Body Love Wellness » seasons

A Dash Of Blessing

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:00:00 +0000

As I noted in my tip this week, the Summer Solstice (occurring on June 21st at the end of the week) is often a time to celebrate the abundance of Mother Nature. A great way to celebrate this abundance is to take a moment to be grateful and thankful for the food we eat.

In much of Western culture, we’ve been taught to be critical of food. We’re taught to assess and evaluate its contents, whether it has the right vitamins, the right amount of calories, carbohydrates and fats, where it comes from, who makes it, whether it’s “junky” or “healthy” or “bad” or “good.” We toss so much opprobrium on our food that it might as well be a condiment!

As someone with a degree in integrative nutrition, of course, I am an advocate for having fresh, organic, well-made food available to everyone. I believe that the more people have access to whole, non-chemicalized foods, the less prevalent certain diseases will become.

That being said, the way most of us talk about our food may be more unhealthy than most of the food we eat. When we talk about how “bad” or “junky” or “crappy” or “unhealthy” our food is, we create a variety of problems. Below is a list of just a few!

Stress Response – When you eat and think that you’re eating something bad for you, this creates a stress response in the body. Your body is getting two signals: digest this food but it’s bad and you should stop eating! This conflict between what you’re actually doing and what your brain thinks you should be doing creates a stress response, also known as a “fight or flight” response. When you’re in fight or flight mode, the blood rushes away from the core of your body (where digestion takes place) to your limbs (where fighting and fleeing take place!). As a result of stressing yourself out about what you’re eating while you’re eating, you become unable to fully digest your food.
Negative Messages – By telling yourself that what you eat is bad or wrong or unhealthy, you’re also telling yourself that you are only worthy of such food; i.e., that you’re bad or wrong or unhealthy.
Oh, The Guilt! – With all of these negative messages, you also set up a guilt response. As a result, you start to feel guilty about what you eat and then seek out (often unconsciously) more sweet, salty or carbohydrate-packed foods – foods that provide a chemically soothing response – as penance for your guilt.

Luckily, shifting negative thoughts about food is actually quite simple, and I’d like to share one my favorite methods with you right now!

Take a moment, every time you eat, to bless your food. Take a moment to thank Mother Nature, another deity, the food itself, or yourself for feeding your body and nourishing yourself so well. Make this blessing truly your own and have fun with it. Your blessing can be as easy as a quick gratitude list for your food. You can think it to yourself or say it aloud. Getting your friends in on it will make it even more pleasurable. And if you’re accustomed to already blessing your meals as part of a religious practice, pay even more attention to the words you use. Feel the gratitude for the food in your body.
Comment below and let us know if you notice any changes in your relationship to food this week or tell us if you come up with any particularly great blessings!

And don’t forget to check out my blog at More of Me to Love.

Also, please stop by Golda’s Facebook group and become a member of the Body Love Wellness Group!

Golda is a Holistic Health Counselor who graduated from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. Through her fun, simple, stress-free approach, Golda specializes in transforming people’s relationships with food and their bodies.

Want some individualized attention actualizing this week’s tip? Check out www.bodylovewellness.com to set up a consultation with Golda!

A Dash Of Blessing originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on June 15, 2009.

Satisfying Your Sweet Tooth With Sensation

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:52:00 +0000

By Golda Poretsky, HHC

At this time of year, sweetness is all around us. The air smells sweet with blossoming flowers. Sweet, juicy fruit is ripening and in season. According to certain ancient cultures, this time of the month in June provides us with a full moon that signifies the best time to harvest the sweetest honey.

Reading just those few sentences above, could you taste the sweetness of this time? The human imagination is so incredibly agile and evocative that just thinking about sweet things allows us to taste and sense sweetness.

As humans, we have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. (Of course, some of us don’t have the use of all of those senses.) Most of us think of the first five senses as distinct from one another. You hear sounds, smell fragrances, etc. Some of us even believe in a sixth sense, or an ability to sense things beyond those five senses.

In order to really experience the sweetness of life, you may have to go beyond categorizing your five senses. You may have to look to your “common sense.” Just like you know what a “loud color” is and may have had an experience that “left a bitter taste in your mouth” you can understand how to see, hear, taste, touch and smell the sweetness of your experiences.

This week, I want you to experiment with enjoying the sweetness of your experiences. Whether it’s taking a walk on a beautiful night, enjoying the way a piece of silky clothing feels against your shoulder, laughing with a friend (or even crying with a friend), I want you to focus on the sensations in your body and sensing the sweetness of the moment with all of your senses. Let us know what you tried and if it made you feel emotionally full.

By the way, there’s nothing wrong with satisfying your sweet tooth with food, particularly if you take the time to savor and enjoy it. But sometimes acknowledging the sweetness of an experience can be even more satisfying!

