How I Healed My Relationship with Food- Pt. 3
In the Book That Changed Everything, the author detailed her own destiny-shifting story, of her daughter’s priceless stolen harp, her choice to contact a dowser to locate it (out of pure desperation), and his ability to locate that harp using only a map and pendulum. This led her on a very deep dive into the world of metaphysics. The esoteric world. The spiritual world. The woo woo world. She chose to write a book explaining every fascinating thing she found. The book was so well-researched and cited that I couldn’t ignore the author’s message:
The world we live in is not as it seems.
I have so much more to say about how this simple concept changed my life, but for now, let’s focus on the FOOD.
If a person can accept that we have a body, a mind, and a soul (or subconscious, or higher self), then it is also possible to accept that one of those aspects can affect another, consciously and subconsciously. A lot of energy healers operate from the framework that suggests that every physical ailment has a root emotional cause. This is a well-examined idea, and countless books have been written on the subject. We can use this relationship between mind and body to change how our body behaves, in relation to our thoughts. The magic really happens when we involve the subconscious with that effort.
A great example is the use of mantras. A mantra is a sound, word, or statement repeated frequently, in an effort to use the physical voice to retrain the subconscious mind. Mantras can be used to shift thought patterns and behavior in an endless number of ways. (Stay tuned for a blog post that’s all about mantras and their many possibilities). In the case of food addiction, the use of a mantra can be very helpful. With overeating, the emotional roots can be extremely complex, which is understandable. There are many ways to determine what exactly is causing addiction on an emotional and energetic level, and I’ll briefly touch on that later. But to begin, it can be useful to simply start with a mantra. A great mantra begins with the three P’s. It is positively worded, in the present tense, and makes precise assertions. The three P’s. Here’s the mantra I use often, throughout the day, to address my food issues:
I have a healthy relationship with food. I crave only healthy foods.
I eat when I am hungry, and I stop when I am full. I get full very easily.
I greatly prefer eating homemade meals at home.
Some great places to say mantras include:
In bed, as you are waking up
In the shower/bath
In the car
While doing mindless chores (like folding laundry, doing dishes, etc.)
In bed, as you are drifting off to sleep.
Saying a mantra while you are engaged in a boring or repetitive activity is actually fantastic. Driving, for example, keeps your mind occupied on a task, which allows it to step aside while you speak to your subconscious.
I have used this mantra to great effect in my effort to change my relationship with food. I hate to describe it as magic, but I don’t know how else to explain how I gradually went from wanting fast food in large quantities to feeling like I could just really go for a salad that I made at home. I’m at the point where simply imagining eating fast food tacos evokes a feeling of disgust, and an internal knowing that that taco just isn’t for me. Don’t worry, I’m still human! I test it from time to time because sometimes I don’t believe it. And in a sick way, I guess I still want to want fast food? So, I’ll eat some fries. Then I’ll feel like, ehhh, this is okay. I’ll stop (because, of course, I get full really easily), and usually throw them away.
That was not normal for me, has never been normal for me. And yet, now it is.
Don’t get me wrong, french fries in particular are clearly one of the most glorious foods on the planet. I’m not knocking fries. You enjoy eating fries sometimes, great. Eat the fries. We are on this planet to enjoy being in a human body, and that most certainly involves eating fries! What I am saying is that there is a difference between someone who casually enjoys eating fries sometimes, and someone who is an addicted, obsessed, fry monster. I am now, very humbly, in the former camp. Now, let’s get back to the good stuff.
Self hypnosis is another method I use to subconsciously address my relationship with food. Of course, if you have the money and the time, there’s no substitute for hypnosis sessions with a trained professional. But I recognize that it may not be possible for everyone to commit to that. Enter YouTube, Insight Timer, Spotify and the literally hundreds of self hypnosis videos and audio sessions available. The first time I engaged in a self hypnosis session, I was really just messing around on YouTube, and was only about 10% convinced it would work. But somehow, as I closed my eyes and began to listen to the suggestions, I slipped into a light trance state. (I was aware of my surroundings, and yet seemed to simultaneously be very far away from them.) When I shifted back to a fully awake state, as I now have done about twenty times, I didn’t feel like anything had necessarily changed. It wasn’t obvious. But, again, I just didn’t want to put junk into my body anymore. It is that simple. That is my reality.
As the miracles of mantras and self hypnosis began to really work for me, it gave me space to examine my food choices without the addiction factor hovering in the background. It gave me space to look at my fat. Even though I was absolutely eating better, I still had a lot of it. We know that fat is stored energy. The agreed upon method for ridding yourself of fat is 1) eating less and 2) moving more. Calories in, calories out. Every diet on the planet is based on some form of that principle. And it works! But as I learned more about a different definition of energy, I began to see my stored fat in a new light. What if this stored fat (or energy) actually formed for reasons in addition to my nightly cheeseburger trysts? After all, we all know that person who can eat whatever they want and never gain weight. The lucky jerk clearly has a really fast metabolism, which they inherited in an extremely unfair cosmic lottery. Why don’t I have that? Could I have it? I started a new mantra: The stored fat/energy in my body is being eliminated and removed from my system in a very efficient manner, and it happens automatically. Part of the magic behind that mantra is that it led my conscious brain down a path of researching the emotional/energetic reasons fat could become stored in the body.
One of those possible reasons is pretty straight-forward:
We take on and carry the energy of those around us.
Some people, those Traditional Chinese Medicine might call “Earth” types, are particularly good at doing this. We listen, we empathize, we care, we help, we give, give, give. And as we are doing that, without healthy boundaries and a protective energy practice, we are also taking so much of the negative burden of others onto ourselves, figuratively and literally. On an energetic level, we’re saying, “Please, I hate to see you in pain. Give me some of it, and I will carry it for you.” Or, we make the decision to store our own pain in our bodies. “I don’t have a safe outlet for this anger and frustration I’m feeling, so I will stuff it down. I will hold onto it and make it a part of me.”
Clearly, there is so. much. more. here to talk about. But for now, I ask you to simply consider the possibility that fat is not just stored calories from french fries, but may also be stored negative energy generated by your mind, and the minds of others. When I began to make a conscious effort to release that negative energy, those memories, those beliefs, that’s when my body really started working more effectively, and I stopped storing so much fat. I still have fat on my body, and I’m still on the journey of working toward total emotional freedom. But in dealing with some really hard stuff, my relationship with food is getting a lot friendlier.
Whew, deep breath! If you’re still with me after reading about my food-scarce childhood, my experiences during Covid, and the new tricks I discovered to try to mitigate all that (mantras, self hypnosis, and changing my relationship with negative energy), I sincerely thank you for your time and attention. I hope something here resonates with you and maybe even helps you with your own evolution toward a healthier body, mind and soul. Please, let me know what you think by leaving a comment. And if you’d like to continue this (very long!) conversation, I invite you to book a Reiki session with me online, or in San Jose. We’ll move some energy and talk turkey!
Love,
Michelle