What I am becoming more aware of, is the fact that when I find an intrinsic value in myself that is NOT related to outside value, I am able to stand more confidently in who I am. This helps me not only appreciate how far I’ve come, but it also helps to turn the volume down on the tapes.

Here are Seven (7) Self-Love Techniques:

1. Stop dieting. I mean this. I know that some people are dieting who read this blog and I have to admit that it did help me lose weight. HOWEVER, had someone told me that I could have intuitively ate instead 10 years ago, I would have laughed in their face. BUT, I would have been better off for it. Put the calories, scale, points, fat grams away. Learn your body, deal with your emotions, and stop dieting.
2. Wake up every morning, look at your naked body and find one thing you love. I have been doing this every morning for the past week. It’s like an private, daily, exposed moment with yourself. I noticed the starting of abs today For me, this has helped because I have spent SO many HOURS in front of the mirror hating myself, especially the way I looked. So just one thing.
3. Sleep. I can’t stress this enough. When I get enough sleep, I find that I am able to not only focus more throughout the day, but I eat better, smile more and am more gentle with myself.
4. Smile After reading this post, I sat in front of the mirror and smiled at myself. Why not? Smile when you’re walking down the street. Who cares what people think! They’ll probably wish they were as happy as you.
5. Move a little. For me, I find that when I work out (run/zumba/yoga/stretch/weights) I find little parts of me that I didn’t know that I had. Strength, stamina, flexibility, mental power that I get to tap into. I find that moving helps me clear my head, gives me insight into my untapped abilities and gets me a bit sweaty.
6. Accept a compliment. This is hard for me, but after reading this post, I now make a concerted effort to accept compliments. People are wanting to give you a gift and learning to accept it was hard for me. BUT, a bit eye opener. For me I felt vulnerable and/or that it was a pity compliment. But I am enjoying accepting the gift, it’s like getting a little present. And sometimes they can be quite moving.
7. Keep a ‘Success Journal’. I love this! I got onto this after a professor at uni told me about hers. Write down your success, not your failures. A compliment, a great e-mail, a comment on your blog, a conversation, a great workout, a binge-free day, a huge emotional hurdle you got over, getting enough sleep. We don’t praise ourselves enough..so go out..get a notebook..decorate it and keep it somewhere. Write down those positive things.

These are just some techniques which I have found have helped me along the way to build up Self-Love. I am joining Tina for her 30 Day Self-Love for the month of September. I am tracking my thoughts on this at the 30 Day Self-Love tab at the top of my page. Join along if you want with your own blog, or start this in your success journal!

Tell me, what is at least one way you practice self-love?
Has the idea of self-love changed and/or gotten easier for you?

~Mish

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• Making The Connection: Have you thought about where your food comes from?
• But I Can’t Honor My Hunger Cues: do you struggle with eating only when you’re hungry?
• Get It In My Belly: do you think putting rubber-bands on your food is ok?
• Sorry I’m Not Sorry: are you done saying sorry for being you?
• Let’s Make A Deal: need a pick-me-up and accountability?
• Body Image: Seeking the Truth: how are you and your body doing?
• Why I’ve ‘Let Myself Go’: amazing read!
• 10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn: do you agree with the list?
• What IF: I Manifested A Healthy Relationship: great post!

Until next Thursday..keep writing amazing stuff!

~Mish

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I lived on ketchup as a kid.

Further, I was raised with the mentality ‘that food is meant to just keep you from starving’, the appreciation for food wasn’t instilled.

So, this whole discovery of myself has actually enabled me to discover food. To let myself slow down enough to enjoy the food. To really surrender to the whole experience!

Actually stopping. Chewing. Eating. Taking Pleasure In. Adoring. FOOD is something that I have NOT ever done before.

When my students made The Pioneer Woman’s macaroni and cheese the other day, I knew I couldn’t eat it cause it would upset my tummy. But the one bite I did have was amazing!

I didn’t just want to eat some blah pasta with sauce…I wanted something that I knew I’d enjoy! So I modified MamaPeas Recipe for Quinoa Lasagna with Mae’s Hummus Cheese, I can’t do soy as it calls from in MamaPea’s recipe.

Mama Peas recipe, minus Soy cheese, with swiss chard in each layer as well as hummus cheese.

Now the close up

It was SO tasty. I enjoyed every single bite. I have NO idea how many calories and/or points are into. I had a HUGE slice and it was fabulous. Not only was it healthy, but it was enjoyed.

So yes, I LOVE food and I am learning to ENJOY it as well.

Have you ever noticed how gorgeous beets are?

I sat and stared at one the other day!

Do you LOVE food, but find yourself not ENJOYING it?
What foods do you genuinely enjoy?

~Mish

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She baked carrot cake, couldn’t wait for it to be baked so she ate the top of it, while standing.

