Junk food: giving something up or letting it go?
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Junk food: giving something up or letting it go?
We can probably relate to the following cycle where we clean out the pantry and fridge, throw away all the junk food into the bin, stock up on healthy foods and supplements, sign up to the gym, buy workout gear – only to find ourselves a month or so later back where we were, junk food in hand.Many of us know from experience that when dieting and giving up junk food we are playing a tug of war inside ourselves. It can be a patchy process of liberation, littered with broken resolutions to start and stick to a diet.
Is there something missing when we go down this path?
No matter how much sense it makes, giving something up that we believe requires willpower to initiate, and even more to sustain, places us in a constant tug of war between denying and giving in to our cravings.
What if, when we start to look at wanting to lose weight, we first take a look within, rather than focus on all the things outside of us like joining a gym, starting a weight loss programme, going on a diet, and throwing all the junk food into the bin.
When we consume junk food, we lose ourselves and the company of the person we know ourselves to be. We lose any ability to look within.
As we start to let go of the things we think we want – but know our body doesn’t need – it becomes apparent that the real cost of junk food in our lives isn’t just our waistline. It’s us.
Animals listen to their body and do not live in disregard of it. Many, if not the majority of human beings will push their body beyond what it can take. As a follow-on and simple example it can be said that – we eat more than we need and, not only do we eat far more than is necessary, we eat what we do not need … and that is putting it lightly!
Serge Benhayon An Open Letter to Humanity, ed 1, p 163
It’s no secret that junk food temporarily distracts us from the discomfort we feel in daily life, and it may give us a momentary false boost to keep going; but it dulls us and leaves us heavier in every way.
We are fooled into thinking that when we are ‘giving junk food up’, that we are depriving ourselves. If we focus on the junk food or the deprivation, we are missing the point.
We’re not truly giving anything up; we are re-gaining our sense of self and the fact that we are worth taking care of.
We are opening up to an opportunity to look within and gain an awareness of the strength and qualities that are already within us.
We may believe it is difficult to let go of something so readily, legally and cheaply available to everyone – the biscuit jar at work, the snacks at the supermarket counter or the food buffet at a family celebration. We’ve lost track of the fact that there is nothing greater to be found outside of ourselves than what’s within us.
Junk food cravings are made strong from our own entrenched patterns of behaviour. Like self-perpetuating cycles, they are well worn paths we can and do easily travel on auto pilot. Letting go of a habit comes when we demand something different of and for ourselves in the moment, and instead of reinforcing and following the same old pathway, we start laying down a new one instead that delivers us to somewhere junk food can’t go – to a truer future.
It’s not so much a case of ‘just say no’ as it is of saying yes to who we are without the junk, knowing that this is worth saying yes to in ways we cannot actually fathom on the wrong side of a packet of our ‘go to’ junk food.
It’s a bit like surfing: letting a junk food crave-wave hit and go past without catching it. Instead, hanging back and staying steady and ready for the kind of wave that’s going to take you where you really want to go. That kind of wave might be going for a walk, having some water, doing something lovely for yourself – a stretch, cup of tea, even a 5-minute lie down, completing a job, closing your eyes.
Our bodies, down to the last cell, are our biggest fan club.
The body is constantly clearing, but the moment we let go and don’t have that chocolate bar or bag of crisps (chips) is the moment our body can effectively clear the junk food debris from our system. Sometimes this can bring headaches and other unpleasant symptoms as our body attempts to clear them from our system and restore homeostasis, our natural chemical balance. It is amazing how much better the body feels, and how it thrives in the absence of junk food and the presence of simple care, love and respect for ourselves. So very different to the misery of dieting and giving up junk food.
When we make it about our bodies and how we are feeling, it brings a completely different view of the whole picture.
When it comes to the true state of our being and its daily beingness, who should we listen to – the mind or the body? The answer is very clear but few like to admit the unconditional honesty of their body.
Serge Benhayon Esoteric Teachings & Revelations Volume III, ed 1, p 571
Filed under
Diets, Losing weight, Over eating, Weight-loss
