Really loving my body shape and how I feel versus how I look is a recent new awareness for me. Lately I’ve been feeling so great and really enjoying feeling how my body feels whenever I walk or move, so much so it often makes me smile to myself, even in public!
Going back 10 years, my focus was never on how I felt but always on how I looked. Sure I would eat when hungry, or sleep when tired. Actually as I write that, I realise I didn’t eat when hungry –
- I ate all the time to deal with how anxious I was feeling and used food to comfort me if I was feeling emotional, and didn’t want to deal with difficult or hurtful situations.
- Sleep when tired? Actually I was exhausted, but would push myself to stay up late at nights and drive myself hard because I felt a stigma attached to being a single parent and wanted to prove to the world I could ‘do it all’. I wasn’t going to be on benefits and a drain on society: instead I was going to be a great mum, a hard worker, a sociable hostess and later when I got married, a house-proud wife!
Everything in my life was all about ticking the boxes. For years how I felt in my body did not rank high on my list of priorities.
Body Weight, Body Shape And The End of Yoyo Dieting
For many years I battled with my weight. My size would fluctuate wildly from one month to the next. I would balloon at Christmas and holidays because of over indulging in my favourite treats of chocolate, cakes, rich foods and alcohol. And I would feel horrid, but back then it didn’t matter that much, I didn’t like the way I looked most of the time and this was a constant source of misery. I would then starve myself or try out the latest new diet. Unfortunately I could never sustain them and often would be left feeling so hungry, I’d overeat ending up feeling much worse than when I started the diet. I was left to contend with the failure of not sticking to the diet plus the failure of letting myself down even more.
So what changed?
In 2005 I attended my first Universal Medicine workshop and learned a simple yet deeply profound technique – the gentle breath meditation.
This gave me an opportunity to really stop and feel how I was living my life.
And one of the very first things I looked at was food. One day I decided to experiment with cutting out gluten from my diet as I’d observed for a long time that whenever I ate bread, directly afterwards sleepiness would hit which became something I just put up with. Why wouldn’t I eat bread? What’s how I feel afterwards in my body got to do with anything? I want to eat whatever I want to eat, right?
Well I was curious and decided to cut out bread. Immediately I began to notice the difference. No longer did I feel sleepy in the afternoons, but instead had more energy and felt more alert. This was the start of me making how I felt in my body (over how I looked) the most important thing.
When I gave up gluten, I wasn’t intentionally thinking of doing it to loose weight, but more on how not eating foods with gluten made me feel in my body (great) and energy levels (increased). And without trying the weight just fell off me. My battle with food and yoyo dieting was over!
My body shape changed a lot over the last 10 years. Even though I was slimmer, at one point I wasn’t too keen on how I looked but yet could not deny just how great I felt in my body and also within myself. Some people would say to me “Oh you’re too thin”… and I would reply: “Well I feel great” – because I truly did!
Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body. And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling, and no longer my own or anyone else’s expectations of how I ought to look. Because inside I FEEL great.
by Debra Douglas, UK
You may also like:
I am Beautiful by Bianca Barban
Women in Livingness Blog 
“What’s how I feel afterwards in my body got to do with anything?” An arrogance that may not consciously be spoken but it is acted out none the less for most people, including myself, however now much less than it used to be. My health and well-being has only increased since and as I give priority to what I feel in my body.
Powerful to look in the mirror, fully accept and appreciate ourselves.
All too often people focus on what’s on the outside rather than inside. I can relate to receiving comments about my body size. remarks like ‘Oh you’ve lost weight” or “you’re so thin” and yet the true marker of how I am is how I feel. And It’s beautiful to be in a body that’s light, energised and re-aligned to sacredness.
Ignoring the loud and clear messages my body was communicating with me created much misery and sadness in my life. I couldn’t function properly and felt very much alone. I needed support but didn’t know who or what to turn to. It was in 2005 that I too met Serge Benhayon and this is when my life started to change. For the first time in my life I was being presented with a way of living that supported me to connect to my essence and to live from the wisdom from my body.
It has become apparent to me that how we feel about our bodies comes from the inside not the outside. I realised that from considering what I had done and how I had moved before making the decision about what I ate. The I was also more aware of how I felt after eating what I ate. Slowly the honesty kicked in and the foods that made me feel uncomfortable and actually had no nutritional value, slipped away.
What I have discovered is that how I feel about my body effects how others see me. I have lost weight in recent years and initially had quite a lot of negative feelings about how I looked. I would feel my body and notice that it felt boney or I would catch sight of myself in the mirror and think that I looked too thin. And interestingly at that time a lot of people commented on how thin I was. But now I never ever think about my weight, I feel an incredible sense of fullness from within and when I look in the mirror I love what I see. No one ever comments on my weight anymore and there are no sideways glances either. When we walk our truth in a body that reflects truth then we appear full beyond measure despite what the scales say.
Love this. If we have a sense of fullness within, this is what we emanate to others. Similar with ageing, the quality in which we carry ourselves expresses more about who we are, than numbers or wisdom lines.
Our bodies are reading energy constantly, they are understanding life on an energetic level and they never reinterpret energy. Our eyes on the other hand are reinterpreting what they see and so are relaying false messages back to us. A woman’s true beauty and confidence don’t come from her looks and our bodies know that.
How we feel is so much more powerful than how we look.
If I go on how I look I will never match every single ‘acceptable picture’ that is out there which change like the wind. How I feel however tends to be more stable and supportive because if I don’t feel great I can feel why I don’t and how to change that. It’s an inside governed change specifically from and for me. Not a blanket diet or lifestyle from the outside .
That is such a smart way to live, being aware these ‘acceptable pictures’ are there but not being ruled by them.
Our strength and stability come from within us, as does our beauty.
It’s so true Debra, feeling fabulous on the inside always strikes a fabulous look! –
Agree with you Deborah the loveliness we feel inside our body emanates our beauty that goes far beyond a physical look. That beauty is vastness just like the universe.
The distinction you make here Debra is so important, how do we feel in our bodies is more important than anything else and it stops and asks us to live connected to our bodies and to let go any images we may have for how we think we should look. And so we live and walk us.
It’s lovely to be focussed on what I feel and not what I look like.
Universal Medicine and the Gentle Breath Meditation supported me to realise how much focus I placed on everything outside of me, including the way I looked. My reference point in life is now very much how I feel. If you look great but feel terrible inside what’s the point?
This is amazing example that plays out in a lot of places – we have a picture about life, be it the way we look, the job we do, our family or relationships and we try and make life fit those pictures. But we don’t really stop to consider how we feel and if those pictures are really going to deliver us contentment
It’s amazing how much we avoid feeling – even to the extent that we’ll happily talk about feeling this or that but all the time resisting where our body is at. Joining up and unifying our words and physical actions is a great project to embark upon.
Yes and is incredibly empowering as well. There is an ease that comes into the body when we choose to listen to it.
To truly feel where we are at is to surrender. We do not have to talk about how we are feeling or try to be anything else other than the letting go of the resistance or whatever is there that is getting in the way of the deepening within.
When we start to prioritise how we feel in our body over how we look, things start to change and we feel so much better – more energy, more settled, more content. When we’re overriding what we know is true for us, it gets highlighted in so many ways but most of all through our bodies – a constant tension, anxiety or unsettlement. Our bodies, and how we feel, are our true barometer of how much we’re living what we know is true and works for us.
Nothing beats the feeling you have inside yourself, inside your body when there’s a genuine self-love. To move, talk, walk, dress in that quality of self-love is what arises every woman’s beauty whatever her age, shape or size.
It is important to be aware of what we eat, how we see about ourselves, and the way we hold our body affects how we feel and physically look. Our body loves it when we nurture and care for it and through self-care and self-love it will shine and sparkle.
Listening to our body and honouring what is shares is a wise decision, ‘This was the start of me making how I felt in my body (over how I looked) the most important thing.’
Yes it makes sense to eat in a way that does not make us feel affected in any way. It had become so normal to feel heavy or sleepy after a meal and especially on our festive days like Christmas or birthdays it is just so normal to feel bloated after. Yet why have we just made this so normal when we can eat in a way that is very tasty but also at the same time very supportive of our body?
I notice that I can eat to comfort myself when I am not feeling good about myself equally I can eat poorly when i am feeling the next layer of expansion and am resisting or delaying going there.
It is lovely that you are letting the ideals and pictures go and just enjoying how you feel,’ I’ve been feeling so great and really enjoying feeling how my body feels whenever I walk or move’.
“Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body.” Our body is our best guide as to how we feel. Many people may say that some students of Universal Medicine look too thin, but in comparison with much of the population these days its no surprise. Obesity rates have soared in all Western countries. Slowly some in the medical community are catching onto how important lifestyle medicine is. Not surprising they are late to this information, as they have virtually no lectures on nutrition at medical school.
We can only truly change when we change the energy by which we are impulsed in the first place, otherwise we can overeat or diet but never will feel great because the energy we are doing it from is one that always will make us feel less than we are.
Dropping our pictures and expectations of ourselves as women and accepting our bodies can be an unfolding process.
Living in connection to our essence is the truest guide for us to live who we are, through which we develop a loving relationship with our body, as such honor the truth it shares with us of the choices we make.
It is amazing how easy it is to maintain your body shape when you stop eating gluten and dairy and breads as I find substitutes have the same effect on the body.
It is true Vanessa. When we consistently live in connection to the solidity of our essence, and be guided by our truth, our bodies will reflect this quality without effort.
