Day 60 - Discover Your Beverage Profile: How What You Drink Impacts Your Emotional Life

Step 1 in The Awake Eating Method is Cleanse. It is all about investigating how what you drink affects your body and your life. Here is a sneak-peek into what you will learn about yourself in session with me:

What follows is a general breakdown of different types of beverages, and what they symbolize emotionally. Find what beverages you drink on a regular, consistent basis and investigate whether the emotional needs correlate for you. These are general, from observation with clients, so take what resonates and leave the rest...

SODA: Needing direction; wanting more goodness and positivity in daily life.

• Soda is essentially sugar water. It is sweet and gives you an initial burst of energy. The problem, though, is that soda is like a life preserver in your day. It may keep you from sinking initially, but it is nothing like getting on a boat of true nourishment. A life preserver keeps you floating aimlessly, while a boat (symbolizing a nourishing meal or water) gives you actually stability and direction to follow your dreams.

DIET SODA: Withholding pleasure; restriction from what you really want in life.

• When you consume an artificial sweetener your taste receptors send a signal to the brain to prepare the body for the delectable food on its way. But nothing comes. It is like a child about to eat an ice cream cone.... and then it falls and splats on the ground. Drinking these beverages may symbolize that you are not allowing yourself to experience true pleasure and goodness.

COFFEE: Believing that you are not enough; that you do not have the abilities you need.

• Coffee (or caffeinated beverages) can give you an advantage or edge. You have a burst of energy from your stress response and your mental acuity is enhanced for work and creativity. Overtime, though, it depletes your ability to function at the bare minimum without it. This drink is used because deep down we really believe that we do not have the abilities, skills and talents within to achieve what we desire. 

ALCOHOL: Escaping from your true expectations of life; numbing negative thoughts.

•  Alcohol can be a powerful sedative. Your brain and neurotransmitters are altered, almost as if we are letting another identity take over, because we are not enough. You may feel reprieve from what is overwhelming you outside of yourself, and numb from the thoughts from within. The tendency with alcohol is to push away the true potential that we feel is possible in our lives.

WATER: Flow, investment, cleansing. 

• Being that we are made up of 70% water it is obvious of its power in our lives. If you drink water on a regular basis you allow things to come and go in your life. Drinking this beverage allows a river of abundance to make its way into your life; where new packages come to you from upstream, and what no longer serves you can be released downstream.

Once you have identified the underlying emotional reason that you are choosing beverages, we can begin to work on addressing your true needs with something other than diet...

Nat

Day 59 - Is the Recession Making You Fat?

Have you ever had a negative conversation about money, the stock market, the economy or the state of the world, and subsequently felt hunger bubble its way into your awareness?

Have you ever watched the news packed full of war, murder and rape, and suddenly felt the desire to snack on something rich and dense?

What about watching a horror, suspense, or doomsday movie? Do you have the urge to calm your nerves with food during or after?

A recent study was presented August 5th at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in Washington, D.C. In it the researchers took two groups of participants. One group was primed to have a 'survival' mindset with words like "withstand" and "deprivation." The other group was primed with an abundance mindset with words such as "plenty" and "ample."

The participants with the survival mindset ended up choosing food that was high calorie and dense, while the abundant-minded participants simply chose the items that were the most tasty to them at the moment.

What this study is implying is that when we feel that resources are in jeopardy we naturally compensate by choosing calorie-dense, life-sustaining foods. 

Normally there is nothing wrong with this. Our psychology is intertwined with our physiology; we are designed to perceive a threat or coming famine and act on in with instinctual behavior. This is one of the reasons why the human species is still here.

The problem is that we are bombarded with the survival mindset constantly. Any news segment proves that with the now standard phrases of the 'bad economy', the 'stock market falling' and 'the recession'.

You may even have due reason to react. Maybe you have been out of work, your investments are in peril or there has been talks of lay-offs at your company. You could be skimming by every month to pay your mortgage.

The key, no matter what your situation, is to realize that a healthy and happy body is THE most important asset in whatever may come. 

So, our goal today is to get you to shift from instinctively reacting to joyously embracing the world.

