. You will start to feel your feelings change. When you change your thoughts, your feelings follow, when you feel a different way, you act in a different way, whatever your actions those will always give you your RESULTS.
