by Sherry Strong, Author & Illustrator of Return to Food – the Life-Changing Anti-Diet
When you really start to understand just how incredibly amazing your body is, you start change the way you look at it. When you move beyond understanding into appreciation for your amazing body you start to realize what an incredible gift you’ve been given and it changes the way yo interact with it. When you daily tap into that gratitude and truly feel a deep sense of appreciation for the magnificence you are, things shift and change no matter what size you are and what you weigh.
I’ve seen this happen within my own body and countless clients. The way to your ideal weight and health is through appreciation and gratitude for the amazing body you have right now. No matter your size or health challenge right now, as long as you are alive, there is more right with you than not. Becoming crystal clear about what is working in your body and being grateful for that is the path to creating more of what you want. Focussing on what is wrong with your body, what you don’t like about it, will lead to more of that. It truly is as simple as that.
I will say this again for emphasis as it is so simple it is easy to miss. The path to getting the health, energy and appearance you desire is to focus on appreciation and gratitude for what is right in your body.
In workshops and seminars I’m conducting, I will ask anyone who has an amazing body to volunteer to come up in front of the audience to show everyone. I rarely amongst the uninitiated to my work have even one volunteer. Occasionally I’ll get the big boy with the beer belly and bravado to put his hand up to make people laugh but not because he truly believes it. Even more rarely will I get someone who knows and appreciates what their body does.
I then take the audience through what I call The Amazing Body Audit where I ask them to imagine how amazing it is to have vision, imagine all the beautiful things you’ve seen on the planet, the faces of people you love, sunsets, sunrises, landscapes, artwork, nature….now imagine losing your vision and knowing you’ll never see anything again. How amazing is vision? Can you tap into gratitude for how amazing vision alone is and how wonderful it is to have this? Now think of hearing, touch, taste, laughter, love, digestion, thought and on and on. How amazing is it that your body can do all of this? Even the ability to create fat cells is the body’s incredible mechanism for protecting you. Everything in your body is set up to heal and gift you with amazing experiences in life. When we tap into this gratitude and really really feel it, we are naturally drawn to giving the body what it needs to get more of that feeling and in doing so the body finds healing and its ideal weight effortlessly.
Check out this little video from the Illustration in Return to Food called RIP Perfect Eating and feel free to share and leave comments.