Yes the effort is effortless when we listen to what the body asks us to express.
I find it was through healing emotional hurts that supported me to be more self-loving and thorough this shift my diet also shifted.
We focus so much on the outer body that we forget that the true beauty lies within. It took me a long time to accept this, as my self worth was low and like so many women I would compare myself to women that were taller, more beautiful more sexy ….all the attributes that I felt I didn’t have and couldn’t see, but all this did was allow my self esteem and self worth to plummet even further. Being introduced to the Gentle Breath Meditation was the beginning of changing how I felt about myself. Every time I did it I felt more connected to myself and with the deeper connection the negative thoughts would disappear and I would feel fuller in my body and I gradually started to enjoy being me. Like you now Debra when I look in the mirror I am more willing to accept all of me and not criticise myself as I did before.
I feel really appreciative of the fact I have no body issues as I see so, so many women who pretty much loath how they look. When you think about it we aren’t treating God’s divine body with the love and sweetness it deserves…
Our relationship with food as a comfort is really worth looking at. I gave up gluten and dairy many years ago now and the difference in my body and my energy levels is huge. I am finding that my diet naturally alters and refines as I do, and feeling a lightness in my body feels lovely.
When we feel light we tend to eat light and when we feel heavy we tend to crave more dense and heavy foods, and also what we eat contributes to how we feel. Everything is linked and one choice affects the next, but how do we shift our choices to be lighter and more supportive? Through self-love and self-care, and letting go of our hurts. You may ask, what’s our hurts got to do with our diet? Well, we all know when we feel hurt and emotional the first thing we reach for is food, comfort eating is a huge addiction.
When we feel amazing in the movements we make from our body, we then reflect our true beauty and this then is not only seen but also felt and confirmed which shows just how beautiful it is to move from how we feel and then reflect that outwardly so.
“an opportunity to really stop and feel how I was living my life.” This is such a beautiful gift offered and presented by Universal Medicine and The Way of The Livingness.
Thank you for exposing the cycle of yo-yo dieting etc that so many women spend most of their lives trapped in. It is so awesome that you have connected to how your body feels rather than how it looks and the benefits that flow from that appreciation.
I have for most of my life been overweight and it was something that I had just resigned myself too. I am now back in a healthier weight range yet it still takes some adjusting to let go of a heaviness I carry towards my body and learning to enjoy how my body is today.
When we make how our bodies feel important, we are open to make changes in our diet, at times people do feel the effects of gluten in their bodies but do not have any level of self love that would inspire them to make different choices.
Beautiful, loving your body from within, being happy in your skin…”Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body.” We spend so much time looking outside of ourselves, and looking at the superficial aspects of our life for acknowledgement or fitting in. The fashion of what looks good changes, we need to take a step back and reconnect with our bodies and start from there, love who we are from the inside out.
I really do love my body and are quite shocked when with other women and thier level of hate towards there bodies is so strong. It is such a cruel way to be with ourselves. I never hated my body but I never loved it either, now I will often stop to admire my figure and it’s more from kindness than objectify my body to any standards that we are endlessly bombarded with.
” Because inside I FEEL great.” Is this just not beautiful thank you for sharing Debra.
When I was growing up, I don’t think I ever came across a woman who was truly comfortable with herself and very loving towards and with herself. Every woman I knew had some sort of critique or criticism towards herself. I love that I now have women in my life who reflect something different to this.
How lovely to truly love your body. This is so unusual I love that you can claim that, very inspirational.
What I am noticing is that when we make life about how we feel and not on how we look not only do we see and respond to others differently in the way that no matter how we look it is the radiance inside that matters but others can see and feel the beauty inside us. How we feel comes first and then how we look is a confirmation of how we feel.
It is such a big one body shape and how we look … that this will determine how you feel and what environment you are going to put yourself in. Being able to see the that it is really about how you feel on the inside and how you let this out equally with all.
Brilliant Debra, I can relate, for me it has been about a struggle to put weight on. I have tried all sorts of foods, large portions, different times and supplements. But what I have not changed till now is the quality I eat the food in. The habit of ‘wolfing it down’ carries with it a feeling of desperation, anxiety and hiding my light. I am inspired by your words and now imagine eating all my meals, already feeling full of me.
“I ate all the time to deal with how anxious I was feeling and used food to comfort me if I was feeling emotional, and didn’t want to deal with difficult or hurtful situations.” I am sure most of the population can relate to this Debra so many of us eat for reasons other then eating, it would be great if we was educated on the cause and effects of emotional eating – we need to bring this out of the dark.
Amazing article exposing a deeply poisonous epidemic that has permeated society to it’s core perpetuating an never ending drive for external beauty the lack of self worth in women world wide… burying further the truth of the innate beauty that lies within. People complain about the behaviours of our youth today yet feed into the very energy that creates the issues they suffer from by not speaking up against the sexualisation, false images that abound, and the promotion of qualities that indeed make us ugly. This is a social issue and a responsibility we can’t just hand to somebody else.
This area really needs to be studied- how dieting often doesn’t work because the issues underneath have not been dealt with.
I also stopped eating gluten 8 years ago and also dairy and it completely changed my digestion and how my body felt and looked. What is interesting though is that now if I don’t listen to what my body needs or doesn’t need then my body reacts in just the same way as it used to… with bloating, discomfort and tiredness. As soon as I make changes to my diet for how I am now living, all those side effects go again.
That question of ‘what does how my body feel got any significance in life’ made me smile because I also used to be like that whereby my thoughts and mind where the only way to live (as the thoughts would constantly say) yet when we give the body a say, listen to its feedback on our mind-driven thoughts many times the truth gets exposed. Our bodies ability to feel is vital if we are to live in any form of true sucess, living love and knowing ourselves as love as apposed to sucess defined by recognition.
When we feel great about ourselves on the inside, we move, speak, think completely differently, and the external matters so much less. I’ve also found experimenting with different foods fascinating in terms of the kinds of thoughts that I have after eating certain heavier foods.
It is interesting how we feel about our bodies, because recently I put on weight as a result of some comfort eating patterns that I continued from a holiday. What I found interesting was that I didn’t choose to notice I was putting weight on and it was only until I went to try on a summer pencil skirt that I ‘realised’ I had indeed put on quite a bit of weight. What was interesting here was prior to putting on the dress I was feeling good about myself, enjoying my body and had started swimming and using my local gym but as soon as I clicked that I was over my normal weight by probably a stone I started to not like my body. How my self worth was tied up with an image of what my body shape ‘should’ be in order to be attractive, this was such a strong feeling and one I felt very uncomfortable with acknowledging that I was governed by images more than by how I felt.
Debra you are super sexy! I saw you at a wedding recently and you looked just radiant. When people embrace who they truly are the inner glow and beauty is undeniable.
I loved reading this blog Debra. What was inspiring about it was that in a world focused on look-ism you broke away and felt what was going on in your own body instead. This will be the future – constantly checking in and correcting our diet according to what our body is telling us and feel how we feel after we eat rather than following endless diets and listening to others – for how can we beat the wisdom of our body?
I didn’t realise how much gluten affected me until I gave it up for a few months, on the advice of a nutritionist to help with acne that I had at the time – when I tried some again the effect was really obvious – it made me very sleepy and a bit irritable which stood out a mile, it was great to experience this as then I knew it was something that I truly didn’t want to eat because I knew from my body how much it affected me.
The way we look versus the way we feel is so super important, because if we get caught up in what we look like, it ensures that all the flaws we see are the ones that don’t make us feel love towards ourselves. This can be so damaging, however, when we go to how we feel, that ensures we aren’t captured by pictures that can pull us down.
It’s so true Debra, when we really stop and look our life, the things we do and take foregranted as ‘right’ actually don’t add up. We say we like to ‘chill out’ and take things easy but do we really? We have ‘time off’ but do we ever truly stop and wind down? I’d say not. There is a huge discrepancy between what we say and what we do. As you beautifully show the bridge between these two places lives in the feelings and senses we have. For if everything is energy then these sentiments, sensations and thoughts we receive are what actually make up our physical body. The question is, are they critical, negative and analytical or full of Love?
I have begun to appreciate my body actually knows what it needs and does not need rather than follow all the ideals and beliefs that we are told are good for us. That does not mean I don’t end up eating a healthy diet it just means that I listen to what my body can digest and supports it to be fully engaged and vital in life.
This is a great way to approach self image issues, to change the game by shifting the rules a little from how you look to the focus being on how you feel. It would be great if some photos of your story were attached to this blog, it is a truly remarkable life change you have made and I am sure many people would relate to.
Loving and nurturing myself, re-discovering all it takes to let my true woman out
(simply surrendering to the true and natural loveliness of me) is the most exquisite journey that deepens constantly.
And when we have this focus… On how we feel that is, it’s like a doorway into a whole new way of feeling and being, in this connection starts to shine out and our eyes bringing true beauty.
What you have shared here Debra beautifully illustrates how living in connection to what we feel within and in our bodies as opposed to what we think, brings greater awareness to the choices we are making and why, as such our bodies reflect the level of love we are choosing to live with.
I spent all of my adult years yo-yo dieting and once I started eliminating the foods that caused bloating and mucus, my weight simply dropped off. As I refined my diet, more weight went until I finally reached the same weight I was at age 18. My body has stabilised at that and I don’t have to think about what I eat, I cook and eat as much as I feel to, and it stays steady. I love being slim, but because I am no longer eating heavy foods, I feel great inside too.
