Weight Loss and Living with Contentment
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Weight Loss and Living with Contentment
If I could use one word to express how I feel about my life now it would be contentment. This has not always been the case but I have found a way of living that has allowed me to feel this and along the way I have lost weight and let go of old ideals and beliefs that were holding me back from living a life with love and joy.
My life used to be a constant wave of ups and downs. There was never a time when I would say I was on an even keel for very long. When things felt lovely and life was running along smoothly I didn’t have the capacity to hold that loveliness. I would start to think something was going to go wrong and then I started on a mission of trying so hard to hold everything: my room as a young girl, my house and all that was in it, trying to always keep the house tidy, trying to keep on top of everything that was going on around me. Trying to stay one step ahead of life so that I didn’t have to feel what was really going on in my life, so then never really being in my life. Instead, constantly on the run.
All this began to dissipate when I started to listen to talks by Serge Benhayon.
I had been seeing Serge for some time prior to this; each year I would head south and have a healing session with him. I know in this time things were starting to slowly change, but after listening to his talks it was like life started to make sense. I began to understand the part I played and my responsibility in all that I chose to do. I remember once thinking that life now felt like I was looking at the back of a tapestry, seeing how the threads were worked together, the detail, the intricate stitching that made the tapestry. It was the back of the carpet and how it was worked that was the important part, this was the greatest contribution to the end result. This is what gave the tapestry the beautifulness that you saw and the quality that I felt.
Since coming to this deeper understanding, everything in my life has changed: there is a holding now that I didn’t feel before, a sense that I no longer have to try to hold anything and my life is now held with the loving support from the choices that I make. The more love and appreciation I have for me, the more I learn to love me, then the more of me I am living in my life. This allows an openness to love others and hold others in the same way that I hold myself.
Who would have thought that to change my life I had to start with me – me on the inside, not me in relation to everything and everyone ‘out there’ first?
One of the biggest things that changed was my relationship with food. I started listening to my body and when I would eat something, I would write down what I ate and how I felt; I then started to make choices that were based on my body’s reaction to the food that I was eating. So if I ate something that made me bloated, lethargic and/or gave me indigestion, I would eliminate it from my diet. As a result I lost 25 kilos. The excess weight slowly fell away over 2 years with no thought of dieting and it has not come back. My relationship with food and my body means that my choices with food are forever changing. The deeper my relationship with my body, the deeper I am able to feel what it is that my body needs.
It was easy for me to give up foods that did not agree with my body. I had previously always been in a punishing relationship with myself. Recently while doing a course on Slowing Down my diet, I got to stop and feel at a much deeper level not just what I was choosing to eat but how I was eating it – did I love to cook, did I love taking the time to set the table and sit and spend time with myself? I discovered that even though I had lost weight and kept it off, the choices that I had been making were coming from my head and not from a connection to my body.
Even though I had been making more loving choices with my food and life in general, there was still something really deep that I was not dealing with. And this was my lack of self-love], and appreciation in the way I felt about me, and the way I talked to me and allowed my thoughts to run off in a punishing, almost abusive way towards myself.
Through The Way of The Livingness I have learnt so much about responsibility. I am responsible for what happens in my life far beyond what I choose to eat and how it affects me as well as every part of my body. When I choose to be more loving and tenderly look after myself on the inside and the outside, I’m offering the world a reflection that is a different way of living. By taking responsibility for the choices that I am making in all parts of my life, I have far more awareness of what is going on around me and how my choices are affecting everyone else.
By choosing the love I have for myself that brings awareness and responsibility, I now feel a sense of contentment inside me that says ‘I’m okay’. I’m not perfect… I’m forever learning and unfolding a truer way of living. Life is much simpler and I now feel a holding that supports me in all areas of my life.
As my commitment to life grows, I am letting go of ideals and beliefs, self-punishing ways and holding back out of fear or anxiousness, and letting go of not wanting to be with myself. My life is now more full of me and I am finding that it is the choosing to be with me that has allowed me to feel the joy, contentment and steadiness in my body.
By choosing to live with this inner contentment I have a knowing inside me from something far beyond me as an individual – a feeling of connection to everything and everyone. A feeling that is universal.
Now when I stop and take a moment to look around at all the simple things in life, I get a feeling of absolute joy, even if it is hanging the clothes on the line, feeling the sun on my face and watching the willy wagtails playing in the yard.
Filed under
Appreciation, Diets, Livingness, Weight-loss
