Maybe you’ve already been able to tell this… but I’m “into energy”.

I’m woo-woo.

I believe in soul purposes, and alignment, and intuition, and epiphanies, energy and God/Universe/Life/Spirit/Higher Power/Divine (whatever you want to call it). I work with Chakras. I believe that healing your relationship to your life goes hand in hand with healing your relationship to food. They are unable to be untangled from each other.

So let me talk about something very practical – that is so essential to this Fuck It Diet and normal eating and happy vibrant living- that also has an intense energetic component: being grounded or being in your body.

You’ve heard people talk about this before, right?

The idea of being in your body.

Also known as presence.

Also known as grounding.

Think about this right now: Are you in your body?

Are you actually experiencing what it feels like to be in your body?

Or are you doing everything in your power to avoid it?

Most people do. MOST people avoid being in their bodies to no end. Because it freaks them the f*** out. Being in our bodies makes us come to terms with things we don’t want to have to deal with.

It makes us feel things we want to be able to avoid.

So much information, pain, emotion, trauma, memory, energy… it all gets stored in the body when we aren’t willing or able to deal with it head on and process it. We can’t cope, so we escape the body through our worry, excessive thought, tv, dieting, escape escape escape escape.

We rarely are willing to be in our bodies. Feel them. Breathe. Feel the discomfort. The realness. The anxiety.

It all has stuff to teach us!

All of the feelings, emotions, sensations have things to teach us. And until we are willing to be with them and feel it all, we won’t be able to learn from what’s there and move forward.

Grounding

This all sort of came together with me when I was taking this energy class that taught us how to work with the chakras.

We were learning about how these different chakra energy portals in our bodies are correlated with all the different aspects of our life, from the very physical, and our relationships, to our heart, our voice, our intuition, all the way up through our connection to the divine, and everything in between.

And when we talked about Grounding, I had one of my clicks. Yes! This makes so much sense! This has SO much to do with The Fuck It Diet!

Grounding is associated with the root chakra. The lowest one. The one that represents and links us to this physical experience. It has to do with food, family, bodies, manifestation and bringing ideas into the physical, and it is all to do with BEING IN YOUR BODY and rooting your energy to the earth.

We are so rarely in our bodies. And it can be so hard to stay in our bodies because we are faced with all of the things and feelings we’ve avoided.

But, we have to start. We can’t keep avoiding living in this body, in this life, now.

(If you like hearing about this kind of stuff, chakras, energy, etc… you can sign up for my little free chakra course and I will update you with energy related Fuck It Diet stuff.

I’m also doing an energy webinar with the wonderful Alexis Saloutos who I studied with next week on Grounding, and will update the people who have signed up for the chakra course.)

2 practical things you can do:

Being in Your Body- 10 minutes

Lie down for 10 minutes and breathe. No distractions. Just feel what it’s like to be in your body, not escaping, for 10 minutes. Be bored if you must. Or let your mind unkink and unwind. Feel what’s there. If anything comes up feel it, if not, chill. Feel your body. Feel what it feels like to be where you are now. There’s not much too this except allowing whatever is to be what it is.

Congrats you just practiced being in your body. This will help when you feel the urge to escape through “vices”: food, dieting, etc – this is practice in feeling what is already there. Instead of trying to escape it.

Grounding- 20 seconds

Take a deep breathe and imagine bringing your energy into your body. If that feels like the most abstract thing you’ve ever heard, I understand. Just pretend you can do it. Just imagine it. Imagine you bringing your energy from wherever it is – wherever it is floating around – into your body.

And feel it there. What does that feel like? Hot? Cold? Tingly? Sore? Moving? Static? (There’s no right or wrong).

Then imagine sending that energy you pulled back into your body also down into the earth. Flow it down through the floor, down through the basement, down through the dirt, into the rocks and spreading into the earth below you.

How does that feel?

You can easily do that grounding visualization in about…. 20 seconds altogether or less.

What do you guys  think about this stuff? Wanna hear more? Sign up for my free little chakra course. And let me know!

