Food Is Not The Enemy

Our relationship with food is primal and complex.

We need to eat to live, but modern convenience combined with sedentary jobs means we often eat more than we need or food which does not nourish us.

As children, our mothers and others often "loved" us with food, or we learned ways to satisfy emotional needs with food and if those habits continued into adulthood, we find ourselves eating not for hunger, but for other reasons.

If you have been 'dieting' for many years, you may be surprised at how quickly you regain weight after the 'diet' has ended and how you manage to gain a little more each time.

You have effectively been teaching your metabolism to become more efficient at fat storage.

For long-term, sustainable fat-loss that you can maintain once you reach a healthy weight range is most effective when you examine your relationship with food and make some changes about the way you think of food in your life and in your body.

You may be used to the following kind of thoughts:

• food is a temptation
  
• food means being out of control
• food means gaining weight
  
• food means wanting things I can't have
• food gives me comfort
  
• food me guilty
• food is the enemy.

Well stop right there!

Shifting your thinking around food will shift your experience of food.

Try these thoughts for a week and notice the difference you experience:

• food means energy
• food means strength
• food means having enough vitality to work
• food means not getting tired before the end
• food means I have what I need
• food means brainpower
• food means muscle
• food is my best friend

Working with a food diary, without making any changes to what you usually eat, gives you a more accurate map of what you're currently doing. Don't judge, just record.

When you really know where you are, you know what to do to get to where you want to be.