We think that what we eat is all about nutrition. But in my experience it has a whole part to do with blocking out how we feel. The thing is we have become so adept at this, we don’t even observe or sense that we have these deeper feelings in the first place. ‘Feel? Not me…please pass the cheese’ – well, that’s the dialogue I have had. So it has been beautiful, like you Debra, to stop this blocking behaviour with my diet and start to feel just how much there is to life. It’s truly a feast for our senses.
Interesting how we feel we have to prove ourselves no matter what it costs us physically. We eat to get us through life, without realising the impact of what we eat and rather than eating foods that supports our body we choose foods that make us more sluggish. Fantastic to read how you have given up gluten and your body has found its own natural shape and feeling great!
Thank you Debra for this encouraging and supportive sharing.
This is the revolution or more so the evolution Esoteric Womens Health is supporting women with. The fact that they can look or feel within for how they are feeling without needing to go to the outside to be shown. There are so many images pushed at women of all ages to bend them into whatever it is that’s going on but now more and more women are seeing their natural beauty which has nothing to do with outside appearance. The outside is just a reflection of the inside and so isn’t based a ticking a box but based on a living feeling. You see so many women shine from their own support and care. We have been sold a dummy with media pushing all manner of how to looks at women when in fact everything they have ever needed is at their fingertips. Esoteric Womens Health supports women of all ages and all styles because it’s a true support for women, no dividing up or target markets just bringing women back to themselves.
That is such a valuable lesson to share. When you take time to observe people, it is obvious that how you feel actually affects how you look, the inner glow is clearly palpable on the outside.
I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling.
It’s such a pivotal moment isn’t it Debra, when you can look at yourself and have that gorgeous feeling inside, overtake any picture or words that try to come in and change that feeling.
It’s funny, but like you when I lost weight people would say to me ‘oh, you’re too thin’, but when I put weight on, no-one ever said ‘oh, you’re too fat!’… it seems that being slim can sometimes expose others, and bring up their own issues surrounding their body image, and they felt more comfortable when I was overweight than when I was slim.
“For years how I felt in my body did not rank high on my list of priorities…” It is sad but I feel that many women feel this way Debra, putting themselves way down the list and making sure that everyone else is happy, whilst leaving themselves feeling exhausted, and often left feeling disenchanted with their body. I was a yoyo dieter too, for years my weight fluctuated with the seasons and it wasn’t until I gave up gluten and dairy that my weight stabilised without trying. Thank you for sharing your experience with us, you are an example of how we can change our body without strenuous exercise or dieting, but instead making self-loving choices about what we eat and choose foods that our body does not react too.
For me there is a marked difference in what I feel and what I see. When I feel the connection to my bodies and every move I make, I feel confident and present with myself. This then has a domino affect on how I see myself and it feels amazing to live in this way. Feeling from our bodies is a true marker of the glory that is our connection to self.
I have been a bit of a yo-yo dieter too Debra, but the weight always came piling back on. I never considered giving up gluten until I came across Universal Medicine and for me the transition felt natural. I also gave up sugar, alcohol and dairy and although I was already slim, for the first time in my life my weight remained constant without trying, so no more need for diets. I got the ‘you’re too thin’ comments too, but like you, Debra, I felt, and still feel great, so there is absolutely no going back to a way of life that included foods that obviously didn’t agree with my body, and I can safety say that I not only love my body shape, but feel great too!
It is great to hear you celebrate you and how your relationship with your body has changed. This has been exactly the same for me, it has been a gradual unfolding process and Universal Medicine definitely have helped and supported me with this. It was interesting to feel something as I read this line “Oh you’re too thin”… and I would reply: “Well I feel great” – because I truly did!’ As at times people have said that to me and only now whilst reading your blog I realised how I take on board what others have said instead of going with what I feel. A great one to be revealed and I am sure more will unfold for me after being aware of this now. Thanks xx
I have just been contemplating all the ideals and beliefs around food and body image we have been literally fed, it’s now starting to come about that many of the these were not founded on truth and we are seeing the results in illness, disease and obesity.
For me it confirms listening to my body and the feed back it gives me is truth that supports my body…..
Beautiful celebration of how you feel in your body being reflected in how you look and it is lovely to feel your acceptance of this. Thank you for sharing how by choosing to experiment with giving up gluten because you had recognised the negative impacts eating it had on your body it resolved your yo-yo dieting without you trying. When we see weight as the issue we are caught in a dieting cycle which can only be addressed when we become willing to look at the reasons why we are over-eating or indulging in things that we know are not good for us.
If we were to honour our sacredness, the depth and magnificence of who we are as women, our outer physical appearance would be accepted as the divine reflection that it is.
Doesn’t this show how making the exterior the marker of success is flawed and deeply unachievable?
It is like being concerned with an apple’s outer appearance when you bite into the apple it is rotten from side to side.
To be honest I would much prefer the odd shaped apple and enjoy the crispness and sweetness of the fruit.
Luke funny you should use the analogy of the fruit, as I often choose the odd shaped apple as its true glory lies inside, not in the perfection on the exterior….. Bit like us really!🍏
Luckily we have learnt to discern the rotten fruit to avoid biting to make sure 😉
To love and honour the sacred vessel that is our physical body is a work in progress for a lot of us. We have spent lifetimes being dictated to and coerced into performing to a set ideal and image about how we as women should and shouldn’t look, act, feel etc. All this is a distraction so that we do not stop and feel the majesty we truly are beneath these many false layers. To honour the woman is to honour the living Stillness of God, that sacred space that lives within us all and gives birth to this expression in all others.
The first thing for a true change in our life is to stop. Stop and observe ourselves and our life with all the honesty that is in us. You have shared what this has brought you and I feel the joy in the connection you have with your body, accepting the gorgeous woman you are.
Yes Debra – so so important to keep feeling your body and what feels true to that instead of the ideals, images and expectations that wield through mankind… It is those lies we need to defeat by changing where we come from; are we connected to our body or not? Great to every time check in, to feel our gentle breath and how are we proceeding this forth? Where and when do we loose it? And so we can come back to our breath, our body and all that we feel. It is our choice to be with it.
Feeling amazing in your body doesn’t even begin to compare to how we look, in fact when you feel amazing in yourself I find I don’t even care how I look because I know the people around me are getting something much greater than that.
Great blog Debra, we really do put ourselves under massive pressure to meet the ideals we hold and that we judge ourselves against. Your comment on food stopped me, ‘What’s how I feel afterwards in my body got to do with anything? I want to eat whatever I want to eat, right?’ that has often been how I’ve approached food, it’s all about the taste and the gratification now, and the attitude beyond that is to ignore the after affects – this is all pervasive in our societies where we look at the surface and do not consider the full consequences of what we do, yet our bodies do not lie and show us clearly the affects of our choices.
When we actually connect deeply with ourselves the drive to appear a particular way drops away.
Your clear declaration says it all Debra, ‘inside I feel great’ and that’s it, it’s about how we feel and what we feel not how it looks, and when we make everything we do about that quality then we live and move in a very different way.
“ Everything in my life was all about ticking the boxes. For years how I felt in my body did not rank high on my list of priorities.” This is a sad reality of how many people live every day. When we choose to make changes and live by what we feel rather than what we think we can discover the loveliness of who we truly are.
What a miraculous turn around Debra just by giving up gluten. It is a major effect on the body. I remember when I did the same it was not to hard to do. The benefits were above and beyond ‘missing out’ as so many think when they give up a certain food. When you start to feel really great you do not want to dull this feeling with food.
The subtle and not so subtle messages and comments we live with everyday about how we look, how we should look and all the opinions in between become very obvious when we start to feel deeper into how we are feeling in our body and make changes to reflect this. The truth is always in what we are experiencing free of this influence and pressures from outside of us. As you have mentioned Debra – going against the trend is going to bring attention from others but your choice to go with the honest result in your body is what is life-giving. Very Inspiring.
“And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling, and no longer my own or anyone else’s expectations of how I ought to look. Because inside I FEEL great.” How beautifully confirming – I love your appreciation of yourself and the inspiration you offer.
The thing that is not mentioned in all the latest diet fads and trends is that the satisfaction felt from being on the diet is felt from receiving recognition for having a good looking physic and body image but NOT from how you feel on the inside with yourself. The best diet is definitely the one that supports a yummy feeling of being yourself in life and the body image should be a simple confirmation of this.
“Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body.” How we look versus how we feel is poles apart, the feeling we have from our bodies is a truth forever embodied and there is no greater joy than that. Thank you Debra.
The power we all have when we choose a livingness that supports us to connect with our bodies and feel appreciate and celebrate the love that we truly are through honouring ourselves with self-love and self-care of our bodies we naturally emanate and reflect this to the world.
It’s amazing how we continue to eat food that isn’t right for us even though we know we’re going to feel terrible afterwards. I did this for thirty plus years in order to squash down what I didn’t want to feel only to have to deal with the physical discomfort and any weight gain and would then put the brakes on eating and so the cycle would continue. Similarly to you Debra I’ve learned to listen more deeply to my body as well as deal with the underlying issues that lead to what is essentially an eating disorder. And it’s awesome to be pain free and feeling far more vital from not consuming gluten, dairy and all forms of sugar. It isn’t normal for our body to be in discomfort.
Great blog Debra, and so true that when we embrace who we truly are it is reflected in everything we do, having profound affects on everyone we come into contact with.
