Luminary Photo by Skip Armstrong

 

Open minded. Generous. Kind. A good listener. Reliable. Compassionate. Respectful.

These are just a few of the qualities I look for in a good friend. The kind of friend I want to be, and also be around. How about you? What are the characteristics with which your closest friends treat you on a regular basis?  What type of friend do you strive to be?

Now let me ask you one more question: How often do you show up in your relationship with your body with those same ideal friendship qualities leading the way? Like, how you think about your body. What you say to it on a regular basis. Or in how you care for it- how you rest it, move it, nourish it, etc.

A friendship is pretty much the opposite of how many of us have come to relate to our bodies. We were taught instead to control our bodies, to feel better about ourselves if we look a certain way. We’re constantly bombarded with media messages reminding us to keep ourselves perpetually toned and wrinkle free! As a result, many of us experience a fair amount of ambivalence when we eat, we feel threatened or confused by our hunger.  We end up eating in ways that don’t send a friendly message to our body.

Become a Better Friend

In order to heal your relationship with your body, you need to first start seeing your body as a separate, valued being. Like a friend that needs to be treated with the same relational intentions and valued characteristics we show to the important people in our lives. One of the most powerful ways we can cultivate a better friendship with our body is by befriending our experience of hunger.

Every time you take a bite of food, it’s like sending a text message to your body. Each bite is an opportunity to communicate with your body on both an emotional and cellular level. How you relate to your body when you’re hungry and while you eat can have a significant impact your health- psychologically and physically. HOW we eat matters just as much, if not more, than what we eat. It impacts our level of contentment, our relationship with our body, our perception of ourselves, and our body’s ability to optimally metabolize our food.  Mindful eating is an intentional approach to how we eat, and encourages a sense of openness, flexibility, and curiosity in our relationship with food.

“Stop fighting your appetite. Welcome your natural need for food back to the table. Trust in the wisdom of life, and life will nourish you in a good way.“-Psychology of Eating

Understand Your Hunger

Most women are a little unclear about how to mindfully experience their hunger. That’s why we created a FREE Making Friends with Your Hunger Luminary Learning Guide- to help you find confidence in your relationship with food, increase your mindful eating skills, and practice treating your body more like you would a dear friend.

Did you know that there are actually two types of hunger? Firstly, there is the more familiar “Stomach (Body) Hunger.” Stomach hunger is your body’s way of telling you it needs nutritional nourishment to keep rocking all of the important and complex tasks you need it to do to help you live your life. The Luminary Learning Guide helps you to get more comfortable with this feeling, and to make better decisions with both how and what you’re actually going to eat. One of my favorite aspects of the learning guide is the Hunger Scale Tool we developed just for you. It helps you check in with your level of stomach hunger, and also helps you to know when to stop eating by paying attention to your level of satiety, or fullness.

There is a second type of hunger, called “Symbolic Hunger.” Symbolic hunger is the healthy and normal urge we all have for emotional, spiritual, relational, intellectual, and physically soothing forms of nourishment. Our Luminary Learning Guide will help you practice moving away from mindless emotional eating, and toward an ability to actually identify your deeper needs and take action toward meeting those needs in a direct and generous way.

So the next time you feel hungry I want you to try something new. First, pause, take a few deep breaths, and slow yourself down. Next, pull out your Making Friends with Your Hunger Luminary Learning Guide and relate more skillfully with your hunger. When you do so, you are offering your body and yourself a generous and healing moment of connection. And a solid start toward a better friendship.

Sign up below to get the FREE Making Friends with Your Hunger Luminary Learning Guide sent right to your inbox. 

With love,
Cara
Team Luminary