guest post: Christie from Honoring Health

Although I believe that eating nutritious food is a key part of a healthy lifestyle, I can honestly say that the mental and emotional reasons we eat are just as, if not more important. That’s why Honoring Health is one of my favorite blogs. Christie addresses these issues that I think are crucial when it comes to having sincere quality of life.

I’ve always been especially drawn to the concept of intuitive eating, so I’m thrilled that Christie was kind enough to do a guest post for me about listening to our bodies versus listening to our minds when it comes to making food decisions. Enjoy!

Christie on listening to your body.

Hello friends of Gracie! My name is Christie; I’m a health and wellness coach specializing in changing women’s relationship with food as well as the author of the intuitive eating blog, Honoring Health. Gracie is one of my favorite ladies online so I am both delighted and thankful to be writing a guest post for her corner of the internet. I am often inspired to write more because of my interaction with my readers and Gracie is no different. When we talked about me writing a guest post, she said she’d like to to write more about how I learned to listen to my body instead of listening to my mind. That’s a loaded topic because it isn’t as simple as just doing it, it takes time, patience and most of all trust in yourself to make the right choices for you. But it is possible and I hope to shed some light on it for you.

For me, my journey to listening to my body was long and hard. I started out in a time where no one knew what intuitive eating was and there was hardly any support for it. In fact, the first group I joined was on the Weight Watchers website of all places! It was a different world indeed but I think that because I had to learn the hard way, it has really enabled me to get the most out of my process to a happy and healthy relationship with food. Through that, I was able to learn the difference between my bodies signals and my mind convoluted tricks.

It’s a mad house in there.

OK, I digress.

When I started out, I was eating anything and everything. I was binging most days on jars, yes, jars, of nutella and loaves, yes, loaves of bread.

Everyday.

I was miserable and chalked it up to the intuitive eating process. I thought it was just another failure on my part. I was forty pounds heavier and thought I was destined to be at war with food for the rest of my life. But, thankfully, though I did go back to dieting a time or two, I didn’t give up. Eventually, I realized that intuitive eating doesn’t mean that I can’t try out new ways of eating and that is just what I did. I experimented with all sorts of food lifestyles, I tried being a vegetarian, a vegan, a raw foodie and eventually settled on a gluten free, dairy free and low sugar lifestyle. Along the way, I learned the difference between my bodies signals and my mind signals by really paying attention to how it felt. I learned a couple of things about hunger and our bodies signals:

• Physical hunger doesn’t come on instantly. It slowly builds over a couple of hours. If it comes out of nowhere, it is probably your mind needing some sort of distraction, comfort or some other emotional need.
• Hunger is a primal, unmistakable feeling. Like having to pee. It just is. Now, there are cases where one has denied their hunger and fullness signals for so long that they lose touch with what they are. But, through the intuitive eating process, you can get back in touch with them and when you do, you won’t doubt them.
• Our bodies don’t want junk food. Our bodies are miraculous and can heal itself from almost anything we do to it, there is always a system of checks and balances going on but even with all that, our bodies want to run smoothly and efficiently. Think of it as your car. It will still run if you don’t get your oil changed every three months but eventually, it is going to be a bumpy ride. Same thing with our bodies, they want premium fuel, regular tune ups and an oil change from time to time. If you are craving junk food, it is because of one or two things: you are addicted to the chemicals in the food like sugar and trans fats or your mind is replacing its needs with food.
• Fullness starts in the mind, not the body. By the time our bodies have told us we are full, we are already past that comfortable mark. And the urge to just keep eating anyway is some ingrained habit that comes from some sort of emotional need. Everyone “just likes food” but really, we don’t abuse the things we like, we cherish them and honor them, our bodies included.

I know that some of these tips may be a little hard to swallow, horrible pun intended, but the truth is, in order to heal our relationships with food, we have to be brutally honest with ourselves. Society has taught us to ignore and hate our bodies but if you have faith, you can tap into the wisest resource you have - your body. The answer isn’t in the latest diet book, a calorie counter or even my blog, it is within you. And once you tap into that, I assure you, you will be the happiest and healthiest you have ever been.

I hope you have found this post helpful, if you have any questions, please let me know! Don’t forget to stop by Honoring Health and say hello or follow me on twitter for a little more of my brand of crazy.

Thanks so much Christie! xoxo

• Do you find it difficult to distinguish real hunger from mental/emotional cues to eat?
• Which of Christie’s points do you find the most helpful?