"Vegetables make life easier."

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I feel a hunger, a hunger I used to mistakenly fill with food.  I now see that what I really hungered for was creating.

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We are what we eat (we truly are).  But we also live in a world of duality for the purpose of balance.  Sometimes, to be in balance, we need to indulge.  After all, there's nothing like feeding the Light than when our spirit takes us to the local ice cream shoppe for a small hot fudge sundae with extra hot fudge.

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Emotional eating is unconscious over-indulging in food to unconsciously build a layer of protection against the blows of negativity (negativity can have the opposite effect as it acts more like a vampire draining energy, which causes weight loss in victims), and is conducted as if on "autopilot".  It's as if we do not have a choice in the matter; it just happens and we have no control over it.

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I remember not being able to sleep at night because the pain in my back was quite severe (due to emotional pain).  One evening, I got up to read myself to sleep.  I had gotten into the habit of indulging in the consumption of sugar but at this time I was consciously choosing not to go that route because I really wanted to kick the sugar habit.  As I sat there reading, with my back pain raging, I could not help myself and I gave in to the magnetic pull from the cookies (or was it ice cream?) in the kitchen.  When I sat back down and settled in to read my book while munching on my sugar, the pain in my back subsided almost instantly, and I was able to go back to bed and sleep.  So, as much as I wanted to be off the sugar, I still needed it to medicate and numb the physical and emotional pains.  I knew then and there that I was going to have to bide my time and allow nature to take its course, and that someday I will be free from my sugar habit and pain cycle.

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The point of this story is that emotional eating serves a purpose: to soothe, comfort and protect us from the effects of negativity, and to fill a void.  When the void is filled with the healing of love and light, food no longer has power over us in this way.  Eating on "autopilot ceases and we are in a place of making conscious choices about food consumption.  HOWEVER (and this is a big HOWEVER), I have not had health complications to take into consideration during my time of emotional eating (such as high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, etc.).  While I was free to partake of emotional eating without worries, it does not mean that you should.  Be responsible for yourself.  Do what is right for you.  And always get the advice of your healthcare professionals.

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I thought about deleting the following paragraphs because they are my personal thoughts in my process, but I think they are very important.  I'm leaving them in case someone out there needs them for their own journey.

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As I sit here, why is it so hard to go to the place where I want to be?  Why do I choose to stay in the place where I don't want to be?  I do not know other than because it is safe, familiar and comfortable.  Why and how could this place become safe and comfortable?  How am I ever going to get what I want, do what I want to do, and be in the place that I want unless I travel outside of my comfort zone?  I can't.

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Why is making a simple choice, such as eating a serving of cucumbers, so difficult to make?  Why is choosing the place where I really want to be so difficult?  Because I make it so.  It's not really that difficult...it's just change.  And it's not like it's not a change I haven't experienced before.  How many times have I been in a healthier place...exercise and eating right?  Many times.  This time is no different.  Except, why am I dragging it out?  Why don't I just dig in like I have all the times in the past?  Could because it never lasted before have something to do with it?  Have I really gotten to a place of complacency in my body and my life that I'm content with where I'm at rather than going after what I really want?  If so, then is that really considered thriving in life?  If I want to thrive, can what I am choosing for myself really be defined as "thriving"?

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The answer to my dilemma came to me like this:

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One day, as I was walking around my home in a bathrobe, I felt as if I wasn't myself but my grandfather I(who is deceased).  This went on for days until I decided it was time to figure out what htis was all about.  I realized that I had been trying to shake my habit of eating certain foods (comfort foods) but was not having much success.  I remembered that my grandfather had various "goodies" around his house that he liked to indulge.  I realized that I was doing the same thing.  I remembered that he was not very healthy in his elderly years, and I was headed down the same path if I did not change my ways.  While comfort foods served me for many years as they medicated my pain and suffering, I was now coming into my awareness that these comfort foods were no longer serving me but harming me and it was time to get a grip on their power over me.  I stopped indulging.  Because they had become such a habit, I've had to constantly remind myself that I'm making different choices for myself.  So, the habit of indulging in my comfort food became an unconscious choice.  My decision to make the necessary changes to make myself healthier comes from conscious choice.  The fact that I felt as if I were my grandfather also showed me that the energy I was dealing with was generational in nature, which makes it even harder to work through.

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We spend our entire lives adapting to the negative environment around us.  For some, food becomes the coping method of choice.  Emotional eating thus has become a learned behavior.  Food becomes our security blanket and serves to protect us from negativity.  It therefore is a physical manifestation of emotional immaturity.

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As children we are expected to grow up.  Growing up includes emotional maturity.  Those bad habits that we picked up to cope with the stresses in our life will one day no longer serve us as we meander our way into "maturity".  For emotional eaters, this means working through the power that food has over us.

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One day while waiting for my children to get out of school I grabbed a piece of paper to understand the phases of my life and how emotional eating affected each of them.  Of course, I realized that I had been emotionally eating my entire life, for as far back as I could remember.  And, yet again, I was brought to the "rut wave".  The "rut wave" is how my mind explained to me how I couldn't get past a certain point in my life, whether it was losing weight, attracting clientele, keeping the house cleaned, or anything else that required long-term consistency.  As I contemplated how I always seemed to fall back into the old, I saw that my pattern resembled the ups and downs of a wave, the "rut wave".  The majority of my time and energy has been spent in the various levels of the lows that exist between the highs.

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The highs represent the periods of time when I attempted to break away from my rut pattern.  It would be a time when I would begin to exercise and eat healthier.  I could go for several to six months like this.  I would feel terrific.  I would be consistent.  Then, one day, for no reason, I would begin to backslide and inevitably fall back into the familiar rut (inability to create permanent change).  From this last wave I rode I could tell something was beginning to change and I would soon be backsliding, but I thought I had it under control as I tried to be wiser than it by now allowing it to gain control, yet again.  I had been running and was dropping pounds daily.  I felt very good.  One day I did not have the energy to run.  I thought, "That's fine.  I'll take it a bit easier today.  After all, I don't have to run everyday."  I continued to exercise even though I wasn't running.  Eventually, all exercising and eating right ceased.  As you can see, nothing in particular happened to me (like surgery or a broken leg) that made me stop.  My energy simply was depleted.  What I didn't realize here was that my downfall was that I tried to be "smarter" than the rut; what I needed was to be "stronger" in my will to work through the negativity of the rut.

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When you medicate your pain with food, and you experience pain day in and day out because you are living in a world of negativity where emotional bullies repeatedly attack, you must constantly medicate yourself.  Heal your pain.  Regain your power.  Enforce your will.  Fight for your life and win the game of life.

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On a nature walk one day, Mother Nature spoke to me.  She said: "People overindulge.  Coffee is meant to be used as a tea.  As a tea, it stimulates the mind, increases metabolism, is detoxifying and acts as a laxative."

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Feeding the Light is not necessarily about the foods we eat.  Feeding the light are those actions that promote the flow of energy, such as:

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Positive thinking

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Movement - stay active, exercise, yoga

Stretch long and slow to get the issues out of the tissues.  Feel the discomfort all the way through to a release.  Stretch through the discomfort.

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R&R - meditation, naps, quiet time

Reaching beyond one's comfort zone, and so on.

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Negativity feeds off negativity.  Rather than feeding the negativity in yourself and others, feed the Light.

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~

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When you have a dream about being in a rut or ditch, pay attention to what's going on in your life.  What's the rut?