Speak the Language of Love to Your Body
It’s that time of year when everyone is talking about love. Red and white hearts adorn all the stores, children are busy making shoe boxes into mailboxes to house all of their Valentines and dinner reservations are filling up fast. Chances are, we have a response to this holiday; we love it or we hate it, or maybe we’ve just outgrown it, but the messages are all around us either way.
This got me thinking about the messages surrounding us when it comes to food and diet. They are really too many to count. But a more important question is what are the messages you tell yourself about food and about your body?
We are all telling ourselves a story about our bodies. For many of us that story is not a kind one. But that language, that inner dialogue, that negative voice, has a tremendous impact on our ability to love ourselves and subsequently to accomplish the change we may want to see in our lives. Our language can uplift and encourage, empower and inspire, or it can defeat, distort, and diminish. What story do you tell yourself about food and your body? If we see food as our enemy, and ourselves as someone incapable of change, or worse unworthy of it, then we will never truly be free even if we lose the weight.
The story we tell comes from somewhere -- and for most of us it is programming that started a very long time ago. Someone told us not to trust ourselves around food. Someone told us food was our enemy. Someone told us we were fat, long before we ever truly struggled with our weight. That programming created a belief system. For example “I don’t deserve to eat, because food just makes me fat.” or “I will never be loved if I don’t lose weight.” Those belief systems then create an identity. That identity creates actions. The actions create habits and behaviors that only reinforce the identity, an identity that was NOT formed by TRUTH.
So what can we do? We can get curious. This is no place for judgement, that is the voice we have been listening to for too long. We can ask ourselves, what is the story I have been telling myself about food and my body? Who am I being when I eat? Am I being who I am or who someone told me I was? And then we can ask if that is based in truth. We can change our beliefs and in turn begin to shape a new identity which will result in different behavior.
We can shed all the weight, but if we don’t change the way we speak to ourselves, the beliefs we embrace about our value and worth outside of our weight, then we won’t find the freedom and happiness we truly desire.
So this Valentine’s Day, let’s listen to the voice in our head. If it isn’t speaking kindness, compassion, and truth, let’s break up with that voice and find one that can speak in love -- no matter what our weight, no matter where we are on our journey.
“What story do you tell yourself about food and your body?”