Recover Your Radiance

Recovering from an eating disorder is a journey. For so long, I fed myself from a place other than listening to my body. I was either in a state of rebellion or should-ing all over myself. It was a process of learning to come to listen to my body.

I was able to create structure around feeding myself through the practice of macrobiotics. I must have intuitively knew I was allergic to the foods I was taking in and purging out of me, 4 years ago when I learned about self-healing through cooking whole foods, eating seasonally and locally when possible. It was not immediate, but over the course of one year or so, I put down sugar, as well as the need to purge the food I was eating. I recovered my health and independence by learning to take care of myself and balance my energy with food through the study of and practice of macrobiotics. I spent so many years learning how not to feed myself, that it has been a journey of learning to trust that I am not going to get hurt when I sit down to eat.

The blessing in all of this has been the ability to get present in my life. You can use the practice of eating mindfully to help you process where you are in order to get out of your way and become who you want to be. If you are in recovery, do you take the time to nourish your body? If you are struggling with your weight, are you clear about how to eat?

One of the most important parts of my day is mealtime. I am taking care of me when I sit down, bless the food and chew well. More than what I eat, is how I eat. I try to get present every time I sit down to eat, and use the time to be with myself, or share gentle conversation with friends and family. Your body responds to the messages you send to it when eating. Notice the conversations you have with yourself around food. Are you grateful for the food you are ingesting? If so, your body will thank you. If you are eating to get through, while being busy, you will trigger the fight-or-flight adrenal hormones, attracting into your life more stress than before. You may be caught in a cycle of eating when stressed out–did you know the simple act of chewing can realign you with your parasympathetic nervous system and supercharge your metabolism? Check out a past post “Chew Your Way to a Radiant Life” for more information on the benefits of chewing.

What, where, how, when, and why you eat are all things to think about. Especially if you are concerned about your weight, it is important to create some structure around food so you can worry less and live more, eat optimally and create a radiant life according to your deepest desires, and clear any resistance to your radiance that may be showing up in the form of thinking your body needs to be other than it is in any given moment.
The practice of creating a radiant life starts right now, where you are. Start by accepting all of you and appreciating your body. Feed yourself nourishing foods and loving thoughts. Your body will respond and your radiance will shine forth as never before. Keep coming back and learning how to coninue to grow and blossom into the radiant self that you are here to become.