Debra, thank you for sharing your experience, this is one I can relate to as I have also been on the diet roller coaster, and it very rarely works long term does it?! A true way to lose weight is to make loving choices for ourselves and eat what is right for our body, never mind what the latest ‘trend’ is. I have had people express to me that they think I am too thin, but as you say, it is how you feel inside that counts and if you love and respect yourself enough to nourish your body then there is no need for validation from the outside from others because you love yourself for who you are, whatever size or shape.
Thank you Debra for a great blog, it is amazing the changes that giving up gluten can bring to one’s health. I feel so much better in my body, much more vital, and that draging the body around feeling has gone. So often how we look becomes more important than how we feel, when this changes, then true change can occur in our lives.
There really is such a difference in how we feel about or bodies rather than measuring or comparing ourselves from how we look, as the eyes can sometimes trick us but the truth shared from the body is absolute gold. When we feel amazing this is also reflected outwardly too and that is a beauty-full sight to behold.
Absolutely Kelly – it is like we are amazing birds of paradise who have been waddling around considering ourselves eternally to be slugs of some kind. No offense slugs but the fact is we can fly and stretch our wings and transform our life by simply connecting to the natural feeling sense we have actually had inside all along.
It’s always beautiful when a woman embraces and loves her own body shape, there are so many external pressures when it comes to the way we look, but ultimately we all have slightly different body shapes and sizes and what matters is not our appearance but our settlement and contentment in our own skin.
Beautiful Debra. Your experience with bread shows that we can gain so much form simply experimenting with what works for our bodies.
This is such a huge one for us as women, how we feel versus how we look. We can feel one or the other and not be satisfied with either as well. We hold a great importance and pressure on ourselves to feel good and look at ‘all’ the time and with this image we all hold about ourselves, when we are not feeling fantastic, we are down on ourselves, without actually reading what is going on, why are we feeling the way we are and not being down on ourselves when we do not feeling up beat all the time.
It is so interesting to observe how almost everything in society: media, fashion, advertising etc., is all about how we look. Never it is actually asked how we feel inside our bodies. In the past I also saw myself as a woman like that, just beautiful by looks but now after having studied with Universal Medicine and having experienced how amazing my body can feel, I know that how I feel is what makes me feel beautiful. Then, when I look in the mirror I see this beauty as well
I love your blog Debra, you have exposed how much more important it is to focus on how we feel in our body instead of our shape or size. Once we care, nurture and honour our body it will be it’s natural weight and size. This would be an awesome blog for so many women to read as I know anyone could relate and benefit from reading your experience.
Living life based on what feels good to our bodies is far healthier than following a cold image of how we want ourselves and the world to be. Thank you for this reminder Debra.
The way you describe yo yo dieting is so familiar to me Debra, I never did this to lose weight – for me it was about ‘controlling’ painful acne. Try as I might the diets never worked. Now I see my food choices not only for how they make me feel in my body but for what they allow in my life. For example I have seen that sugary foods make me feel completely disconnected from myself and others – this feels so awful I remind myself of it whenever I have a ‘sweet tooth’ moment.
Amazingly I love my body more than ever now too…..and the acne – gone!
“.. when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am…” What an awesome claim Debra, thank you for the reminder that it is our acceptance of ourself that matters and makes a difference in what we ‘see’.
Yes this is true when we look in the mirror the face that looks back at us is reflecting what we feel and that informs how we think we look. If we do not like what we see, what are we truly feeling?
I was the same Deborah when I gave up gluten it was not to loose weight but to stop the bloating stomach cramps and tiredness that I felt, but by gradually giving up all products containing gluten I naturally lost weight at the same time.
It’s bizarre how much we as a society focus on our body, but yet this only ever seems to sit on the surface level. All those hours spent staring at mirrors, and yet we do not stop to actually ask how our body feels. Your experience Debra flips that all on its head and what you say just makes so much sense. When we begin life with feeling, what and how we see changes completely.
So true Joseph. There are literally millions of diet ‘solutions’ out there yet the real answer is so simple. We just have to love ourselves enough to value the way we feel in our bodies.
Connecting with our bodies is essential for our ongoing evolution … sounds like a truism , and yet so much information is out there now that just sits and stays in the mental plane, and doesn’t connect us at all to who we truly are.
Thank you Debra for sharing such a lovely and loving blog, I have over the last few years lost weight and do look a little on the thin side, I kept clothes hoping I would regain weight and be able to wear, but recently decided to accept me and the weight i am now, because I like you, feel great on the inside.
Such a beautiful point Debra. When we feel amazing on the inside this is reflected outwardly ten fold. Thank you for sharing such a confirming and lovely blog.
A really beautiful sharing thank you Debra with such a powerful message.
“Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body”; that is truly what is important and the key to a joyful loving life. Thank you Debra.
Very beautiful, I agree, when we embrace who we truly are, this is reflected out into everything we do and everyone we come into contact with.
Debra I loved the simple way you put it – feeling good from the body and not from your looks. This really cuts through the common myth about beauty where people are judged beautiful or not according to their external appearance. If only we were all taught this from birth – imagine constantly meeting other people of all ages who were honouring their bodies and then allowing the external side of things to be a reflection of whats going on inside.
It really is what is inside that counts isn’t it… Because if what is inside is not real and true, then no matter what is put on the outside, if what is inside is corrupt it will eventually rot what is on the outside
This is such an incredible sharing as when we feel good on the inside, this shines out and others can see it. Quite often we can either be appreciated by others for this, or sometimes face jealousy. However, this is other people’s stuff they are trying to put on us and when we feel this great, do you really think we care either way? It’s an amazing feeling to have true connection with our bodies and truly feel what supports us and what does not, and honour that. I know without Universal Medicine and the many healing modalities they provide, I would never have learnt to feel this amazing, especially when I connect to the sacred woman I am and feel the sexy sway of my hips and appreciate the lovely warm glow that flows up inside me in that moment. It’s amazing!
Christophe I know this to be true. Words have a powerful effect and describing ourselves in negative terms is a reflection of how we feel and it affects every aspect of our life. I used to be a very harsh critic of myself and extended this to others. I had to tick all the boxes and of course never managed as there were so many. Most of this is now in the past.
Yes, we need to work very hard on putting ourselves down because otherwise our amazingness shows through, regardless. Even when we wear rags, our inner beauty still shines.
Some mathematicians who work for a dating site analysed their data and found that women of identical weight can have very different success on the dating site, depending on whether they describe themselves as ‘curvy’ or whether they describe themselves negatively, like ‘overweight’ or even ‘fat’.
Depending on how we feel about our body we look very different, we dress very different, we behave very differently and others respond to us very differently.
That is interesting christophschnelle – and not surprising. Other people always reflect the degree to which we value ourselves.
It is gorgeous to come to a place where you realise that it is not about how your body looks but of how you feel within in. This is revolutionary to so many seeking the look without being prepared to look inside and deal with how they feel about themselves first.
I agree Samantha. From reading blogs like this that I realise how many of us have got it inside out, as in we focus too much on the outside instead we should focus on how we feel inside first. Because then our beauty naturally shines through when we feel amazing from the inside out.
Thank you for this celebration of honouring ourselves and how we feel inside. I have been caught and still allow myself to be caught in giving my attention and energy to how I look. This blog has made me stop to feel how beautiful my body feels, how precious I feel and how I can simply connect to this anytime.
Of course most of us understand that what we eat gives us energy, but what is the energy of what we are eating and what is the energy with which we eat is what is now seen to be even more important for our well-being and vitality
These are key questions cjames and ones that are rarely discussed. The energy we eat in has a huge affect on how we feel and how our meal digests. Sure, all systems may appear to be working, but if we eat stressed, for example, that stress is what we are eating. This is like an assault on our digestive system and therefore limiting our ability to absorb essential nutrients, vitamins and minerals.
I have also received comments that I was too thin after making dietary changes that made me feel great on the inside. It is interesting how what you look like on the outside can still be a marker we use to make a assessment or judgement of someone that takes us away from feeling the truth of where they really are at … Amazing!
And, dare I say it, sometimes these comments come from jealousy and nothing else.
When we truly trust how we feel and fully claim it. It does not matter what comments we get, if any because we know we are already amazing with or without other people taking note. We can confirm ourselves through appreciation and trusting ourselves more and more.
I did get a little too thin but it is true – because the average weight has gone up so much, normal has become the new ‘too thin’.
I love how you started to simply experiment with a few changes and noticed how different you felt. This is gold. you are worth it, and each step we make to honour ourselves continues to keep building this.
Yes I agree it is inspiring how Debra was open to experiment as it means starting somewhere isn’t so daunting and going step by step and feeling the body means we are more likely to sustain any choices made.
I feel sure that many of us can so relate to your sharing Debra – It is a first for me also after many decades of eating to feed a need or comfort. What reflected back to me then in the mirror did not shine and sparkle in the way that it does now. Now like you I’m smiling from the inside out. It is so beautiful and joyful to love the body your in, through changing old patterns/behaviours for new self loving choices.
I can certainly relate to eating to “feed a need or a comfort” as well as when I was tired or feeling very emotional. But finally coming to the understanding of what was driving my eating totally changed my relationship with food and from there to my body shape changing; not through dieting to lose weight but from developing a much more loving and caring relationship with my body and feeding it what it needed, not what my mind was always trying to convince me I wanted.
