To Heal Emotional Eating, Feel Safe in Your Body
If you have an eating disorder, whether it is bulimia, anorexia, or other form of “emotional eating,” ask yourself this: Do I feel safe in my body?
I have worked for over twenty years with women with all sorts of emotional eating problems including severe eating disorders. I am fully recovered from bulimia, myself. One of the most deeply entrenched experiences that women with eating disorders carry throughout life, if they don’t seek healing, is the feeling of being unsafe in their own bodies. I believe that the suffering we cause ourselves (dis-eases, eating disorders and addictions, violence, and other dysfunctional behavior) originates with our disconnection from the Self. A result of this “disconnect” is insecurity.
Food and alcohol provide temporary respite from the stress of insecurity. Biochemically, eating produces serotonin, which numbs our fear. Dieting gives us a sense of power and releases endorphins–the neurochemicals that override anxiety and pain. These biochemical “safety devices” help us relax momentarily, but “numbing out” fails to create genuine safety and well-being in our lives.
As we learn to heal our food addictions and normalize our eating patterns, it is vital to incorporate alternative, healthy safety resources into our lives. If you struggle with binge-eating, anorexia or bulimia, this is a diet-free way to build a supportive foundation for a magnificent new way of being.
There are two types of safety resources that you can develop for yourself: inner safety resources and outer safety resources. This article focuses on the inner safety resources that will allow you to nurture yourself and think positively.
Inner safety includes protecting ourselves from our own negativity, as well as the negativity or intrusiveness of others. Setting limits with ourselves and other people is pivotal to this process. This includes owning our power, and setting our path, regardless of the expectations or reactions of others.
When I was in the early stages of healing from bulimia, I learned how to meditate, calm myself down, think positively about things, and not make mountains out of molehills. I learned to create a nurturing inner environment for myself. Here are some typical inner safety resources I’ve compiled from my clients and workshop participants:
- Prayer and spirituality
- Meditation
- Optimism
- Ability to reframe events and outcomes positively
- Ability to redirect negative thinking
- Visualization of comforting objects and activities (snuggling into a warm, cozy blanket, for example)
- Visualization of supportive or beloved people, such as a parent, aunt, or teacher
- Writing, journaling, drawing
- Soothing music
- Setting limits and saying “no” to people I don’t want to be around
- Self-responsibility
Have you developed and utilized some of these inner safety resources? Think back to your childhood–perhaps you used some of them in the past. If so, it’s time to reconnect with them again. Make a list of both the healthy and the dysfunctional behaviors you see in yourself as you struggle with your eating disorder. How many of your inner safety resources are actually unhealthy for you? (An example of a dysfunctional or unhealthy attempt to achieve safety may be reaching for ice cream to soothe an anxiety, or cutting your food into tiny pieces to maintain a sense of control.)
Here is a simple exercise you can go through to determine how safe you feel in your body: Sitting in a comfortable chair, take two or three deep breaths from your diaphragm, then imagine the last time you remember eating out of alignment with your desired eating plan. What do you feel right before eating? (It’s probably some form of anxiety.) What do you need?
Now replace your image of your undesirable safety resource (overeating, restricting, purging, for example) with nurturing self-care: Imagine one of the positive items on your list of inner safety resources. What do you experience in your body as you think of that resource? How do you feel?
Continue to breathe deeply from your diaphragm as you imagine this positive resource. Notice what you are experiencing in your body.
Through such inner work, you can and will learn to experience the joy of feeling truly safe within your body. You can transform your relationship to food and heal your eating disorder–I’ve done it and I’ve helped hundreds of other women do it.
Jane E. Latimer, M.A., founder of the BodyWay Online program, gives you the tools to transform your relationship to food, your body and your life. Visit http://www.bodywayinfo.com to download your free introductory lesson and healing audio.
What Is A Vitamin And How Do They Help Our Bodies
If you want to know what is a vitamin then you also really need to know what it does and why it is necessary for the health, well-being and vitality of the human body. A vitamin is an organic substance, a molecule that helps you and your body to react in a certain way to other influences. The only way that you can get vitamins is from energy as in the sun, or from food and nutritional sources.
Although they never actually answered the question of what is a vitamin the first people to make good use of vitamins were 18th century sailors. Sailors used to suffer from a very unpleasant disease called scurvy due to the fact that they were at sea for long periods of time and did not have any access to fresh fruits or vegetables. They soon discovered that by giving the sailor’s limes they could help to prevent scurvy and keep the sailors a great deal healthier. The active ingredient that was helping to prevent the dreaded illness was vitamin C or ascorbic acid. It was not until the 1920s that vitamins were actually discovered in their own right.
