A Healthy Relationship With Food

Many people have an unhealthy relationship with food. Food often means much more to us than simply satisfying our physical hunger. Therefore, trying to lose weight or eat healthy usually requires more than changing our diet. Few people know what it is like to have a healthy relationship with food. People today don’t have role models for healthy eating habits. We have unhealthy examples all around us; media and advertising remind us daily of our old loves (cookies, potato chips, ice cream). They tell us how much happier we would be if we continued that affair. Despite these challenges, it is very possible to develop healthy eating habits. There are some fundamental behaviors that help us improve our relationship with food. As you prepare to instill these behaviors, it helps to visualize yourself successfully adding the behavior into your life habits. This can be easier and more effective than seeing yourself removing an unhealthy behavior.

Is Your Relationship Good for You?

We all want to be in healthy relationships. But sometimes it is hard to know if a relationship is healthy or unhealthy. Healthy relationships help us feel better about ourselves and about our place in the world. They make us feel happy and safe. Unhealthy relationships make us feel unhappy, insecure, or even unsafe.

• Everyone deserves to feel happy and safe in their relationships.


• If a relationship has unhealthy qualities, you can work to make it better or choose to end the relationship.


• We can all learn ways to make our relationships healthier.

We can work to make all our relationships; with family members, friends, romantic partners, food, finances and others as healthy as possible. And we can learn how to tell when a relationship is not healthy and how to improve it or end it.

Reprogramming Your Habits...

So, how do you establish a healthy relationship with food? Learn how to diffuse the emotional power food has in your life. If we understand the triggers and temptations that prompt us to eat reactively, we will become aware of our patterns. Out of that self-awareness, we can begin to alter our eating habits and work toward eating for physical reasons instead of emotional ones. Having a healthy relationship with food is possible. Eliminating your frustrations in relation to food is possible. Here are five steps to help you get on the right track.

1. Start believing that you can have a healthy relationship with food. You might feel stuck but you aren’t.


2. Learn the difference between emotional and physical hunger. Write the definitions on a piece of paper so you have to think about what they mean. You’ll be more likely to remember them and differentiate them as they occur.


3. After every meal and snack this week, jot down whether you ate it out of emotional or physical hunger. This will help you get in touch with your physical needs and your emotional cravings.


4. For every meal and snack, use a scale of zero to 10 to measure how hungry you are. Zero is not hungry and 10 is ravenous. Concentrate on eating the majority of your food when you feel between six and eight on the hunger scale.


5. Start a journal and spend 10 minutes every day writing in it. To keep in touch with your emotions, write about your day and how you feel.

By implementing these steps, you’re already on the path to greater self-awareness and to positive change in your eating habits. As a result, you will reach your ideal body weight and you will gain control of your eating habits. Start right now.

Make It Happen!!

“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” - George Bernard Shaw

Words of Power

The difference between a dangerous spell—um, I mean goal—and a safe, effective one has everything to do with parts of speech. Most goal setters use mainly nouns and verbs ("I want my business to succeed," "I want to have a baby"). This frequently leads to either outright failure or the kind of success that doesn't make people nearly as happy as they expect. But there's another class of words that work much better—adjectives.

I've come to depend on adjectives because goals made of nouns and verbs are risky: They bring to mind "imagined situations," as opposed to "imagined experiences." The two are subtly but crucially different, and experiences, not situations, are always what we really want. Ilsa expected business success to produce feelings of contentment; Sue thought a baby would make her feel loved. Neither fully anticipated what would happen after they achieved their goals.

By using adjectives, you can avoid this trap by focusing all your efforts on the quality of the experience you want to create. This process is harder than "normal" goal setting—it requires some serious soul-searching and perhaps a good thesaurus—but it does pay off. -

Read more.... http://www.oprah.com/spirit/goal-setting-strategies-from-life-coach-martha-beck

Accurate Self-Assessment

Accurate Self Assessment: an inner awareness of your strengths and limitations

• Are you reflective, do you learn from experience?
• Do you know your own capabilities; what you can and can’t do, your strengths and weaknesses?
• Are you open to candid feedback, new perspectives, continuous learning, and self development?
• Do you ask for help from others who might have more experience, knowledge, or ability?
• Are you able to identify and target your needs for improvement and change?
• Do you have a desire to learn and grow?

Personal Power

Personal Power: a sense of self-confidence and an inner knowing that you can meet life’s challenges and live the life you choose

• Do you have a good sense of who you are and your ability to get what you want?
• Do you believe that you can set the direction of your life, and do?
• Are you able to distinguish between things you have control over in life and those that you don’t; do you avoid stressing over the former?