Don’t forget to check out my blog at More of Me To Love.

Also, please stop by my Facebook group and become a member of the Body Love Wellness Group!

Want some individualized attention actualizing this week’s tip? Check out www.bodylovewellness.com to set up a free consultation with Golda!

Satisfying Your Sweet Tooth With Sensation originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on June 8, 2009.

3 Steps Towards Thoughtful Indulgence At Parties

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 18:37:00 +0000

St. Patrick’s Day is here and, like many holidays, revelers tend to get a little wild. The beer is flowing, the food is abundant, and you might just find yourself with a hangover – or the food version of the hangover: the “food coma” – the next day.

I have no problem with a little mindless self-indulgence now and then, but if you find that you have a pattern of over-indulging at social functions, I have a few tips that might help, especially with food.

1) Acknowledge Your Abundance

I remember from my dieting days (long past – don’t worry) that I would tend to grab lots of foods that I deemed “bad” when I was at parties because I would never allow myself to have them at home or just on a normal night out. I was like a food prisoner on furlough who wanted to make the most out of this brief period of freedom.
Nowadays, I can check in with myself to better understand what kind of food I want, because I no longer restrain myself the rest of the time. It’s as if my mind and body no longer think that this particular party is the last chance they will have for some chocolate cake, so chocolate cake doesn’t have the same kind of desperate appeal it used to have. Next time you find yourself in this situation, remind yourself that this is not your last chance to have whatever food it is you’re reaching for, and see how this changes your choices.

2) Allow Nourishment From Other Sources

Food isn’t the only thing that nourishes us. Parties give us a great opportunity to be nourished by social interaction. If you find yourself uncomfortably focused on food at a party, decide to turn your attention to how it feels to interact with different people. Allow the talking and the laughter to move through you and energize you. Recognize that this is also nourishment. And don’t let how you think you look (unless you think you look fabulous!) affect your confidence when approaching others to chat; you’re fascinating and with your shoulders back and chin held high, people will be delighted to talk to you.

3) Acknowledging Your Feelings To Yourself And Others

I’m going to let you in on a little secret that I’ve learned in my years as a counselor—99% of people feel at least somewhat shy at parties. Some of the most extroverted, confident people I know still feel a bit overwhelmed in a room full of people they don’t know. So the next time you’re at a party and you’re reaching for an extra drink or cookie that you don’t really want, just acknowledge to yourself how you’re feeling and tell yourself that it’s okay. For example, you can think to yourself, “I’m feeling shy/anxious/fearful etc. and I accept that completely.” You may even find that after you accept it, that feeling lessens. You can also tell people who you meet how you’re feeling. I find that if I admit to someone I’ve met at a party that I don’t know anyone and I’m feeling shy, he or she will generally either reciprocate the feeling or introduce me to lots of people. Speaking your truth in this way is a wonderful practice and it has the added benefit of redirecting your attention away from behaviors that no longer serve you: i.e., eating and/or drinking too much.
Try these tips at your next party/event/holiday and let me know how it goes by leaving your thoughts, comments and questions below.
To check out more great tips this week, click HERE.
[Cross posted to www.moreofmetolove.com.]

3 Steps Towards Thoughtful Indulgence At Parties originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on March 16, 2009.

The Time of No Forward Motion

Golda Poretsky, H.H.C. — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:12:00 +0000

Hi BLW Lovees!

I apologize for not updating more often. I will soon be blogging on a really fantastic new site–once that’s up and running you may have more of my blogging than you can handle!

Now on to the topic of this blog…

One of my mentors once told me that in the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, November through March is the “time of no forward motion.” This means that during this time of year, the people of this pueblo spend this time going inward, resting, dreaming, and completing what they have started rather than start something new.

In nature, as well, things quiet down. Most mammals are resting and restoring. Trees appear dead. Nights are long and days are short.

Rather than take a cue from our environment, most of us spend our winter running ourselves ragged, buying gifts and overeating in November and December, then tethering ourselves to resolutions and treadmills in January and February, in between bouts of winter colds and flus. Many people suffer from debilitating seasonal affective disorder, feeling depressed throughout much of the winter.

I have a theory that much of the stress we experience during the winter is a result of us not acknowledging what winter means. We carry within us an ancestral desire for a certain type of winter — warming our feet by the fire, drinking and eating warm, satisfying foods, looking out a window at the stars as we drift off to sleep.

Take a few minutes now to dream up your ideal winter. Would you go to bed soon after it gets dark? Would you eat more soups and stews and cooked vegetables and less salads? Would you write down your nightly dreams rather than your daily resolutions?

Pick 3 things from your list and incorporate them into the next 2 months. Feel free to let me know where this experiment takes you. If it takes you to right where you are, that is perfect.

The Time of No Forward Motion originally appeared on Body Love Wellness on January 18, 2009.