What does it take to love your body?

The question you are probably asking yourself is why you should subscribe to yet another blog. The answer is simple. What you are doing right now is just not working for you. I’m sure you have all tried the same 101 diet books and get fit apps I have in order to love your body. In fact, if I had to bet, most of you know deep in your soul how to cook yourself healthy. If you were really looking for a way to succeed at feeling great inside your skin, you would have found that by now.

But you’re just not doing it.

It’s not because you’re lazy, it’s not because the food you make for yourself when you are committed isn’t really good for you.

It just isn’t enough.

You’re not cooking yourself healthy and happy because you haven’t given yourself permission to look at food and health and happiness as an “ADD IN” process rather than one of denial. Being on a diet is supposed to be miserable. You are supposed to suffer when you eat ‘health’ food, right? Dieting is a Puritanical virtue as long as we don’t enjoy it. We pretend to, of course, but all we really do is count the seconds until it’s over. Like Lent or a colonoscopy.

There is this meme floating around Facebook right now, the “30 day challenge” where you give up the following:

No one is saying that soda and fast foods are good for you.  They most emphatically are not. The problem is taking the approach of denial, rather than of inclusion. You are taking out foods you shouldn’t eat rather than adding in foods you should. Eventually, your 30 days is going to be up and you will revert right back to the way you ate before. That rumor that it takes 30 days to create a habit was something that was made up to sell books. What it takes to make a habit is a reboot of your mindset. That can happen overnight or if you are looking for a way to fail, or cheat, you can find it anywhere and no matter how long your ‘habit’ has been in place.

You want to get healthy, lose weight, get your cholesterol down, lower your blood sugar? I can teach you how to cook that way, but you have to decide whether you are willing to think about food differently. Stop thinking of food as an enemy to be vanquished or a nagging haridan to be tamed into submission.

Stop thinking that way right now.

Start thinking of food as your friend. Your very best friend.

Food is what makes you strong, your brain whir with activity, your days amazing and your nights filled with great sex. Think of food as your new lover that maybe you have only had online chats with so far. It’s time to get intimate. It’s time to get REAL with this relationship.

I know that sounds terrifying. #foodislove? ‘I shouldn’t love food so much’ is the common refrain I get when I say or post that. But, hey, what do you have to lose? Have you tried dieting and misery and then loveless nights cuddling up to comfort food that gives you no comfort the morning after? I have clients that I teach how to cook themselves healthy with long term life threatening illnesses. When I ask them what they would do to be healthy, they invariably answer, ‘whatever it takes.’ What is it going to take for you?

Maybe it is time to reimagine how we eat, and how we feel about that.

Maybe it’s time to take this relationship to the next level.