Our relationship with food can be quite complex when we don’t start off from a basis of listening to, working with and honouring our body. We get feedback from our food intake and digestion all the time. It’s just that we’re so influenced by what’s marketed and sold to us, what ‘normal’ looks like – menu types, portion sizes, how regularly to eat and so on, that we’ve lost sight of the fact that food is just about nourishing us in a way that is right for and supportive of our particular body and its particular needs.
Yes, it can be tricky to discern the truth amongst all the marketing hype around us. But what we do have is ourselves and we can use ourselves as a science experiment, feeling what is and is not appropriate for us, noticing what fees great in our bodies and enlivens then and what has the opposite effect. Apart from the obvious things that are detrimental to us such as sugar, coffee, alcohol etc, what food and portion size etc suits some will not suit others. A fabulous experimental observation to undertake when approached from a curiosity and “what if?” for each of us.
Great comment Cathy. Our relationship with food have certainly become very complex, it can be very simple, eat when hungry, stop eating when we are full and listen to our body in terms of what food we should and shouldn’t eat. Another point is to trust what our body is telling us.
When we don’t know we are at the mercy of our mind and if we don’t listen to our body, how would we be ever able to know? It makes little sense to override our one true input.
This is a beautiful sharing Debra. How you chose to honor the love you are, though honoring how and what you feel is so inspiring. This reflects the power we all have when we connect to our love within through our bodies and make choices that support this connection. When we choose to honor ourselves through self-care and self-love our bodies, being the markers of truth, naturally reflect this as a celebration of the love we claim. This is something that no diet can give us, as the essential ingredients required for this kind of true nourishment comes only from connecting to who we are within first.
Beautifully expressed Carola.
True nourishment through self-care and connecting to who we are within first, should be part of our education in schools. Imagine if we were taught to honour ourselves? we would see far less of the self harm and abuse which comes in the form cutting and eating disorders of all types
What an incredible teaching so to speak which would be amazing to have in every school and for every parent to share. That listening to our bodies is a honouring and self loving relatioships to have with our selves.
How I feel instead of how I look has been a beautiful discovery of connecting to my inner heart and feeling from there as opposed to an image of myself viewed from a mirror and shop window as I walk past. Now I can return to look in the mirror and see the real me reflected in my eyes. My body shape and size has changed also due to the simple fact that I am no longer bloated and am not carrying the extra weight from eating heavy foods and drinking stimulating drinks. My body and being is able to enjoy the absolute power of stillness, surrendering to the sweet, loving, tender being I naturally am.
Thank you Debra, I really haven’t had a problem with my weight most of my life but that didn’t mean I accepted my self and how I looked, I am learning more what it means to to connect to what I feel on the inside and live life from within out and not the other way around.
Reading this I can feel how much I can measure myself by how I look instead of how I feel to define my worth. Thank you for sharing this.
Yes Lieke, I agree for me also and I also would add that it’s about self-acceptance!
Thank you Debra for this reminder. If it weren’t for the choices to reconnect to and follow my feelings life would be a completely different picture to the understanding I have of life now. And should things get heavy (emotionally/ mentally) by actually feeling the situation that weight can and does lift.
This is a fabulous sharing that I expect most if not all women can relate to. We all know diets don’t work and we end up eating more because we are so focussed on what we are missing out on. Why isn’t this front page news? “Diets don’t work!” Let’s start again and find what we do need to support us. I had the same experience as you with gluten. I stopped because my body made me and without focussing on it, weight just fell off me.
Appreciating myself from the inside out is something I am still working on and the level of my connection and love for myself is forever deepening. It makes sense to me that we are what we eat and how we treat ourselves, this is reflected back by the way we feel in my bodies and way we look at ourselves. When I eat foods that support my body I feel calmer and can feel what is going on around and within me which leads to me being supported by my choices to build a solid foundation of loving choices, being more present and delicate with myself offers me acceptance and appreciation of myself.
I celebrate the turn around in your life Debra from only focussing on looks to letting go of many misconceptions about life and deeply feeling a responsibility to honouring your body and your feeling.
The more I connect to my body the more I can feel what my body is asking for in the way of food, sleep or nurturing. Listening to my body is something I am struggling to do and still often go around the cycle of eat poorly, bash myself up, feel bad about myself, and eat something else, although I am continually taking more responsibility for my choices and deepening my love and respect for my body by being more delicate and nurturing with myself and starting to accept my inner beauty and choose foods that support my body which changes how I feel about myself form the inside out.
Wonderful Debra what a great joy to read your words. You are amazing and it is great what you share because there are so many women out there having this experience with the Yoyo-Dieting. Our bodies are not the enemy it is our way of living! So you are one of the great role models who showed that loosing weight has to do with our own choices and that it is on us to decide if we want to take responsibility for our lives.
I can relate to a lot of things what you are sharing Debra. Another point what I realized in the past was, that my self-worth always depended on the way I felt. When I felt bad, my self-worth was going down, when I felt good, I felt more worthy. Later I realized, that my self-worth doesn’t depend on anything, e.g. how I look or how I feel. That was a big revelation to me – I’m always a son of god, no matter how I feel.
You (I, anyone) may look itself in a mirror and congratulate (or bash) itself on the body shape and look. If it does not look good to you, it is possible to make an issue out of it. The body will be the enemy that has to be disciplined and worked on. If it does look good, that is it, what else can you ask for in life? Alternatively, anyone can look at the mirror and clock how you feel about yourself, and how you feel IN your body. Being conscious of this will also make you aware that what you see in the mirror is never what the mirror reveals but is always tainted by how you feel about yourself and in your body.
I have been told I am too thin and like you felt great in my body .. but I wonder what are we comparing ourselves to when we make such comments as “too thin” and “too fat”? It’s like there is consensus in various periods of time about what is considered acceptable. No one would bat an eye lid at my body size back in the 50’s and 60’s. I am sometimes amazed at how skinny people were back then.
Once I stopped eating gluten and processed foods like cheese and biscuits/chips/pasta/bread (even gluten free varieties) my body felt a lot lighter and I was freer to feel the effects other food have had in me – are they warming and nuturing or damp and dulling? There is no particular diet, it is a constant observation and adjustment that is all about feeling and listening to my body. There can be no other way to live for me now.
Reading your blog Debra, I realize that I have been ‘battling with my weight’- not losing weight, but trying to gain weight. People wonder if I am anorexic but I eat well and, according to blood tests, I am not absorbing nutrients from my food. Recently, I put on a kilo and what seems to be the key factor is that I took my focus off how I looked and I stopped putting myself down and making myself small. The more I accept and appreciate myself, the more my system accepts the food and so the weight gain is a reflection of a deeper self-nurturing and allowing.
Gorgeous blog and celebration of not feeling yours or anyone expectations of how you ‘should’ look-but rather how amazing you feel, thank you Debra for sharing this with us all, as we all get caught up with the external image of how we think we should look.
Feeling my body, appreciating its wonderful working, embracing the lessons it provides me has been a true revelation and liberation for me. Accepting that the way I look is the results of my choices is very empowering and for this understanding I thank Universal Medicine and its teachings.
I had a similar approach to eating as what you’ve shared here Debra and felt completely powerless due to the emotional way I was with food. These days I’m much more connected to and aware of myself and how I’m feeling and my relationship with food is totally different….it’s a way to support and nurture myself and if I find myself reaching for a certain food or eating when not hungry I know it’s time to stop and check in to see and be honest about what it is that I’m not wanting to feel.
How often we eat to stop feeling the situation. The hunger comes through like we are striving but actually the body is not hungry at all, just us trying to hide and numb what we are feeling.
Debra I loved this part “And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling,” so lovely to look in the mirror and appreciate and accept, rather than moan and find fault.
I also experienced a profound change in awareness of reconnecting to my body after starting To attend courses with Universal Medicine. What was interesting for me, and very revealing was that even after changing my diet and letting go of all the obvious foods that keep weight on, it wasn’t until I changed my relationship with myself that I was able to start to actually feel, and it was only then that I was able to start the cover of the accumulated overweight.
This is a great sharing Debra, thank you. I can relate to all that you have shared, but it wasn’t food that I turned to, it was the ‘doing’.. keeping busy, organised and there was always something to do, which was a symptom of filling the void of not being enough. With the gentle breath technique, I realised that i can bring the quality of ME into whatever I do… and this has made all the difference.
Dear Debra your sharing is beautiful and inspiring. I feel self-acceptance is key, feeling and knowing the truth of who we are inside out and honouring that in all our movements be it eating, working, walking, expressing. Our choices transform us.
You cracked a layer of right and wrong versus truth and embraced a truer version of yourself. I admire this and take a next step in my own unfoldment!
I grew up with an acute awareness of ‘what others think’ and ’what others would approve of’ – this dominated my life for a long time and I hated it, especially whenever I found that I had no chance of ever meeting the expectations. In a knee jerk reaction I decided I will abandon trying to match up with all of that and do my own thing. This felt better, because I was not trying to match anyone’s pictures, but I had now donned another restrictive set of conditions to replace the first ones, because what I had chosen was trying to prove the old way was wrong, this was not developed from my heart and in honour of myself. More recently I have seen gorgeous role models such as Natalie Benhayon who by no means bends to anyone’s rules and expectations, however everything about her shows a great honouring of herself and then she offers that same honouring to everyone else. This is a delight to see and I am inspired to give it a go.
