When you escape diet prison, there is much that changes in your life:
you gain more happiness
you gain more freedom
your gain more joy
But there’s also so much you need to let go of in order to get to the happiness, the joy, the freedom.
And that’s the part where most of us stumble.
That’s the part where most of us quit.
Letting go, ridding yourself of beliefs, of things, of people even is hard –
even harder though is letting go of the parts of yourself that still hold on to the belief that you are your body, that you are your weight.
Those parts of you have spent a lifetime carefully creating an identity around your desire to be thin at all costs.
Those parts of you have spent a lifetime on the internet looking for the perfect diet to finally remove your fat from your bones.
Those parts of you have spent a lifetime hating on your every cell in order to – what?- love your body eventually?
Those parts of you won’t give up easily.
They’ll fight for their survival.
They’ll fight for their right to hate on your every part.
They won’t go down without reinforcing their beliefs one more time.
And it’s up to you to surrender to those desperate attempts to keep you stuck.
Those desperate attempts to keep you locked in a world of misery and pain.
A world so small that even you are beginning to want to break out.
However, how do you stop listening to those voices in your head that tell you you ARE your body, you ARE your fat, you ARE the number you see on the scale?
How do you turn the other way when the majority of your mind wants you to go buy that diet book, join that weight loss program or go back to that Weight Watcher’s meeting?
How do you deal with the feeling that you’re falling apart, that you are destroying everything that you’ve ever stood for, that you’re breaking yourself into a billion pieces?
You breathe.
You lean in.
You surrender.
I know that is not what you want to hear.
I know that you are still waiting for the magic bullet.
The healing pill.
I tell you though that breathing, surrendering IS that pill, it IS that miracle drug you’ve been waiting for.
If you breathe into the feeling of anger, fear, pain, allowing your emotions to arise – unfiltered – you are going to rise above – healed, not forced.
I remember sitting in my room at the treatment center I was in, crying, raging, wanting to die, feeling as if my entire world was about to collapse.
There was a battle going on inside my mind that nobody could understand.
There was so much fear and misery of who I’d be if I stopped being thin.
Of who I’d be if I stopped being the one who didn’t eat.
Of who I’d be if I ‘gave in’ to what everyone else was doing.
I didn’t want to be normal.
I didn’t want to gain weight.
I didn’t want to stop feeling thin and having that high that not eating gave me every day.
I wanted to remain that way –
AND I wanted out.
I wanted to be free.
I wanted energy.
Happiness.
The freaking ability to THINK.
I wanted to have a life, not a thin body.
Yet, those parts of me made me hold on to every belief I ever created, every world I ever built inside making me believe that I was nothing but the bones that everyone could see.
And so my insides fought.
Day after day after day.
I’d cry.
I’d numb.
I’d lie.
Until one day, those parts of me that wanted me to die, gave in – just a little bit, hardly noticeable, and I began to breathe a little lighter and feel a little stronger.
I began to eat a little more and lie a little less.
I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel –
and slowly embraced my body for what it was, what it had always wanted to be.
The more you fight, the more you’ll lose.
Had I known that it was completely normal for my old beliefs to stage a revolution – or at least try to – I wouldn’t have been so scared, and I was terrified.
So, now that you know.
Now that you’re aware of the FACT that these beliefs WILL grow stronger once you begin to inquire, go deeper, let go of your destructive ways, how will you respond? How will you allow yourself to heal?
Escaping diet prison isn’t a one day thing. It might not even be a one year thing. It’s a continuous process that allows you to dig deeper and deeper into your core, to remove those doctrines from your heart and begin to see yourself for what you truly are: golden light.
The one thing you have to remember is this: you are not your beliefs. You are not your thoughts. You are not the tape that’s going on inside your mind.
You are so. much. more.
And though those beliefs may hurt as hell, though you may be scared AF, you are not going to die because of those thoughts that keep you stuck in diet hell.
When you move into the direction of your freedom, when you break yourself apart, your physical being – though it may feel like it – is not in danger, only you’re old dogmas are.
The question is: are you willing to challenge those or are you going to turn back to yet another senseless weight loss diet?
Are you going to buy into the summer body crap or are you going to allow yourself to heal for real?
Your ego may have to die a million deaths, but your soul will soar for the first time in your life.
*Photo found here.