Stuffed her face.

Cried.

Then e-mailed a friend. Tweeted another.

They were the wings to pick her up.

After my cool-down I re-read the e-mail the I had sent. It was interesting to not only look at how I wrote the email, but also the feelings which drenched the words that I had written.The thing which I am becoming more aware of is the fact that when I ‘flip the switch’ of the binger I go into a completely different state of mind. I would call it manic, although I am sure that it’s not the technical definition. Frantic. Focused. Unstoppable. Exhausted. My whole energy goes into binging and trying to stop my binge.

It’s a learning curve.A life lesson, IF I choose to reflect upon it and offer my mental-self forgiveness. I woke up with a different appreciation, I suppose, for the binge. I am not angry. I am just thankful that when I fall into the hole of manic binge despair, I am realising that it’s not the end of the world.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s the beginning and continuation of my healing.That I, You, We all have the ability to reflect upon what triggers things…IF we decide to face down what caused it. If we reach out and not suffer in silence. If we choose to RESPECT ourselves enough to push through the s–t that is holding us back, keeping us stuck, rendering our minds stagnant. If we offer ourselves forgiveness.

If you’ve dealt with food issues, do you have a different ‘frame of mind’ that you snap into when you ‘slip back’? What are the triggers? What have they taught you?

~Mish

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————————-

Reteaching Loveliness ~ Maman

So far, training for the half-marathon has been a true life changer and there’s still 14 weeks to go!

My body is positively responding to my consistent adherence to the established training regimen. I can only imagine the good things ahead!

This past week I finally posted to all my friends on facebook that I was training for a half-marathon.

Now that the physical aspects are set in motion, it’s time to work on the mental piece associated with self image.

Michelle suggested I read Women Food and God by Geneen Roth. The book explores one’s relationship with food and how that relationship mirrors our feelings about love, fear anger, meaning, transformation and spiritual beliefs.

Each page provided opportunities for me to think about my self-image, the image I created and responded to with food over the past 48 years.

By Kindergarten, I was 4 inches taller than any of my classmates. I felt self-conscious, I just wanted to be small like all the other girls.  I’ve always felt I have fat thighs (I call them thunder thighs). I have told myself for over 40 years that if I  was only had thinner legs I would be happier.

Geneen’s writing speaks directly to our wishes of having our bodies smaller here or bigger there and she put it all into perspective with one simple sentence:

“Despite your argument with your physicality, the fact is that you are here and the 151,000 people who have died today are not.”

She’s right.

My facebook post generated a response from Kelly, one of my classmates from Kindergarten. Someone whose legs I’ve always wished I had.

She wished me well in the half-marathon and I told her that while I had won all the races in Kindergarten my goal was just to finish this one.

Kelly’s response to me came out of the blue:

“Hon, the reason why you won all those races in Kindergarten is because you had such beautiful long legs (even then!) I will be cheering for you in Vegas. You’ll be great…you always are!”

I cried.

With one simple statement, my friend of 43 years completely discounted the negative image I created for myself.

One aspect of Geneen’s book is grounded in the work of poet Galway Kinnell who wrote:

“sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.”

Kelly unknowingly did just that.

Has anyone ever unknowingly provided the opportunity to reteach your loveliness?

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NO, you’re NOT going to go home and sulk. Go to the beach for a walk.

It’s a beautiful place, where I find pure serenity.

I mean seriously, it’s in the middle of winter and I was basking in the sun.

There has been a mental shift happening and learning to say NO has been one of those things. I am a type-A, go-getter, PEDAL to the METAL type of a girl. I go 100% all the time, rarely ask for help and totally sacrafice who I am to make sure that I am living up to other people’s standards.

I don’t always know how to say NO!

School is cranking up. My runs are cranking up. I skipped out on my run yesterday and stewed all-day long today about how guilty I felt for not running the 5 miles that I had planned. I got out of class and decided, NO I am NOT going to feel guilty anymore about this. My mind is chattering away but my legs have it in them to run it.

5 miles/ 46:54 / 4:1 intervals / under 10 min/miles

When I used to run, I would PUSH myself to run the amount scheduled even if I felt like I needed a walking break. I decided, NO, I will NOT push myself. If I need a walking break then I’ll take one.

Learning to say NO is an empowering sentiment, especially in the intuitive living. Saying NO, because you need rest or saying NO because ‘I can’t make it this weekend, I need to focus on certain things instead’ or saying NO because you won’t let your emotions take over.

For intuitive eating it’s NOT about saying NO to certain foods because they are ‘bad’ or they are rubber-banded or because you only have one ‘naughty day’ each week. It’s about saying NO, because you’re full content, aren’t going to eat your emotions, and/or are not going to mindlessly eat.

Yes, life is about saying NO. And learning how to use it to bring balance into your life.