It’s amazing how things fall into place, like the correct body weight happening naturally, simply from listening to your body. How wonderful for you to be able to not only step off the dieting merry go round, but to now actually really enjoy you and your body, and not have that constant focus on weight.
Beautiful.
I have found that the choice of food can affect how I feel in my body. I recently had a sugar binge and I could feel how my body was struggling with the excess sugar. This inner struggle began to show on the outside in particular my hair. As I choose to ignore what I was doing to my body I focused on how bad my hair looked. I was super critical and no matter what I did my hair just didn’t look good and at times I blamed another person. I was being super hard on myself. I made the loving choice to stop eating sugar and my body instantly responded. I feel good on the inside and it’s showing on the outside and my hair looks great. There was never anything wrong with my hair I chose to be non loving and non supportive to myself and I took it out on my hair just like many women do with their weight.
Lindell, that is a great point, how your choice to be unloving with yourself in a sugar binge, led to more unloving behaviour with the critical self focus. When you changed the choice to a loving one with food you followed on from that with a natural loving flow back to you in other areas. It’s interesting how each choice flows onto something else even if it seems unrelated, it’s still connected. How we feel looking in the mirror may be related to the energy we chose to be in with our last choice. There is such a huge responsibility to ourselves with each choice we make, as we are choosing not just for this moment but for each following one and so on. Thanks for your awesome and honest sharing.
There is so much to look at with the way we live. Everything you do has an impact on your body and your future choices. It only takes one thing to throw out your whole rhythm and then it can become a snowball effect. That one thing could be anything from a word, an argument, family visiting, you can’t fit into a dress, going on a date, being dumped – anything.
Debra, it was so lovely to read how you made simple changes to what you were eating, and most of all how you connected to yourself to feel what food supported you, and what made you feel sleepy. I am still refining my foods, as what was once supportive no longer is. Beautiful to feel the changes you have made, and how wonderful you feel.
I get it when you say …”For years how I felt in my body did not rank high on my list of priorities.” This has also been the case for me. However now having gained an understood of what the body truly is and that we are a Son of God and to understand that the quickest way to know God is through the body. I have slowly begun the slow process of truly feeling it again. It is an incredible journey back to my true tenderness and preciousness. This is enhancing my experience of life to no end. As women choose to take this journey out of the hardness and into their innate gentleness and natural nurturing qualities I see the incredibly beautiful femaleness expand out from them in a most glorious and powerful way.
Gorgeous Debra to feel how you have claimed feeling great! This has been my experience recently and it is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me – and it is infectious for those around us. Just awesome.
“For years how I felt in my body did not rank high on my list of priorities.”
And that is what happens to most of us, the way we feel is not as important as the way we look, we have given in to all those magazines and models of beauty that don´t care about the feeling in the body. We say that beauty is in the inside but, how many of us don´t want to be beautiful outside first? When the priority starts being how I feel inside, the whole world turns around.
Debra I admire the way you have followed your inner direction and made the changes in your life that have made all the difference to you.. Connecting to our innermost and not slavishly following what is seen to be what is in fashion or what everyone else is doing on the outside is the true joy we are looking for.
I really felt a lift as I read this blog today. I could feel how you are claiming your body back and honouring your own choices because you know they feel true. It also supports me to do the same as I am temped to go to the nut cupboard to make me feel better rather than staying with what’s really going on inside and allow myself to express from a more honest place, closer to the truth of who I am.
Debra I love this part…”And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling, and no longer my own or anyone else’s expectations of how I ought to look. Because inside I FEEL great.” . It has been a long journey back to self-nurturing for me and I am still on it. I feel to make a more concerted effort to look in the mirror and truly see my essence. This is one thing I do not do enough of. Thank you for the encouragement to give it a go.
Debra, to be able to feel “you” from your innermost is so precious and is confirmation of the true connection you have with yourself. To be able to hold this with loving eyes when we are bombarded with ideals and beliefs from the outside is truly awesome.
Debra, this was such a great blog….’how I feel vs how I look’….I am sure every woman can relate to this. How many of us really focus on how we feel, it is so much more seductive and also devastating when we go with ‘how we look’. We are bombarded with imagery from magazines, celebrities, the internet, shops, all directing our focus to how are look. So it takes courage and dedication to really begin that process of building that relationship with oneself, to focus on the inner and how we feel, vs what is out there, that can so very quickly validate all that we are not. I know what one I am choosing.
Looking with loving eyes is a revelation. It changes everything. You see yourself as someone who loves you sees you. No more magnifying the faults and despairing over features that cannot change, gradually you see the beautiful woman you are.
I agree, Johanna, acceptance and self acceptance is vital to build a healthy relationship with oneself. When I accept magic can happen.
This is so true, and once a level of acceptance is reached within ourselves we can then truly begin to build healthy relationships with others too, and then this acceptance deepens and the magic expands.
How I look is wanting to be good. How I feel is wanting to be true. To choose between the two is a science worth studying.
This is great to re read Debra, as it made me feel how much self acceptance plays a vital role in the relationship we have with ourselves. The focus or marker becomes that feeling within, under the skin, instead of the exterior look and appearance. This is a much healthier way to live!
Thanks Debra great blog. So interesting that only just recently have I stopped constantly weighing myself, which is crazy as my weight only has ever fluctuated a few kilos since I was 16 and I’m now 45! I’m now at a point where I’m really comfortable with my body and actually loving it. I feel it all comes down to the way I’ve chosen to treat myself so much better than I used to, it makes such a difference to how you feel about yourself, I agree!
Yes Debra, it’s so freeing isn’t it when you can let go of the picture that you think you are seeing when you look in the mirror and instead look at yourself with loving eyes because you can feel how amazing it is to be you, and that’s the only reflection that is ever needed.
Re-reading this post Debra, there is nothing better than feeling completely great inside, and for this to be reflected on the outside. It is magic. I have been deeply appreciating the beauty of acceptance because of the space this allows to be inside my body and its movements or expression. To feel the freeness and wonder of this, is true beauty, and truly beautiful.
So true Debra. When I focus on how I feel rather than how I look when I look in a mirror I can see how I feel. Choosing to eat what I feel will support my body rather than what my mouth and my mind tells me looks good makes all of me feel so much healthier.
A beautiful blog Debra. I love how you chose to listen to your body to guide you to make the choices that honoured how you were feeling. And through this how your vitality improved immensely. Now you celebrate the gorgeousness that you are and feel within and consequently you appreciate, love and celebrate how you look and this is reflected to all. Very inspiring, thank you Debra.
I love your article Debra, I love that you are embracing yourself from your very insides out, from who you are in all your beauty and amazingness! This is gorgeous and something to celebrate and appreciate, all women deserve to feel this way and to support each other to celebrate this true way of living, through choices and commitment, too.
The distinction you make here is spot on, about how we feel in our bodies vs. how we actually look – we spend so much time on the later on looking good and while taking care of our outer shell is important, it’s the quality of how we approach that care that is vital, in other words how we are with us. If we’re pushing and hard, it feels awful, no matter how well we look, but if we approach it with true tenderness and care then it’s a different story entirely, the light is on and it’s not about presenting a shell, it’s about being a quality and allowing that to be expressed in how we are with us and of course everyone.
I love ‘the light is on’ Monicag2, that’s how it feels when I truly care for myself by being tender and loving with appreciation for who I am.
Debra, this has been something revolutionary for me too. Appreciating myself from the inside out has been a novel concept, and one I am still working on day by day. It makes so much sense though then that whatever we put into our bodies, will affect the outer image that we see – and this is not in the way of how much, or calories. There are foods that are supportive for our bodies, and foods that are not. There are also ways of eating that are supportive (i.e. calmly) or not (in anxiousness). All of these affect who we are, and so how we see ourselves. Being more present and delicate with myself has been foundational in starting to accept more of who I am, and my beauty, all the while casting aside the thoughts that tell me I am not.
We can’t underestimate the wisdom you have brought here Amelia, thank you. To be more present and delicate, accepting of who you are AND casting aside thoughts that tell you otherwise is a tremendous bundle of tools to bring to ourselves daily. These sound simple but there are so many women in this world in need of hearing that this way is possible and indeed worth the dedication and commitment with love.
“..and indeed worth the dedication and commitment with love.” and herein lies the dilemma for many women, myself included in the past- that we are worth caring for. I found as my self worth developed then changes begin to happen in my choices and particularly around food.
Debra you’ve just revealed to me how confidence and acceptance with the way one looks is based on how you feel. For so long what I see in the mirror, in comparison to what is deemed as acceptable looks for women, is what I have based myself on… Rather then how I feel.
Wow, this is so true Emily. Our confidence really is based on acceptance of who we are and allowing ourselves to feel who we are in every cell of divine beauty. How could one not walk anywhere without a bound of joy in their step when they know this?
Yes Emily I couldn’t agree more. I struggled with low self confidence and weight for many years, so I always based how I felt on what was shown on the outside. But now I have been reawakened and feel absolutely amazing from the inside and this is then in turn reflected outwardly so.
Reflected so beautifully outwardly so x
So true Emily, I have found this too. Also that how I feel influences in what I see when I look into the mirror. If I feel a bit uncomfortable and am not accepting my beauty, I can look in the mirror but won’t see the amazingness. If I feel great I do not even have to look to know I look amazing.
So true Lieke – “If I feel great I do not even have to look to know I look amazing. ” Brilliant!
For years I didn’t really think that what I did to my body had any effect on how I felt. There was my body and then there was me, a separate entity. It has come as a revelation and something that makes perfect sense, that how I am with my body, with food and in movement, affects how I feel and what I think. The arrogance of that old way of disregard is slowly falling away.