But what is a vitamin and are they all the same? Vitamins are actually divided into two very distinct groups, those that are water-soluble and those that are fat-soluble. Water-soluble vitamins such as vitamin B, vitamin C and biotin can be dissolved in water and thus it is very difficult to achieve too high a level of these vitamins as they can be passed out of the body rather easily. With fat-soluble vitamins on the other hand, it is possible to take too much of them as they are more likely to be retained in the body whether or not they are needed.
But if you want to know what is a vitamin and what its effects are on your overall health the answer is very simple. You need the right amounts of vitamins to help to maintain your natural bodily processes.
The best way to make sure the you have a good supply of vitamins and minerals available for your body is to eat a good healthy diet containing all the essential ingredients such as fresh fruit, vegetables, grains and proteins. If you are in any doubts as to what constitutes a good diet the best person to ask is your doctor. They can give you a good diet that encompasses most foods and will make sure that your body is supplied with all the essential nutrients.
Timothy Gorman is a successful Webmaster and publisher of VitaminSupplementsGuide.com He provides more information on anti-aging supplements, dietary supplements, vitamins and answers the question what’s a good multivitamin that you can research in your pajamas on his website.
Give Your Body Its Vitamin Supplements!
What are vitamins? The term ‘vitamin’ was first given to a group of substances that were thought to be vital for life, each containing a nitrogen-containing component known as an amine. Vitamins are essential for the proper functioning of our body. They help to strengthen the immune system, to ward off disease, and even to improve the overall mood of a person. If a particular vitamin is missing from your diet, it may lead to a deficiency disease.
Vitamins can help prevent diseases mainly in two ways. First, they prevent the deficiency syndromes characteristic of the respective vitamin. Second, they increase the health benefits of the specific vitamin.
Vitamins mainly belong to two categories – fat-soluble and water-soluble. Fat-soluble vitamins are those that can be stored in the body fat and hence need not be replenished daily. Water soluble vitamins cannot be stored in the body and need to be taken daily.
The debate has always been whether you need vitamin supplements to meet the body’s daily needs or whether you can get it from a balanced diet. Theoretically, you do not need vitamin supplements. However, in reality, you cannot get enough of the vitamins that the body needs from your diet. Blame it on pollution, blame it on declining soil quality due to intensive agricultural practices, blame it on your eating habits, it’s getting more and more difficult to get your daily dose of vitamins from your food.
Taking vitamin supplements are, therefore, unavoidable. You need to take them regularly if you need to get all the vitamins into the body. Trying to compromise on that could lead to the breakdown of your immune system, and deficiency diseases.
But there are plenty of vitamin supplements out there. How do you choose the best one? For one, you cannot hope to take a vitamin pill and end the story. Because your body needs multivitamins, and pills containing all of them in the required quantities will be real big pills. They will be a pain to carry and eat regularly, to say the least. Again multivitamin supplements should have the correct mix. If you end up taking too much of one vitamin, that again is can cause health problems.
Talking of multivitamin supplements, one cannot ignore glyconutrients, a recent discovery. Glyconutrients are the plant carbohydrates. Though there are more than 200 of these, eight of them are most essential for our body. These eight essential sugars are responsible for some of the most fundamental biochemical processes in the body. Glyconutrients help in cell-to-cell communication. When the 600 trillion cells in your body talk well, they build well too. That means the body’s systems and processes stay fighting fit!
What are the benefits of glyconutrients? Glyconutrients are known for their anti-aging properties. They help athletes in improving their performance and to reduce the recovery time in case of injury. Glyconutrients have also produced positive effects in children suffering from ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).
Whether you are suffering from a medical condition or not, glyconutrients are essential for your body. They help your body heal, repair, regenerate, regulate and protect itself.
So when you select your multivitamin supplement, make sure it contains glyconutrients. They are absolutely necessary for maintaining optimum wellness of the body.
Lisa Hyde-Barrett, a registered nurse and wellness advocate, understands the relationship between good nutrition and good health. She’s become passionate about the new research behind sugars, specifically glyconutritional products.
Know more about multivitamin supplements with glyconutrients at http://www.deadly-health-myths.com/best_vitamins.html