Our relationship with food has a really important message in it as well as the words we say on a daily basis. Whether we’re talking about food, our connection to it or just simply reciting expressions that include food and weight about how we feel can very easily represent our relationship with food and our lives. The messages we consistently send are often mixed messages to our brain.
Here are a few examples that come to mind:
This is really eating me up – this guilt, shame, frustration
Starving for attention
Swallowing the guilt, shame
This is all feels so heavy
Tough pill to swallow
Food for thought
Chew the fat
This problem is weighing me down
Too heavy a burden
Weight of the world
This is too hard to swallow
Pushing your weight around
You see, our brain takes our words and thoughts quite literally and brings us exactly what we ask for. It doesn’t recognize that we are using idioms…
Our brain hears our words as truth and delivers what we request.
Oh, wait…that’s not what I meant when I said blah blah…I was just sayin blah, blah…I didn’t really mean that…well then, we need to be really vigilante about what the words to we think and speak.
Let’s look at a few examples…
Carrying the weight of the world
Problem
So often…more times than we’d like…we carry the weight of the world in our hearts and minds. We take on other’s 
problems as our own, our safety and the safety of our loved ones is always somewhere in the back of our minds. We are forever packing problems on which could possibly be the reason we keep packing on the pounds.
Carrying the weight of the world is very tiring and so damn heavy so it causes us great stress…and you remember what stress does to us and our bodies…Quick reminder – stress causes us to overeat, it prevents us from losing weight, our digestion is disastrous, our metabolism halts.
Solution
Lightening our load…learning how to let things go…I know, easier said than done. We need to resist the urge to take on too much…we need to learn to say no and mean it. We need to shut off the world sometimes – shut off the phone, computer, etc; turn off the 5 o’clock news; take a step back; reach out to a friend, counselor or coach to help us develop techniques to retreat and let go.
This is really eating me up – this guilt, shame, frustration
Problem
You’re right…it is “eating” us up…or maybe a better way to say it is WE’RE eating “it” up…the shame, guilt, frustration.
When the guilt, shame, frustration gets to be too much, we go to food for the answers. And we all know that food is not the solution. Emotional eating is just that eating our emotions so we don’t have to face them head on.
Solution
The movie Inside Out is a great example of the solution…we need to process the sadness to get to the joy. Emotions don’t need to be pushed away, they need to be felt so we can move on. We need to “feel” the emotion, not “feed” it.
Ok one more…
Throwing your weight around
Problem
A few things come to mind with this one and to be honest, some of the things I’m going to say are very conflicting.
We often become large and we “throw” our weight around so we can hide behind it. Or we remain large so we aren’t seen…doesn’t make sense does it?
How about if we stay overweight, no one will notice us? But, we’re hard to miss, how can no one see us? Because many in our society see us as lazy and stupid, and they just dismiss our value.
Solution
Be who you are at any weight…just be true to yourself, accept who you are right now and just have fun.
If I can help you process this in any way, please reach out…718-258-9198 or email me at coach@coachnancylundy.com.
And as always…remember it’s about time we return to the heart.
Love, Nancy
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