ConsciouS Eating

Body Consciousness in Practice
By Margie Martin, MFT

A quick stroll through your local drugstore reveals a wealth of products designed to help you disconnect from your body. Hungry? No problem, just take this pill. Sleepy? Just have this tea. Wide awake? Well, here's something that will help you sleep. The problem with these products is that they do not address the fact that often when we have something going on in our body it is because our body is trying to tell us something. If we treat the symptom without looking at the underlying message, we move further and further away from an integrated sense of wholeness and health. For instance, many people respond to being overweight by dieting, which means ignoring the body's cues for food. Let's face it, not eating when you're hungry makes about as much sense as not drinking when you are thirsty. It is the eating when you are not hungry that causes the problem, primarily because eating is not an accurate response to what the body needs at that point.

In my professional experience, I have met many women who have lived their lives without being connected to their physical beings. Nothing disconnects a person form her body quicker than a diet does. This disconnect is taking place every day, everywhere. Eighty percent of women have dieted and fifty percent are on a diet ant any given time. Even more scary, fifty percent of nine year-old girls have dieted. This disconnect from our body consciousness is beginning younger and younger in our thin-obsessed culture. If you asked the majority of these women how they feel physically, they either have no clue or admit to feeling lousy.

How do we begin to heal this rift with the body? In our DIETLESS™ groups for women, we begin with a tool called Conscious Eating. The premise is simple: eat what you really want, when you are hungry, and stop when you are full. For a person who has given away her power and body awareness to an outside authority (the diet), the concept of Conscious Eating is initially frightening. "But I can't trust my body's signals; look where it has gotten me." The reality is that not trusting their bodies ahs brought them to the point of being overweight , obsessed with food, and out of touch with what their bodies are saying to them. When we ignore our body, it begins to speak louder and louder until it gets our attention.

The beauty of Conscious Eating is that consciousness is not selective. Once a woman starts paying attention to her need for food, all the other needs that she may have ignored begin to surface. While this is often initially overwhelming, with support and practice a woman can learn to discern these needs and respond to them more accurately.
In the past, food may have been the response to all needs. Tired? Eat something for energy. Stressed out? Eat some chocolate to soothe yourself. Need to stretch? Get up and get a snack. None of these solutions address the real need of the body at that point. Recognizing tiredness as a sign that the body needs sleep, and acting on that, is much more nurturing and satisfying than eating a candy bar and continuing to push yourself. Responding to the body's need for movement with stretching and walking is rejuvenating and non-fattening and a more appropriate activity than eating when you are not truly hungry.

This Body Consciousness becomes a habit-a good addiction. The more you become aware of how your body is feeling at any given moment, and the more accurate you become at taking care of that feeling, the better and better you feel. Feeling good in your body and trusting your body's messages are very empowering. Our bodies were created with a tremendous amount of wisdom and the ability to adapt to many hardships. Trusting our inner body wisdom is a dying art form in our quick-fix, instant-gratification culture. There are so many opportunities to ignore this innate wisdom and push ourselves. Your body doesn't like being ignored or invalidated and, over time, it will begin yelling at you in some manner in order to get your attention. Don't pull the plug on your body's wisdom.

Print Send to a Friend Return to top of page