If I were to ask you why you’re not enough, you’d probably say “I don’t know, it’s just what I feel”.
But a feeling isn’t truth. It’s not fact.
It’s just a feeling.
If I challenged you to give me a list of your deficits and defects, would you struggle to produce evidence?
“Compare teaching yourself to eat just the right amount of food to teaching a child to ride a bike. Do children learn easily when you get angry or criticize them for making mistakes? Will children feel like giving up if they are expected to do it perfectly right away? Will they want to try again if they’re ashamed about falling off? Or do they learn best when you observe what they do, encourage each positive step they take, and offer gentle suggestions on how they can improve? Do they want to keep trying because you focus on how much they are progressing, not on what they do wrong? Will they feel encouraged when they notice it gets a little easier each time?
Learning to stop eating when you’re satisfied is exactly the same. You’re most likely to learn when you’re gentle, patient, encouraging and optimistic with yourself throughout the process.
Continue reading “Expert Insight: Finding Satisfaction with Food is Like Learning to Ride a Bike”
You’re having dinner at a restaurant with friends. You skipped lunch so your stomach is growling like a caged beast as you examine the menu. You go to town on the bread basket and devour your starter as soon as it arrives. Now the waiter puts your main course in front of you. It’s a sizeable portion and you’ve eaten almost enough already.
What goes through your mind?
Which answer leads to you feeling satisfied and thoroughly enjoying your evening?
This is the blog post where I wrap up the theme for the month – in this case hope and hopelessness – and link to an older post from the archives.
There’s just one problem.
It’s the first day of my holiday and I’m currently sitting in the kitchen of a very nice little cottage in the Cotswolds. The surrounding countryside is beautiful. The weather is perfect. The only sounds I can hear are the gentle hum of the fridge, birds chirping in the courtyard outside and the tap-tap-tap of my fingers hitting the keyboard.
Why is this a problem? Well, I’ve come down with a severe case of lazyitis (must be the change of water, I think) and I’m struggling to write the post I was planning to write which, I recall, was something about feelings.
Continue reading “Gentle Reminder: Something about Feelings”
Exercise.
I can practically feel the groaning and eye rolling.
In preparation for writing this blog post I did a bit of research. I googled some exercise slogans. What I found ranged from the ridiculous – “squat till you puke” (eww) – to the downright offensive, which I won’t repeat here (guys, seriously?).
Many of the so-called “motivational and inspirational” quotes I found conveyed the message that to have the body you’re “supposed” to have, you must punish it into submission.
No wonder the ‘e’ word has such a bad rep.
Continue reading “Gentle Reminder: Make Movement Joyful Again”
“Advertising for many commercial goods functions by cultivating our body insecurity or hatred in order to sell products. If we all believed we were attractive as we are, for example, we would have little need for most commercial beauty products. Women in particular are taught that their self-worth is determined by how well they match the cultural standard of beauty.
Most of us therefore feel inadequate and that we can never measure up. And it seems as if advertisers have recently realized that they were so busy exploiting women’s insecurities, they’d forgotten half the population. So now they’re doing their best to make men feel equally horrible about themselves. Buying into these images doesn’t benefit anyone but the advertisers”.
– Linda Bacon & Lucy Aphramor, “Body Respect”.
A few years ago, when I was facilitating a workshop on emotion-driven overeating, I was talking about not buying into “the cultural standard of beauty” that Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor describe. One of the participants became quite angry and said something like “it’s all very well to say that but this is how the world works”.
Continue reading “Expert Insight: Body Appreciation vs. Body Loathing”
Julie de Rohan 