Here are some tips to shift your mindset to abundance, 

and truly believe it:

1. 80/20 Rule: 80% of the time that you watch or read something, have it be positive, good-feeling news or entertainment. 20% of the time become informed by observing the negative things. You are not putting your head in the sand. You are becoming aware, while also choosing to feel good and grateful for what is working in your world, and THE world. 
1. One way I do the 80/20 Rule is by simply watching 15-20 minutes of the evening news (morning news seems to be more fluff) while devoting all of my other free time to inspirational or comedic reading, movies or TV programs.
2. Solution-Mindset: Every time that you find yourself experiencing negative emotion when you come up against the survival aspects of living, simply find a quick action-step. For instance, if you get fearful about the rising cost of food, make a commitment to, instead of buying your Iced Latte every morning, putting that money away to buy canned goods and non-perishables for your pantry. This feels good and 'abundant' verses feeling helpless and doubtful.
3. The Power of Three: Every time you think a negative thought, come up with three better-feeling ones. This one works like a charm!
4. Spend Money on Food: I know this sounds pretty silly - but so many of us spend money on other things; coffee, clothing, trips, tickets, alcohol, etc. Make sure that you are stocking your house full of food so that you do not get caught in the 'survival' mindset. 
1. I know this one sounds counter-intuitive. Nutritionists have been saying for eons to not buy too much food, because we will end up eating what is available. Yet we are finding that deprivation and the feeling of  'not enough' is what perpetuates detached eating behavior (just like the above study shows).  

When you use the above tips, you will notice a dramatic increase in your ability to function and thrive no matter what economic environment you live in.

To a day of abundant-mindset thoughts and eating...

Nat

Resources: Wild Stock Market Could Make You Eat More, msnbc.com, by Rachael Rettner

Day 58 - Why Losing Weight for You is Harder Than Ever Before!

Over the weekend I talked with a weight loss expert. Struggling with weight most of his life he had tried many different diets and gone to extremes to achieve the body he wants.

Now he is at a crossroads. Every time he goes on a 'fast' or eats a limited diet of raw foods or one-meal-a-day, he is finding that it is getting harder to lose weight than ever before.

He had become an expert at losing weight but was a total novice at the real goal in mind; achieving a natural and effortless weight!

Most Americans are experts at losing weight. We know how to count calories, identify brand name diet foods and programs, Zumba, crunch, and elliptical-our-way to a sweaty mess.

Yet very few of us know how to find our natural, effortless, beautiful weight and maintain it for a lifetime.

The salad that used to shed the pounds, is now packing 'em on.

The exercise that toned that body is producing nada.

This guy is trying so hard and not getting results. It is enough to drive anyone crazy!

The problem is that when you become an expert at losing weight, you are developing a skill set that is slowing down your production of health and happiness.

The key to a killer body is trust. 

If you went to work tomorrow and no food showed up in the lunch room, would you trust your boss? Would you want to work for your company, or be able to?

The cells in your body are your citizens, working 24 hours a day to digest, transport, feed, build, destroy, protect and cleanse out for you to live, love and thrive. They are an HR departments dream. A huge community of workers who are completely devoted and loyal to the CEO; you.

They are locked inside you and they do not have a choice to quit and go somewhere else. Live together or die alone.

When a weight loss expert diets, fasts, deprives, forgets or disregards the energy needs of these trillions of citizen cells, these workers lose trust in Mr.CEO-upstairs.

Every time you are physically hungry and decide not to eat, you are neglecting your citizens.

Every time you decide to eliminate certain categories of foods or cut your calories to lose weight fast, you are becoming a dictator, governing without regard for your villages basic needs.

The citizen-cells turn on one of the most powerful biological skills for survival; starvation physiology. They slow down production of every factory in the body, send most guys home and any food that may trickle its way in (when you finally DO cave in and eat) is not burned but preserved at the body's storage depot; as FAT.

Hope is not lost.

Your cells can forgive and forget. All you have to do is know what your cells need and deliver it as the exceptional leader that you are.

Your cells need nutrition every 3 hours, preferably a meal with protein, fat and carbohydrate for all their building needs.

Your cells need you to listen to them by learning how to listen to hunger and fullness.

Your cells need a relaxing eating environment where digestion is optimal and the nutrients actually get delivered into the bloodstream super highway.

Your cells need your attention. When you nourish and love them, they will finally be able to build the body of your dreams.

Nat