Happy, happy New Year!
First of all, I had a wonderful time last Wednesday teaching A Nutrition Class for SANE Eating. The lessons I shared with participants continue to influence me as I write in this moment, sharing some reflections for the coming months.
Because the areas of body weight, healing, and health are tied so closely to bursts of fresh New Years commitments, I’d like to bring in some down-to-earth, loving reminders to help you.
It’s worth noting that the areas of body weight, healing, and health are all areas that can often touch our deepest vulnerabilities as women. The more we attach and identify with these areas, the more is on the line when they things ebb and flow.
You may find these areas are often heavily doused in illusions of control or feelings of entitled guarantees.
For example: “If I eat this way and exercise THIS way, I am guaranteed THIS amount of energy, THIS amount of change in my body, or I am free from THIS amount of suffering.”
Yes, of course sometimes we eat more vegetables and our digestion improves.
Sometimes we incorporate a therapeutic eating regimen in, and our body shapes shifts in a way we find pretty exciting.
And other times there are other influences impacting our bodies’ ability to digest and assimilate nutrition or our ability to lose weight, influences that may have nothing to do with food at all.
When life unfolds in ways that do not align with what we felt we were guaranteed, it’s common to experience suffering.
Frustration may set in as our linear methodologies do not deliver their promises.
So what exactly would be helpful to focus on as we enter the freshness of the coming year?
I’d like to offer a simple reflection…
When it comes to your body and your health, there are some things that are your job. Important things. These things include:
- drinking water - getting adequate, regular sleep - eating some vegetables - noticing how different foods or ways of eating make you feel - finding resources and allies to help support you in your life - deciding what kind of day you’d like to have, what kind of life you want to live - choosing to enter situations as consciously as you can
No one can do these things for you. These are very good places to focus your energy. These things are your job.
But often we are not focusing on these.
Instead, we are focusing on things that are NOT our job. These include things like:
- deciding what your body’s healthiest, natural weight is - the ways your body or psyche invite you into healing - the speed in which this healing occurs - using your ego’s preferences in deciding your most natural way of being in the world
Trying to control these things can feel burdensome. We are making things that our not our jobs our responsibility. This second group does not require efforting. This group requires space to allow these things to unfold in their own way.
My invitation to you this first week of the New Year is to get clear about what you are responsible for and what you are not.
Doing this will help focus your energy in ways that matter most. And will also help you surrender to the wisdom of the rest.
How do you want to feel this year? How can you care for yourself? What’s your real job in all this?
Wishing you a prosperous year ahead.
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