The Self Respect Diet
We all inherently know that we should love ourselves. We regularly speak of the importance of self love and self respect, but are the words really meaningful to us in our everyday lives? In the now? How many times have we given advice like this to a friend- “Well if he/she can’t learn to love themselves then he/she can’t acept or appreciate your love either”.
So many of my conversations with friends over the years have come back to the fundamental importance of loving ourselves, and yet for years I still wasn’t achieving it myself.
One of my biggest frustrations in recent years has been my weight, and I know I’m not alone there. The dieting and weightloss industries are huge and seem to be ever expanding. Every time we look at a magazine or turn on the television there’s a feature about someone’s weightloss or gain.
After three years of feeling trapped in a vicious cycle of negative feelings around weight I noticed something. All these stories in the media and all these diets on the internet, and indeed my attentions, have all been mainly focussing on physical things.
Food, calories, when to eat, what to eat, how much to eat etc…
Although this is all very important, what about harnessing the power of the mind and a different perspective. One which is not based on the frustrations of your past, and very importantly not from a perspective of negative emotions or vibrations.
In the past I have been guilty of hating myself.
Scientists have now observed that every cell in our bodies responds to our emotions. Our cells come to expect, and indeed ask us for more of those same emotions.
When those cells that have become used to self hatred divide, the new cells are made with even more self hatred receptors. Those self hatred receptors begin to dominate the space in the cell that would previously have been used for receiving nutrients. And so our self hate or negative feelings about weight and our body image, actually manifest more self hatred and thus more weight gain, less absorption of nutrients and therefore accelerated aging and overall decline in physical and emotional health.
I highly recommend watching the movie “What the bleep do we know” for inspiration and a scientific description of what I have mentioned above. It really touched and inspired me.
I also recommend the movie “The Secret”, which is about the law of attraction. If applying the advice in this film to weight loss, you would stop focussing on the negative emotions of not wanting to be fat, and begin to imagine yourself slim and happy, and feeling grateful living the life you want.
I have entitled this piece The self respect diet because when those words came to me, I understood how to begin the transformation of my body and my life.
What ,how, when and why would the slim self respecting and happy me eat?
What would the confident me who trusts and RESPECTS my own ability to find INNER PEACE without food sex drugs alcohol or other EXTERNAL stimulants do?
How would that me, walk , talk, laugh, be, live?
I have read that how you see the world is how you see yourself. So ask yourself that question, how do you see the world? I saw it as an insecure chaotic and scary place full of fear and injustice and lack. Now that I understand that we all create our own reality, this view of the world no longer serves me well.
I have also read and come to believe that we see what we describe, not describe what we see. So if I keep telling myself that I fear being fat and putting on even more weight and focussing on that emotion, all I will do is create more and more opportunities to reinforce that reality, to reinforce that fear and that frustration and the feeling of wanting to be slim. The answer for me became clear after becoming aware of the law of attraction as explained through quantum mechanics and a spiritual understanding in the previously mentioned two films, (and also in some great books that I’m reading). Instead of focussing on feeling bad about being fat, I had to focus on the feeling of already being slim. I created vision boards that I looked at every day, which included a picture of a slim body that I cut out of a magazine, with my head stuck on the top. I know it sounds funny, and at first I did laugh about it but, the subconscious mind does not know the difference between imagined experiences and real ones. Either way, whatever we put into our minds and focus our attentions on, our body will then respond to on a molecular level. Each day my body looks more and more like the picture on my vision board, it works.
It is no wonder that I had become out of shape and unhealthy, I had spent years without truly loving or respecting myself. In fact it is a wonder that I was not in a far worse physical state after all the fear, pity, self hatred, alcohol and stimulant abuse I had inflicted upon my body. The body that stuck with me and did it’s best to keep supporting me through thick and thin.
So the picture I cut out of the magazine and stuck on my vision board which I look at everyday is the me that respects and loves myself, the me that smiles and attracts health in to my life by focussing my attention on it. Since quantum mechanic’s says that all possibilities exsist at once, then that self respecting slim smiling me can be my reality if I choose it. Of course by focussing on health and self love, I am naturally attracted to give my body what it needs and wants, and less of what it doesn’t. If I come from a perspective of love respect and inner peace, then healthy choices also come naturally. I am now eating what I want, but of course if I truly love and respect myself then what I want to eat has changed. I am on the Atkin’s diet because I know that my healthy body wants to loose that excess weight. It does not want self hatred. When I walk down the street I feel myself walking in my new slim healthy body, not in the old self loathing one that wobbled around.
The Self Respect diet
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