I don’t want fresh vegetables

Summer is upon us and it has come with a vengeance! It is SO hot here. Like over 100 degrees hot.

There’s something that happens to me every time it gets this hot:

I have zero interest in eating fresh vegetables.

They hurt my stomach. Make me feel bloated. Give me nausea.

But toast with melted butter? Yum

Stew with meat and potatoes? You bet

Hearty vegetable soups? My absolute favorite

There was a time (which thank G-d ended a few years ago) that I would force myself to eat my vegetables “because I was supposed to”.

Even though I felt ill when I ate them.

There’s another thing I thought I was supposed to do.

Wear control top stockings.

How could I not? I have to have the perfect body with the perfectly flat stomach I had through my 20’s.

But I realized that they also made me feel sick.

They hurt my stomach. Make me feel bloated. Give me nausea.

So many of my clients tell me that they think it helps them make better choices when they wear clothes that are a little bit snug, because they can gauge their weight.

The thinking goes, “If my skirt is tight, that means I’m not skinny enough and therefore I have to be careful about my eating choices.” They use clothes as an indicator of whether or not they’re at a good weight.

As for me? I’ve ditched fresh vegetables for now. And control top stockings.

Instead, I eat foods that make me feel amazing.

I wear clothes I love that fit the body I have right now.

When we eat foods that deplete us of energy and wear clothes that make us hate our bodies, of course we feel worse about ourselves. In reality we are punishing ourselves, and as I mentioned in last week’s post, if punishing ourselves worked, so many of us would be perfect by now. Instead, this tends to make us self-conscious or cranky, feel ugly or drained, and that just makes things worse.

What would it take for you to be eat what actually makes you feel good?

What would it take for you to wear clothes that actually fit you, instead of squeezing into something that either fit you years ago, or you bought wishing that it would start fitting you one day?

Imagine walking around all day with a scarf tied tightly around your neck, and you had to force yourself to breathe deeply.

You might say, well the scarf is actually helping me remember to take deep breaths.

In reality, though, the scarf is stopping you from doing something your body knows how to do so naturally and instinctively: breathe deeply.

When we use external cues — like skirts that are too tight around the waist, or rules about what we’re supposed to eat — we lose touch with the most important cues we could have — ourselves.

Our bodies scream messages to us all day long:

STOP! Stop putting that food inside me that makes me feel so unwell.

STOP! Stop wearing clothes that give me stomachaches because they’re too tight around the waist.

And instead of listening to our bodies, we so often silence them.

We assume they don’t know what they’re talking about.

That health guru X, diet Y, and magazine Z said that you should be doing A, B, and C.

Let me ask you: Has doing A, B, and C helped you become the (fill in the blank) you want to be?

And the more we listen to X, Y, and Z, the harder it is to hear our bodies.

It’s time to empower yourself to start ignoring X, Y, and Z.

You’ve GOT to start listening to your body.

Our bodies are like a crying baby.

When their needs don’t get met, they keep crying.

But if after crying for a while their needs are still not met, they stop crying.

They shut down.

They’ve learned that it’s pointless to cry.

Our bodies are no different. When we stop listening to the cues they send us those cues get weaker. We lose touch with our bodies’ basic tools for communicating what and when to eat.

Ask yourself – “What will it take for me to start listening to my body and treating it with the respect it deserves?”

This precious gift we’re given — the one and only body that we have to help us do our duties in this world.

It’s the only one you’ve got.

Start listening to it today.