That’s exactly how I lived too Amanda I was totally disconnected from my body.
I lived in this old way too and am so so glad I now have an understanding and live with the importance of knowing my choices affect my body and health. This was possible once I started attending presentations by Universal Medicine.
The more I am listening to my feelings that are registered in my body the ‘better’ my outcomes from my choices are becoming. For example if I am holding a food in my hand and considering eating it in my head and my body feels tight I have learnt that things can happen. 1. eat the food and further feel that tightness plus extra pains now in the body. In this situation I can ask myself why I chose to override that feeling – what was more important? 2. put down the food, or put that extra helping in the bin and feel lighter without the extra, unneeded weight in my body as it sometimes feels like.
yes it that simple isn’t it leighmatson
Yes it’s true , it’s not only what we eat but how we eat and how we are with ourselves and others when we eat.
Thanks Debra, it is amazing how loudly the body lets us know sometimes that something we are eating or doing is not right for it. And even more amazing the difference it makes when we (finally) listen. I have heard many stories just like yours over the years… so simple really.
This morning I connected with “And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am” and I really related to how we view ourselves is what we see in our reflection, both in a mirror and in others. It brings a great level of responsibility to life. I have been exploring at more depth how I view myself when I eat, and if I eat with the uncertainty whether something is ‘good’ for me or not, it affects me. Very clear that our food is about the quality we choose both in the food itself and in what we bring to the table!
I’ve had a similar relationship with my body and food over the years. Nothing feels better than giving your body the nourishment it needs from what it’s asking for rather than allowing the mind and emotions to take over and it’s amazing how beautifully the body responds when it’s truly cared for.
The effect on our body is amazing when we begin to eat according to how our body feels and not eat something because of how we feel afterwards. I’m fascinated by how we negotiate our way around food, compromising ourselves and as you say Debra eat to not address things in our life, to numb how we feel. This has also been my pattern too. Very much eating to the advice and recommendations of professionals and the wide range of literature available on food and diet. Learning the simplicity of eating based on how my body feels has been life changing. There is no perfection here for I still to eat for comfort in places, but I am grateful to the fact that I am more aware of this and and working on addressing this, without placing a demand on myself on “this is how I should eat”, but simply allowing my body to inform my choices.
“. . eating to the advice and recommendations of professionals and the wide range of literature available on food and diet” had also been my way for some time Jennifer. I have also found that “eating based on how my body feels has been life changing”. As you say, eating by simply allowing our body to inform our choices is truly nurturing, yet why are we not taught this from young?
How you feel affects the way you look – If I’m feeling great and really appreciating myself I walk taller, I shine – so it makes no sense to always be focusing on “fixing” the external!
I gave up gluten too, just to see how I would feel without it, and I was so pleased with how I felt that I never went back! its amazing though once I truly started to listen to my body and accept what i was feeling, I found a lot of other foods made me feel heavy and bloated as well. And even though I have never been overweight, I did develop a ‘self criticism’ voice inside my head that said, “your fat, your too skinny, you need to tone up” etc. but the turning point was accepting how great it felt to be in my body, how light and expansive I felt. Than I began to let go of that self critical voice that dominated for a few years when I was growing up.
So true Harry, letting “go of that self critical voice that dominated us” and giving power to how we feel in our bodies, is the key to changing how we view ourselves.
Debra, I smiled when I read that now you are: “really enjoying feeling how my body feels whenever I walk or move, so much so it often makes me smile to myself, even in public!”, as this is how I also feel, and yes, I also smile in public with this yummy feeling. I just love the flow I feel through my body when I walk, and if the flow is not quite there I will check in with my body to see what’s up, and what it is trying to tell me. How I am feeling is much more important than how I look these days, but I have discovered that when I am feeling pretty amazing on the inside it naturally flows through to the outside.
I have this feeling too sometimes Debra and it feels gorgeous, ‘Lately I’ve been feeling so great and really enjoying feeling how my body feels whenever I walk or move, so much so it often makes me smile to myself,’ it is great to have this reminder and enjoy my body more and more and the beautiful graceful feeling of myself as i move.
Thank you Debra, I had a sort of similar experience recently which I haven’t shared because… well just because. I often wear sunglasses in the local shopping malls, I don’t like the strong fluorescent lights so much, but really it was me keeping in my own world I reckon. Then the other day before going out I caught a glimpse of my eyes in the mirror and I thought, gosh, how selfish to not let the world see such amazingly beautiful eyes, and so I didn’t wear my sunnies in the mall ☺
Reading this again this morning it reminds me of how so much emphasis is put on how we or things, look. There is so much judgement coming from a status quo that has been created by whom or what? This is so ridiculous when there is such a depth of beauty and gloriousness to be felt when we begin to instead focus on how it feels inside and the true quality of whoever or whatever we are in contact with.
Debra: that’s true beauty! You are just giving every women the truth to face: when we feel into it – and give the body the truly nurturing food it wants – not what the mouth wants to taste – it will return to it’s true shape – which is just as beautiful as my inner truth. And the reason for that is simple: because it’s me in it’s entirety.
Loved reading your blog again Debra. Some days I have felt so awesome in my body that how I look on the outside can’t begin to compare, and I realise that that’s what everything should be based on. I can relate to the pattern you shared, I use to constrict what I ate after eating huge meals.. It was like a merry go round with dieting. I have found that basing everything off of what you feel makes everything so much more grander and your left feeling incredible.
A true testament Debra of the fact that indeed our true beauty as women comes from within and never from the outside. A beautiful confirmation of who we are in truth.
It’s funny, because in today’s society, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t and so if we rely on society’s confirmation or validation of us as women or men, we’ll absolutely never ever feel any love for ourselves. So it’s amazing to read about what it feels like to feel good in your own body, and not just feel good about how your outer skin looks in the mirror.
a great blog a great read for all women
When you enjoy your body and the way it moves it does make you smile. It is wonderful to be free of the need to look a certain way and just enjoy your body. I find on days when I have overeaten the night before, I can have a bloated belly which doesn’t look great but it’s not the way I look that bothers me. I miss feeling lovely and feeling my body just the way it is meant to feel (and look).
I love this. When we feel great we just don’t care about the shape of our bodies, the size of our waist, the length of our nose, or what anyone else thinks, we just simply know, from the inside out, that we are beautiful.
Yes so true, and beautifully said…
It really is astounding how so many of us do that – not eat when we are hungry and not sleep when we are tired. How much more simple would life be if we did?
It’s very true – life would be beautifully simple.
Feeling fantastic on the inside allows this to be reflected outwardly to the world too. Thank you for the lovely blog Debra.
It is amazing how easy people find it to say to someone “you are too thin”, “you need to put on weight” when they wouldn’t dream of saying to someone “you are too fat”, you need to lose some weight” because there is a taboo around that, yet it is the same thing. Crazy.
I just don’t know how is it possible that all women could be the same shape, and that our worth in any way, let alone our beauty, can be defined as being anything to do with a narrow range of physical attributes. But we have believed, and been harmed by these manipulative lies for long enough and I love that you blow them out of the water Arianna.
This is such a key point you make Debra as to why it can be so difficult to just give up certain foods, “I ate all the time to deal with how anxious I was feeling and used food to comfort me if I was feeling emotional, and didn’t want to deal with difficult or hurtful situations.” The struggle in being consistent with supportive food choices is often because we are not looking at the underlying issues as to why we make those choices.
I can really relate to the changes you describe in your body when you gave up gluten Debra. I wasn’t particularly overweight, but before I took gluten out of my diet I lived with a constant puffy tummy and weariness. It is so simple really to feel the affects that different foods have on the body, when we are willing to listen and stay connected. Equally important for me was to look at why I chose to eat foods that didn’t support my body.
Yes Victoria, same for me, I have always been slim, but when I ate bread I always felt tired and bloated. So then I ate sugar to pep me up – all the ‘good’ stuff of course as I was also super health conscious. In the end it made no difference, bread was bread, and sugar was sugar.
Now without either, l’ve never felt better and rarely bloat or feel that lethargic tiredness at all.
I feel that too Rosemary, and I am so enjoying being me in my body. Never throughout my life up until a few years ago did I feel being me was to be celebrated at all, but now, I feel so alive within me, that I just want to share that with others.
Our true sense of ourselves can only come from within and then everything else falls into place. There is no ideal anything, body shape, age, marital status etc. it’s all about how you feel in your body and your connection with yourself. At 61 years of age I could be thought of/seen as being old but instead I feel more alive and beautiful than at any other time in my life.
There’s simply no diet or ideal body shape in the world that can bring that ‘great’ feeling of joy on the inside to you. It can only come from honouring yourself and your body first – I love it.
Totally agree Kylie, we can fall for the idea that some diet or obtaining the perfect body shape will make us feel amazing about ourselves but it simply is not true – I know as I’ve tested that method quite a few times in the past. Nothing outside of you comes close to to the steadiness, the loveliness and the confidence that grows as you begin to accept and appreciate who you are from within.
Great blog, Deborah – every woman should read this! It defies everything we are brought up to believe about ourselves as women.
Your sharing should be a leading article in every magazine all over the world, Debra. Too sad that the food industry wouldn’t be willing to change, because they wouldn’t sell potato chips anymore and the huge amounts of food. The money matters still too much and it needs a reflection like your to make each person think about a change.
