Displaying items by tag: SelfEsteem

There’s a popular decluttering process developed by Marie Kondo in which you hold something in your hand and ask, “Does this bring me joy?” If it doesn’t, you throw it out or give it away. The idea is that you only keep the things that bring you joy.

We apply the same principle to our weight management practice when making choices. Does this choice of food bring my body joy? Does this choice of habit or thought bring me joy? When we’re building self-esteem, we use the practice of being two to recognize our emotional joy separately from our physical joy.

Those of us who work on our weight spend a lot of time counting. We count calories, we count carbs, we count steps, we count time spent at the gym and time swimming. We count pounds, we count inches, we count notches on our belts and the number of changes in the size of our clothes. We count how many years it’s been since we could wear our rings.

All this counting serves us in one way or another. It encourages us, it raises our awareness, it tracks our progress, and it demonstrates our commitment. Sometimes it also discourages us, frustrates us, and lays a guilt trip on us. And all the counting I’ve mentioned so far relates to our physical selves. It’s all good, it gets a lot of our attention and at the same time, it’s not the sum total of all there is to count.

We have established the fact that we are not what we eat. Food does not control us. Food has no power in and of itself. We, the thinking, reasoning beings that we are, have the power over what we do and how we create our lives and our bodies. We are the boss of food, food is not the boss of us!

So how do we boss food around? How do we create our lives and our bodies? It’s no secret that it’s all in our heads. Everything starts with an idea. How many times a day do we start an activity by saying in our heads, “I think...?” Even if our thought doesn’t begin that way, the “I think” part is implied.

There is a saying, and a commonly held belief, that ‘you are what you eat.’ I did a little research in Wikipedia to find out where that saying came from.