by Renee Lindstrom, GCFP
During my stages of weight gain just considering dieting seemed overwhelming.
One child was leaving home and another was moving back in while I was going through a through a transition. The stages of parenting can be hard work with celebration and heart-break. A personal and professional practice using the model of Dr. Marshall Rosenberg’s model of Nonviolent Communication has been a resource in both these topics: parenting, empty nest syndrome and weight-loss.
A life already out of balance from being in a period of survival mode as a marriage ended, a loss of a family home, moving households 3 times in less than 2 years, building a practice while being the sole parenting parent to these children. Not only a full-time parent to the children, I was their full-time empathy feelings and needs coach. One didn’t leave my bed for two weeks! I was extremely thankful for my training.
What little personal time and energy I had left was spent on trying to learn and create a social network on-line and in the community, while attempting to build a practice. Squeezing in any attempts at exercise or lifestyle events was not an experience of well-being in the challenges of including children. Rather the weight of it was exhausting! Such as, at the gym it was an emotional workout going through their ups and downs and self-conscious reactions. At this side of the experience I am thankful that the only outcome is this moms weight-gain and that it’s not something else!
These kids stayed in the oven longer than some and now I am in daily awe of their personal accomplishments, their self-confidence and ability to support themselves. If the price to seeing my children have the skills to navigate their world is having to lose extra pounds, I don’t have a problem with it any of it. If others do, well my viewpoint is that it’s just hypocrisy. It isn’t about their ego and any comparisons they have to themselves. It informs me to their lack of empathy skills and abilities to “see” others separate from themselves. If you remember in an earlier article I am an empath and perceive others quick judgments based on observation without any connection outside of their belief system. A belief system I perceive as their devotion to external beauty and rules to achieve it that doesn’t include lifestyle integration and nurturing their inner beauty.
Lifestyle diet behaviours have many contributing factors and it isn’t as simple as choosing a new diet and making new rules to follow. Changing a life-time of diet behaviour isn’t a feat. I can’t count the times I have had friends, clients and students preach and teach their latest diet trending choices only to then watch them fall off the pedestal they have broadcast from, even when others didn’t want to hear it. As an empathy and lifestyle coach the sadness for me in those moments is that they haven’t any connection to their own needs or any awareness that others don’t want to keeping hearing it! It gets old fast.
There are so many diets to try. Heck, I have tried a vegetarian, gluten-free, Atkins and Curves diets and more. At the beginning with weight lose it was motivational and inspirational until something in the home network support shifted. The diet could not be maintained and was the first to fall away. I now find diet trends are temporary feel good experiences to satisfy ego driven self-image needs and that they are not sustainable. The steps of integration into it being a lifestyle is missing. Integrating new life-style habits are tho. Integrating new food behaviours into ones life-style can enhance relationships. Yes you read this right. Expanding your relationship with food becomes satisfying after the initial irritation of new learning curves and making time for it. There is a new spectrum of feelings and groundedness that come with this shift. Some of these feeling are joy, sensuality, confidence , motivation and inspiration. If these are not your experiences with food they are unlikely to be experiences of intimacy in relationships. I have found that shifting ones food focus from the science of it and using it for personal gain into that of exploring it to develop a relationship with it creates recognition to its partnership in giving life that is now extending to a deeper knowing of my own virtue qualities I am modeling in my own relationships.
That being written I am suggesting my shift has happened organically. I am thankful I caught it as it shifted. This shift is in from the story I told myself it what a quality now:
I am not a cook, I can’t cook ……with tremendous feelings of worthlessness, guilt, shame and blame to curious excitement and anticipation that has shifted into a sensuality of somatically experiencing food in the present moment.
In this new internal statement of being there are reoccurring glimpses of physical, mental and emotional interactions in sharing experiences with my partner. Long gone is the lower vibration that supports the comparisons and competition word vomit that has no room in a somatic experience. These are replaced by a shared purpose of learning, growing and creating.
How to Loose Weight by creating a Foodie Lifestyle Naturally
Steps to Loosing Weight
- Commit by connecting to intention (separate fitness intention for diet, they are not married and if necessary create a second intention for fitness)
- Food Lifestyle assessment to guarantee it’s doable (remember diet extends into the kitchen, fridge, garden and grocer. It doesn’t extend to the gym or track)
- Choose a diet plan that’s right for you remembering to make it about you and not about the diet. (Remember that if you choose a trending diet eventually you will go off it and then what? where is the learning integration?)
- Get support for keeping your intention and turning them into goals. (Remember a mentor, group or community can motivate increase incentive to reach your potential)
- Acknowledge results with a coach or in a journal. (Noticing change is the point of mindful awareness and expressing regret or celebrating versus beating yourself up is the new change agent)
Connect with Renee now to get on board with your weight loss program
Follow Renee & Weight Loss on Twitter, Instagram Pinterest or Facebook
Explore Body Beautiful Weight Loss Related Articles :
- Body Beautiful 1: Lost Weight Found Food Love
- Body Beautiful 2: Heavy & and an Empath
- Body Beautiful 3: Beyond Right & Wrong Thinking
- Body Beautiful 4: Weight & Self Empathy
- Body Beautiful 5: Physicality
- Body Beautiful 6: Personal Story to Food Empathy for Emotional Eating
- Body Beautiful 7: Going Forward from Here
Renee’s Living In Natures Love Lifestyle Series on Food Empathy for Emotional eating
- Colour Spectrum Diet
- focus on feeding subtle energy centers – food empathy
Copyright 2014 – 2018 Living in Nature’s Love by Renee Lindstrom, GCFP,
Feldenkrais® Practitioner since 2007, Communication & Empathy Coach since 2004, Art of Placement since 2000
