This Could Also Happen During Quarantine

Last week I talked about weight gain during the quarantine since many people are worried about that (thanks to diet culture and diet mentality and our social conditioning).  This week I'd like to talk about what else could happen.

It's just as possible that people will lose weight during the quarantine.

Or people may stay the same.

Disruption of routines can affect people in a wide variety of ways.

Some people may find they are walking more because they want to get out of the house.

Some people may find they are eating less because they aren't going out as much.

Some people may find they are so much more relaxed at home that their stress levels have come way down and so have their cortisol levels.

Some people may be sleeping better and some may be sleeping worse.

Some people may be so stressed or sick that they can't eat.

Some people may be working even harder than they did before and haven't figured out how to get proper nourishment into their routine yet.

Some people may be eating more because they finally have time to eat and their body no longer thinks it's in starvation mode and actually starts metabolizing better.

A few weeks ago I talked about not comparing your experience to other people and this is why - there are infinite ways that this experience could play out for people and it depends on an equally infinite number of factors.

So even if your body does change, it's not likely you will know exactly why it did. And you may not be able to recreate it if you liked the change and you may not be able to undo it if you didn't. And it may change all over again when the quarantine is over.

So guess what that means?

You guessed it, this means at the end of the day, we can't make our decisions about what we do or don't do based on our weight.

There are too many factors, too much complexity, too many unknowns not to mention the foundational idea that your weight says nothing about you or your worth or value or health or what you can or can't do in this world so why do we even care about it so much in the first place? 

Now some of you may be thinking, damn, but I really want to figure this out and do what I need to do to look and feel my best. 

And here is some great news - you don't actually have to unravel the complexity in order to move forward and take the best care of your body that you can.

Here are 3 things to keep in mind when making decisions about food and your body. These things might take some time to understand deeply but it can be done.

One - make your decisions with awareness about your energy, not your weight.

What do I mean by this? Do I mean how much physical energy you have? Yes, but I also mean how much emotional, spiritual, and mental energy you have. What is the energy surrounding the decision in front of you? Can you feel it?  

Do you feel alive and excited or full of dread when making a choice? For example, say you go into the kitchen and you want to get something to eat.  When you imagine putting your food into your body - do you feel excited about it?

Are you eager and full of delicious anticipation? Or are you already judging what you haven't even eaten yet? Are you already regretting it and you didn't even eat it yet? Or do you not want to eat it but feel like you should?

This isn't about the food at all, it's about the fact that your choice is most likely still tied to an outcome (a certain weight perhaps) deep down in your beliefs.

So you might think you want to eat one food but feel like you shouldn't because it's "not good for you" and all of a sudden - the energy around your choice has dropped into a fear-based place.

If you can't release the link between your food and your weight, and you feel bad about eating something, then you are going to feel energetically heavier no matter what the food is we are talking about and no matter what your weight happens to be doing.

Everyone has different foods that they judge and that make them feel guilty and guilt is heavy energetically.

We want to aim for a feeling of lightness, ease, and joy when we make our choices, and if you can't access that - then that's what we want to work on, not judging or changing our food.

Two - please know that self-love is not about loving your body, but loving your being.  Peace with food and your body requires knowing that you are way more than your physical body.  It also includes accessing the deeper parts of you that know that everything is always ok no matter what and that all this time and energy we put into our bodies has been with good intentions but misdirected.

Do we want to feel good in our bodies? Yes - but we actually have a much better chance of feeling good when we don't equate feeling good with being a certain size. We can feel good in a wide range of sizes and shapes. It's only our egos that don't want us to believe this.

And my, my, my, egos will fight this hard. That's why we feel so bad when we try to let go of weight thoughts - it's not because weight is important, it's because our egos don't want to let go.

So the invitation is to look at what your ego wants to hold onto and how to help it let go and once again the work is not about changing your food or your body.

Three - radical acceptance is your friend. Even when you don't like how you are feeling - can you accept it? OK so yes - I often say that we want to find ways of feeling good in our bodies. And here is a huge paradox that can be hard to wrap our heads around.

Did you know you can feel good even when you feel like crap? This is newer learning for me too so you are not alone. The point here is not to set the bar of "feeling good" as a new thing to judge yourself by.  I've been doing this for the past few years and it's the same thing as judging our weight or our bodies.

If I didn't feel good I felt like I must be doing something wrong, and because of my conditioning around "health" and food, I kept concluding that if I didn't feel good, I must need to change my food or my movement.

But bodies are often going to be changing and processing and assimilating our experiences and detoxing and healing from illness and aging and manifesting in form whatever is going on in our emotional and spiritual lives. The only real constant is change.

So to tell our bodies they must always feel good? Can you sense how much pressure there is in that?

"Alright bodies - you have to do everything I need you to do and you need to feel good ALL the time - do you hear me?" That's like telling a 6-year-old to stop crying when they skin their knee.

Feeling bad is going to happen and it doesn't mean you are doing something wrong or you made a bad choice.

Sometimes feeling bad is the best thing that's going to happen as you let go of something you may have been holding onto.  The feelings need to be released not repressed and they may not even have anything to do with what is happening in your life in the present moment.

I know - this is getting kind of deep, but that's what's so amazing about this work. We stand in the kitchen and think we are just trying to figure out what's for lunch when in reality a whole lifetime of beliefs and patterns are working their way through us.

And we sit there and beat ourselves up and equate our choices with what we look like and believe there is a right choice and a wrong choice it's almost comical to believe we have that kind control over everything. It's also rather naïve.

This is actually good news because it means we can stop thinking that so much is riding on each decision and we can start to let go. And when we let go - then we are free.

And when we are free, not only do we feel better, but we open up a whole new world of possibilities that we never saw before because we were stuck in a box of black and white thinking and limiting beliefs.

Whew - that was a lot. Did you know food could be so interesting?

So what are you going to have for lunch today and how are you going to choose? And if I just confused the heck out of you - then bring it back to basics. 

Start with awareness around your choices. How do I feel before, during, and after?  What do I believe about this choice? What have I tied to this choice as an outcome? Is it really true? What else is possible?

Get curious and see what you might discover and don't forget to be compassionate with yourself all along the way.  You can't do this wrong.