It matters that you eat enough

It matters that you eat things you love

It matters that you care more about nourishing and energy than your jean size

It matters that you want to listen to your body

It matters that you want to nourish your body with lots of different foods

It matters that you understand that there is no perfect eating

It matters that you know that your body wants to be healthy

It matters that you know that your body can handle a lot (and always has)

It matters that you know that you don’t have to so precious about eating the perfect amount

It matters that you stop striving for food perfection because it doesn’t exist

It matters that you start feeding your soul and your other hungers

It matters that you continually feed your physical hunger

It matters that you feed yourself, well, often, lovingly, every damn day, many times a day

It matters that chicken, spinach, and brownies all be seen as equal

It matters that you get out of your own way so your body can start telling you what it wants

It matter what you put in your mouth

You’re more than a robot who lives on lean cuisine pellets

It matters that you feed yourself and that you feed yourself well, and you let go of the dogma and obsession surrounding what you put in your mouth.

It’s time.

PS. My Life Recovery Program is finally open again! Join us now at the early bird price.

And if you haven’t seen my second webinar, the replay is here.

Fuck it.

What we think we know about weight is so so wrong.

Did you know that putting on weight easily is actually the sign of an efficient metabolism? And someone who burns weight quickly has an inefficient metabolism? Yea, because in famines? Caput! Goodbye skinny people with your inefficient metabolisms! (Including myself!)

Did you know that people who are “overweight” actually live longer than their smaller bodied friends? Life spans have lengthened alongside our rising weight over the last few decades. (I mean really, I think this is the biggest piece of info! Let this sink in!)

Did you know social factors and stressors have more to do with your health than health habits? Meaning that feelings of powerlessness, shame, or experiencing prejudice, and the stress that comes with sub par living conditions or unjust social conditions are worse for you than poor health habits?*

Feeling powerless is worse for you than poor health habits!*

Feeling powerless is worse for you than poor health habits!*

Ok. Just making sure you got that.

Did you know that beauty is subjective and learned? And what we think of as beauty changes in fads every few years. As long as we let big businesses decide for us what is beautiful and “worthy”, there will always be groups who don’t know they are allowed to feel beautiful.

This is actress and singer, Lillian Russell, was one of the biggest beauty icons in the late 19th century.

Did you know that the BMI chart was created/funded by the weight loss industry?*

Did you know that joyful exercise is good for you even if you don’t lose weight?*

Why do we never hear about this? Cultural weight bias. We’re scared. We think that what we think we know is right.

It’s like when Galileo said the world was actually round and people were like HELL NO THIS EARTH IS FLAT YOU HERETIC. And they killed him.

And he was totally right.

People are so, so scared of things that are outside their current beliefs.

We believe that weight is unhealthy and it has seeped into every crack of our consciousness.

We believe that what is considered beautiful today is what beauty actually is.

We also have all these association with gaining weight. “It’s uncomfortable. It’s ugly. It’s lack of control. It’s unhealthy.” These are things we believe so strongly that they become true. We really do have that power, especially in our perception of what is happening.

Personally? I believed that once I lost weight, my hormonal problems would go away. And they didn’t. Losing weight arguably made things worse. And the pursuit of weight loss absolutely made things worse. Poorer sleep. Worse sugar metabolism. More stress.

I am not saying…

I am not saying that every person in this world is healthy or living their best life. I am not saying every fat person** is healthy. But to assume that weight is the cause and cure of all health problems is misguided and almost certainly missing the point.

What I am saying is that our weight fear-mongering is off base. And that every person, healthy or not, deserves respect.

Also to assume that we have the right to be so emotionally invested in other people’s “health” is absurd. We absolutely do not get as emotionally invested in the “health” of smokers and heavy alcohol drinkers, we have to get honest about what we are really focusing on and really afraid of. (Do you know how many smokers smoke so they can try to stay thin? They are not doing it for their health. I used to think “hmmmm if I wasn’t a singer I would totally smoke”… so I could be thin. Yea.)

 

*Lots of this information is from the book Body Respect by Linda Bacon and Lucy Aphramor.

** Fat is not a bad word