I was asked the other day for a few tips on weight loss. Where do I begin? Weight comes with a lot of baggage (excuse the pun) and it's difficult to give tips when the places people come from with their weight or diet issues are so varied and deep, but here are some thoughts that may or may not help but perhaps will at least resonate and get you thinking.
For a start 'weight'
and 'diet' have pretty negative connotations. Let's change our thinking
around that right from the beginning. From now on we are thinking in
terms of 'health' and 'well-being'. We are thinking about nurturing
our bodies with goodness instead of abusing them through
deprivation and restriction. Instead of loading our minds with thoughts
of weakness and restraint and denial, try thinking in terms of abundance
and indulgence and freedom.
Your body gets you through
your day. It may have carried your children for nine months in a nest of
love and warmth and health. It may still carry them down stairs that
are too steep, over puddles that are too deep. It is the body that your
partner worships to make those children in the first place. It is the
body that you may occasionally gift with exercise (we'll get on to that
in a minute). It is the body in which you learnt to crawl and walk and
jump and skip. Who are you to deny it the bounty it deserves? The health
and goodness it deserves?
Whatever thoughts you may have in your head about yourself or of
your body image, try taking a new view of your body as a separate entity
with all those wonderful attributes and look at praising and rewarding
it, not punishing and denying it.
It might seem irresponsible to encourage those
chocoholics out there to think in terms of indulgence or abundance but
not if you carry around that first thought about your new life choice-
you are choosing to nurture your body with goodness. With that
in mind, consuming that bar of chocolate or having the third biscuit may
not seem quite so tempting after all. The goal now is not to lose
weight, but to gain health.
How? Choose health and well-being every time. Even in the face of
your
food or body demons, choose health and well-being. If you love
chocolate, have some because you love it. Just don't have the whole bar-
that's not love, that's something else altogether and we are having no
part of it.
Know your body: what
nourishes it? It may be sea air. It may be tomatoes. It may be a soaking
bath.
Whatever it is, choose those foods and exercises and places and people
and things
that nourish your body.
Exercise. Choose something that excites you and makes you zing.
Choose something that works in your day and lifestyle. Even one minute
of deep, concentrated and relaxed breathing does great things for your
body. Choose something, anything!
Change takes time and this kind of change is hard.
Start small and simple. Be
gentle. Be kind. Even if it's just a tiny bit every day, show your body
you care.
This is just the tip of the
iceberg in terms of gaining health and well-being but it's something to
start with.
Good luck and love x All this is incredibly
important as you are modelling to them their
attitudes to their bodies.
Do you want them to look at themselves
full of loathing and disgust? Or
like you are beginning to change to
now- with love and gratitude?
Note to mothers of daughters
It is a great
motivational
thought for gaining health and well-being to ask yourself:
what sort
of mum and woman do I want to be for my daughters? what do I
want
them to see when they look at me- someone who is desperately
unhappy
in their body or someone who celebrates life and well-being? If
you
don't make this change towards gaining health for yourself, do it
for
your daughters. But most of all- do it for yourself.
For M x
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