When did you learn how to say NO?

~Mish

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This whole notion of ‘dealing with tempting food’ was brought about by this post.

Put ‘em away: Out of sight, out of mind. I enjoyed two muffins and then packed the rest away in Tupperware. I added two elastic bands as a visual reminder to stop eating them.

Followed by this photo

Now, let me tell you something…I have tried these tactics as well!

• Putting towels and tape over my mouth when baking
• Hiding food
• Putting notes on food
• Measuring EVERYTHING and putting it into bags with point labels on it
• POINT labeling EVERYTHING in my house
• Weighing egg yolks
• Brushing my teeth
• Chewing ice/gum
• Wearing, that’s right, a rubber band on my arm and snapping it every time I thought of something ‘naughty to eat’ to remind myself that I didn’t need it.

You name it. I was the QUEEN of distraction tactics. They worked sometimes, and others they only induced a larger binge. The point is that we have created so many tactics around our eating that we are missing the point: IT’S NOT ABOUT THE DAMN FOOD! (repeat) IT’S NOT ABOUT THE DAMN FOOD!

• It’s about WHY you think and/or feel that you need avoidance tactics.
• Why you would put rubber bands, notes, points on food to encourage moderation, avoidance and/or over-eating.

the WHY..is really the rubber band you should be snapping.

The more I think about these methods, the more I get annoyed and honestly sad. Perhaps it’s a huge shift in my mentality, but I just don’t feel like blaming, shutting out, controlling, rubber-banding my life away because of food. Instead I just want to keep asking myself why I feel like going into such measures.

More though: Do I want my kids to rubber-band/note-write on their food when they’re five, because they see that’s what Mom does?

What measures have you gone in your tactics to control your food intake?

~Mish

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1. I LOVE my readers
   
2. I put my life in Google Calender and I cried. ok, not really. But MAN OH MAN I have A LOT of stuff going on with my life right now.
3. Blogging MAY take a back seat sometimes. I use blogging to avoid doing school work. I have had a love-hate relationship with school and the more I avoid it the more stressed I become. So I am putting blogging on the back burner sometimes, because I have to.
4. I am going to make changes to EJ. Because I feel like I am finding more and more of my voice and am excited about who I am becoming. I don’t JUST want to write about my recovery, I want to write about ME.
5. I feel CONFINED sometimes by this blog. Meaning that I feel like I am not writing about everything in my life. I don’t want to be become your stero-typical ‘healthy living blog’, what I want this blog to be is an intuitive living/eating/reciping/working-out blog. An intuitive living blog is what I think I am going for here.

So, I think that this realisation, which I have been thinking about this whole weekend, is actually a manifestation of what I have been feeling in the past couple of weeks.

There’s more to Me.

Ever felt confined?

~Mish

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It’s been an interesting journey discovering the CORE issue of my being. It’s been awesome. I have taken back layers to find rotten material and flower patches I have never thought imaginable. However, what I have been searching for is … WHAT keeps me from the zen like state where I am in life and life is in me.

Avoidance. You…

It is the five year old girl, watching her Mom leave..trying to avoid what doesn’t know.
It’s the third grader who asks for another cupcake at a party..trying to avoid being left out of the girls group because I was fat.
It’s the college girl who is hiding behind sweatshirts and dieting..avoiding her insecurities.

It’s me..right now. Avoiding school with too much blogging. With baking. With eating everything in the kitchen. Entertaining thoughts that got me nowhere.

Avoidance, you are brilliant. You keep people ‘at ease’ by giving them coping mechanisms to detour then from what they need to be doing..or could be doing. You allow stress to build up, to be squashed by food, drugs, blogging, exercise, etc.

You’re brilliant.

But, I am going to work on avoiding you..avoidance. I appreciate you’re protection over the years, because I wouldn’t have survived my childhood. However, I am not the four year old girl, 3rd grader, college students or even the person I am becoming right now, because I don’t want to be. I don’t want to keep avoiding life because I think it will be too much or because I am too afraid of myself.

So, thank you for what you did. Now scurry along.

~Mish

Do you avoid things?

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• 8 Food To Help You Lose Weight: isn’t it awesome to see people like Ryan on other sites?
• What Body Image Means To You: what does it mean to you?
• Eating Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat: great discussion about fat and change of thinking with food
• Women Food and God: Chapter 2: like great comments/though provoking discussion?
• Time to Step-Up: ready to get on with it?
• As You Read This: ever had a health scare? get your boobs checked?
• How To Write Courageously: how do you write? who do you write for?
• Do You Count Calories, Fat, or Weigh Your Food?: so do you?
• The Post In Which I Admit Defeat: if you couldn’t run a race, would you go cheer others on?
• The Announcement: would you put your photo up online with no make-up?

Hope you find one that you like

~Mish

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