Food Love and Gut Feelings

By: DR Irina Webster

 

Dear Readers,

 

We are very lucky to have recovery coaches like Dr Irina Webster, Richard Kerr, Karen Phillips, Kate Walsh, and many others, who’ve dedicated their lives to helping people who suffer from Eating Disorders. I hold a great respect for Dr Irina Webster and her work. Dr Irina Webster suffered from anorexia bulimia for 15 years of her life. She recovered and has now worked with hundreds of people to help them defeat the demon of Eating Disorder.

I love this article by Dr Irina Webster. It’s simply amazing and teaches you that you are higher than food obsession. This is a great read for everyone. Don’t forget knowledge is power, the more knowledge you have on your illness, the weaker the demon of ED gets. With this information, your feeding your mind something positive and taking small steps towards recovery.

Happy Reading!

 

We live in a time when many people are obsessed with food, eating and body image. The other thing everyone wants is love: to have love in their life and to be loved.  And the third thing people talk about nowadays is about intuitive connections with yourself and the ability to listen to your gut feelings which will guide you to where you want to go.

How do you think food, love and gut feelings are connected?  Well, the reality is that how you eat is how you live your life. The way you eat affects everything in your life: relationships, love, self-talk, beliefs and your energy level.

For example, chaotic erratic eating, like in case of eating disorders always bring a chaotic and erratic life. Avoiding certain foods means avoiding something else in your life which is bigger than food: feelings, emotions, responsibilities, certain people or certain situations.

Let’s see how food and love are connected? Simply you can put it like this: abusing food is denying self-love and promoting self-hatred.  People with anorexia deny the self (their life and love); they have extreme fears and self -hatred.

People with bulimia and binge eating also hate themselves. They have too much pain and feelings of guilt and shame (which is all opposite to love).

People who are on constant diets also deny some or many aspects of their love which make them feel very sensitive, unstable, moody and unsafe.

People who constantly overeat (binge eaters and compulsive overeaters) – associate their love with food and eating. For most of them love is food and other forms of love for them become non-existent.

Unless people become aware of what and how they eat, they will remain victims of their obsessions and will never know what love is.

Now let’s look at the relationship between eating and gut feelings.  The gut has its own mind with up to 500 million nerve cells and 100 million neurons in the gut. The gut remembers everything, what you ate, when you ate and in connection to what feelings and emotions you ate and how.

An eating disorder can start from you being upset once and wanting to calm yourself down so you ate. The eating gave a temporary emotional relieve. Your gut remembers this episode and since that time you continued to use food to “make yourself feel good”.  Every time you binge, you lose control and just let go.  These feelings are addictive and very soon you find yourself consumed by a food addiction.

Your gut feelings are supposed to protect you by sending you messages (intuitive voices) but your body stop listening or maybe your gut just shut itself down when you started abusing food. Intuitive feelings stop working also.  That’s why people with eating disorders often find themselves in situations which are uncomfortable and chaotic.

Obsessive eaters, anorexics and bulimics stop hearing the voice of their own selves and stop being connected with there own selves. The only voice they can hear is the voice of their food obsession which tells them only about bad things.

To start hearing their own voice again (the voice of their gut and intuition) people should become aware of how they eat and realize that the way they eat affects their intuition. Then they should try to discern the voices: their own intuitive voice from the rotten voice of their eating disorder. In order to return your intuitive voice you should listen and follow just your own intuitive voice and ignore the ED voice.

Here are the steps:

1. Accept that the way you eat affects your whole life.
2. Find out what it is that you are trying to avoid by abusing food (are these emotions, feelings, people or situations)?
3. Ask yourself: what is my true love? What do I really want in life?
4. Meditate and during meditation ask “Who am I? What do I want?”
5. Identify your own intuitive voice: it is a soft, kind, gentle and positive voice.  Listen to it.

 

Freedom from food obsession comes when you realize who you are. When you realize that you are higher than food and that food is only the sustenance to support your body and your body is the temple for your beautiful soul – then you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Loving your soul, listening to your intuitive voice and connecting to your higher self, is the way to recovery and the way to live life.

 

Source: http://www.eatingdisorder-institute.com