I hear the word ‘bad’ much too often from my clients. “Sonja, I was bad. I ate chocolate.”
Food isn’t ‘BAD” nor are you for eating it.
There is no such thing as a good or bad food. Some foods are less nutritious than others, but they are not bad. When my clients enjoy a less nutritious food I suggest they rephrase that statement with the word indulge/indulgence. Ahhh, what a great word.
“Sonja, I indulged in some chocolate today.”
Awesome. I hope you enjoyed every bite!
It’s a very different experience for your mind and emotions when you can say indulgence instead of bad…which one feels better to you?
Have you ever noticed there’s a lot of conflicting information out there about what to eat these days? And they usually all say something different, and they all have scientific proof of why their system is the best. What we want to get to a place of peace and relaxation in the whole fray of diet chaos.
We’re all suffering from a high fact diet.
A lot of information is out there and it tends to leave us confused and overwhelmed. There’s eat this, don’t eat that, take this vitamin, don’t take that, fiber, fat grams, calories….and if you think about it, we’ve limited the concept of what eating is all about…there’s nothing pleasurable about it. Starting today, you have the opportunity to find within yourself the clear voice of what works, what’s truly nourishing.
Begin today and start your own nutritional journey of what works for your body and begin to answer the questions:
What’s good for me?
What nourishes me and gives me energy?
What creates balance for me?
The answers to these questions are very different for everyone.
Do you have food rules that you tend to break and tend to beat yourself up about? Okay, so I’m not the only one.
What are some of the common food rules you have for yourself?
Many people have a list in their own mind of the good foods and the bad foods.
Chocolate bars don’t have devils ears and kale doesn’t have a halo around its head. The food itself is neutral.
What’s a knife?
Is a knife good or bad?
Depends how you use it.
Is a food good or bad?
We’re going to say it depends how you use it, and notice in the conversation amongst the scientists, amongst the experts, amongst the great nutritionists, it’s always about the good foods and the bad foods. And when you talk about the good and the bad, you flatten out all the nuances.
Well, maybe certain foods work for different people. Maybe certain foods work at certain times in your life. Maybe certain foods work during certain seasons, during certain times when you’re exercising more or exercising less. Maybe you’re going to eat differently when you pregnant, maybe you’re going to be eating differently when you’re married or single. It changes. Sometimes we don’t like change, because it’s so uncertain. So we want answers.
Gimme the rules!
It takes a lot of courage to realize there are no rules.
Understanding that there are no good or bad foods takes the moralism out of it, then you can begin to understand your unique relationship with food, and what your unique needs are. It’s all about bio-chemical individuality, which is a fancy way of saying there is no one correct diet for everybody.
So then it becomes less about which foods are good and which foods are bad, and it becomes more about learning about the body. Getting to know it, checking it out, seeing what works, listening to yourself and learning from the process.
What is your body telling you?
Live Inspired,
Sonja.
