The only trouble is that wanting everything to be perfect is to want the impossible. We are all mortal after all, and we are not meant to be perfect. Perfection is meant for God only. We as humans should strive for completion, and completions or wholeness is not possible until we stop trying to be perfect. The tyranny of perfection forced me to confuse spiritual hunger with physical hunger.
Is food a hurter? This strive for perfection is especially common amongst women, but men should not be excluded. The only way we often know how to deal with this is to stuff our feelings with food or to split from them. This type of eating is called binge eating or eating without awareness. Eating without knowing why we eat, in the absence of physical hunger, instead of eating to satisfy physical hunger. This could be compared to an overfull dustbin, it is an effort to empty the bin, and so much easier to just push everything down just to add more on top of it all. We seem to confuse our emotional space with our food space and treat our hurt, our anger and our frustration with food.
Is food an addiction? The feeling of being un-whole and incomplete at times can lead to using another coping mechanism: food addiction. An addiction is classified as anything we do to avoid hearing the message that body and soul are trying to send us. Something we cannot live or go without. Food becomes a drug that helps us to silence the little voice that is screaming out to us to be heard. Do not silence this little voice with food, it will only lead to pent-up emotions and unresolved issues.
Food serves a great many purposes to us. As mentioned already, food can be an addiction and for others a superb coping mechanism. Many of us who struggle with weight related problems are subconsciously using food to quiet our painful feelings and emotions that we do not want to deal with. Failing to lose weight and also to struggle to maintain weight at an ideal level can leave you feeling like a failure and you believe you do not deserve anything good. You feel that if you only had some more willpower, some more discipline and some more motivation…
Fortunate or unfortunately discipline, willpower and motivation are not all you need to succeed in your weight loss efforts. You need to start to delve deeper. You need to turn your focus to the inside and start there with your journey. Start at the core of your being; start with your personal truths. Find out what is it that is emotionally triggering you to torn to food as your rescuer? What is it that drives you to food? What is it that you believe about yourself that is wide off the mark? And what kind of conversations are you having with yourself during the day?
To take the journey into your past and to focus on present issues will help you to understand yourself and your behavior. Your understanding will create awareness and then the battle is half won already. With a little time you will become skilled at recognizing harmful thoughts and behavior. To change these thoughts and behavior is difficult, but doable. Just a word of caution, it does require a lot less effort to fall back into old habits, than to create new habits.
The sad part is that most people give up their quest for a slimmer, healthier body. It is easier not to address the issues at hand and to just give up. Emotions get suppressed, and food is always there for the rescue. It is an absolute must not to medicate your emotions with food, as it will keep you right where you are, unhealthy, overweight and unhappy. To guide you to a healthier, happier you, you need to create a positive, healthy enhancing environment with healthy living and diet.
Turn your attention away from you weight and start to focus on peace of mind. This may prove to be a tricky task, therefore I want to conclude with this. Growth is to understand what we have not yet been able to conceive. Feeling what we have never felt before, to do what we have never done before. It is daring what we have never dared. It may not necessarily be pleasurable, and it obliges us to leave our comfort zone, but to progress into the unknown, to face the tremendous impact of ourselves.
Cindy J Stone – I am an expert research writer, that spend most of my time doing research on all the many things in the world that i find …