It is very inspiring to reread your blog Debra, to remember that when we look in the mirror, what we are seeing it is a reflection to how we are feeling. In order to see a true reflection of ourselves, your blog shows how important it is to first connect to that gorgeousness that can be connected to and felt from within.
“Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body. And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling, and no longer my own or anyone else’s expectations of how I ought to look. Because inside I FEEL great.”
Beautiful comment Debra a willingness to accept the gorgeous women I am is something I am still working on. When I can put all the head stuff aside and truly connect it is amazing.
Debra I love how you say you feel great in your body and it isn’t about body shape. Acceptance of who and how we are naturally is such a powerful foundation to live life from. Then when the occasions come up of “being told” I’m too thin – I can stand with me and support me in my truth and what I know about how I truly feel – it’s not about others perceptions of my size.
Listening to one’s body certainly brings about changes. Prior to meeting Serge Benhayon I did not really think about my body and I was in denial of the condition of it – I was five and a half stone (35kg) overweight and considered myself healthy. Like you, Debra, I gave giving up gluten and dairy ‘a go’ and found I felt I felt so much more vital, sleeping better etc., so I continued. Over the next 5 or 6 years I reached the weight I am now and feel and look so much more alive. I now realise that previously I did not ‘see’ my body and that it was a reflection of the fact that I only chose to see parts of life as there were parts I did not want to take responsibility for. I am now learning to take responsibility for everything and life is so much more enriching and joyful. Thank you Serge.
As you say Jonathan, it is about taking true responsibility for our lives and our bodies. By taking true responsibility for my body I experience joy in my body, a joy that I have never felt before and that I will not let go by eating anything that I know will only please my mouth and mind but will bring devastation to my body.
The way I feel and connect to the deep woman within has such a special and tender feeling that I know is true and pure… it is a completely different feeling that I have when I go into how I think I should be as a woman and go into comparison. The deeper I go with myself the more beautiful I feel.
Love really transforms one life. Listening to your body and making choices based on self care has an enormous impact. While I read this I was remembering how I used to approach food, often overindulging on special occasions only to have to exercise more and cut back for the next few days. It was never about what my body needed, I was really feeding something else in me. When love takes precedence there is no food that could feel as great as that connection to the love within, I simply can’t imagine eating like that now. It’s a huge testament to Universal Medicine and the way love transforms and truly fills like no food ever could. The joy of being is divine!
Yes, I too have experienced that when you feel or rather connect to the gorgeousness of you, my body shape or size does not even come into question. And then anything I may wear looks amazing. Feeling great from the inside out is where it needs to start, rather than looking great from the outside to make in inner feel better. The Women in Livingness magazine is a superb reminder of our inner beauty, and worth reading to support reconnecting to our inner gorgeousness
So very true Johanne!
Your words here Deborah, This was the start of me making how I felt in my body (over how I looked) the most important thing, ring so true, as it is so transformational and freeing when we start to hold how we feel within ourselves, as the true marker of who we are, from that feeling inside of pure joy at just being ourselves, in all of our natural loveliness.
What a beaut blog. I can really feel how you have changed your view of yourself and your body and claimed who you are and the shape you are in this world. It was really lovely to read that. I’d love to read this every day about women claiming who they are by feeling how they feel for themselves and not what we are bombarded with. Keep up the great work!
Thank you for your article. It is great to feel, as I read it, such appreciation and self regard you have for yourself. It’s inspiring, especially when we are bombarded all the time, being told or suggested how we should look, act, feel… There is a certain empowerment that comes with choosing to honor ourselves, choosing to connect to the gorgeousness that is forever there within us, and have this as our marker rather than the suggestive advertisments that are everywhere.
Really feeling how you are in your body is such a great reflection of how you are living, great blog Debra.
Good on you Debra for listening to what is right for you and not what the world tells you you should be. This is the way forward for us all.
Lovely sharing Debra.
..”seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling, and no longer my own or anyone else’s expectations of how I ought to look. Because inside I FEEL great.”
Great claiming and acceptance of self.
Yes a great article Debra, and I can so relate to your response Harry.
For most of my life, people have been telling me the same, that I am so skinny, I’m so tiny, there’s nothing of me and so on, but I too feel great in my body and love how I feel inside me. Recently someone made the, your so tiny comment, and I said, that’s not what I feel inside, I feel amazing, and it felt so lovely to confirm myself in that way.
How great to read and hear this. I think often these skinny comments come loaded with comparison or envy, or even thinking it’s a compliment to be skinny, but none of them truly go anywhere close to expressing what is there to be felt and seen. How empowering for everyone to simply express what is truly going on and felt.
I love your response “that’s not what I feel inside” to the comment “your so tiny” Julie. So often the focus is on the outside and not what we truly have felt in the other. I have experienced this comment also and it can actually feel diminishing, and certainly not reflective of the truth of what I am feeling that can equally come through any shape or size.
Hi Deborah, Great Article. I really enjoyed it. I often think i am too thin and I get told a lot by people “wow you look so thin, your so under weight” And I had started to beleive that myself. Ive been constantly critiqueing myself on how thin I have become. But I actually feel great in my body most of the time. Like you I feel great and its that self acceptance that actually makes me feel big, I dont feel thin at all. What we are never told is, “wow you are amazing” We are always told that something is wrong with us and we have to fix it.
That’s very true Harry, we are not told we are amazing. If we were told this when we were children, I am sure that we would be more content with what we looked like, and there would be less comparison or trying to match an ideal of what the ‘perfect’ body should look like. We would naturally embrace our differences, and accept ourselves as we are.
Harrison…you are amazing!
thanks Rod! You are amazing too!
Simple yet powerful Debra ‘How I feel versus how I look’ For so long women have been obsessed with looks and ignored how they felt. Thank you for sharing with us your new awareness, something we can all learn from.
It is so true what you say here about gluten. Once the gluten was out of my system I felt lighter and could enjoy my body a lot more because it wasn’t bloated anymore.
Susanne, when I gave up gluten and then dairy, that roller coaster of dieting naturally stopped. I never even thought about it, it was years latter that I realised that I no longer dieted,or thought about dieting.
It is amazing the changes that occur when we allow our body to feel and we reconnect with ourselves. We all look beautiful when the emphasis shifts from looking a certain way to feeling.
I agree when we change our focus to connecting to the feeling of how our body feels and reconnect to ourselves, the emphasis changes.
So true Patricia! When caught in the trap of trying to “fix” or change the outside to make ourselves feel better, it is a never-ending cycle that feeds itself and can be difficult to break. There is such freedom in letting go of that and beginning to feel and connect to our innate beauty.
Feeling beautiful on the inside reflects feeling beautiful on the outside.
This is so true Tracy, in the past however beautiful or ‘dolled up’ I was on the outside , I often felt a sense of emptiness and futility. Connecting to the love and beauty on the inside is definitely the way to go. Having a feeling of fullness on the inside, to me is the real feeling of beauty within that then radiates out for all to feel.
And sometimes we can have an internal saboteur that gives us cues to eat something for whatever reason when it’s not really appropriate. I fell for one of these this morning and ended up feeling bloated and heavy in my tummy. Inspired by your blog I have now renounced same substance and let it go. My body no longer wants or truly needs it. Your support has come just at the perfect moment. Thank you Debra.
sure does Trace.
The internal saboteur, as you call it Elaine, can be very strong if we let it and I have succumbed many times to my own internal saboteur. I had two choices, I could continue to numb my feelings and abuse my body with too much, or the wrong kind of food for me, or I could choose to say NO and cut the energy that was feeding my emptiness and stop me from evolving. It is a simple choice, although not always easy, and it is an ongoing, but very worthwhile commitment to myself, which is ultimately a commitment to humanity.
We are bombarded with images and ideals and beliefs of how we should or shouldn’t look and as you say Debra it is all based on what is outside of us. Imagine if we were taught that regardless of how we look on the outside it is all about how we feel on the inside. If we feel gorgeous and yummy on the inside then whatever shape and size we are will not matter in the slightest.
I find it interesting when ‘models’ who are supposedly the right shape, size, weight are interviewed they are virtually never satisfied with their look.
I’m all for encouraging myself and others to feel from the inside.
If we could all could just go back to feeling like we were as little children when we didn’t give any thought to what we looked like and were full of joy and acceptance of just being ourselves.
My shape has changed little since puberty, no yoyo diets, yet I thoroughly disliked my body for many reasons.
Like you Deborah, there has been a profound change ” seeing through eyes that are more willing to ACCEPT the gorgeous woman I am”
Contrary to your experience Wendy, my experience over the years has been the complete opposite, yo-yo dieting, weight up and down, going from indulging in food to being very strict on myself, always wanting to look different and jumping through hoops to get there. This included walking everywhere and numerous trips to the gym. After attending Universal Medicine workshops and giving up dairy and gluten my weight has stabilised for the first time ever, without trying, and I feel lighter and have more energy and the gorgeous woman underneath all those layers is just beginning to show herself.
I love this. “Really loving my body shape and how I feel versus how I look” for so long it has always been about how i look, not how i feel, so i could really relate to what you have shared. The focus for me has only shifted the past couple of years, building within myself a love and connection that fosters feeling, not always looking at the external for validation of to make myself feel whole. So thank you for sharing, it was very reaffirming.
Thank you Debra – a very inspiring article.
Great blog Debra. Lovely reminder that our true beauty resides within us all. And if we listen to our body as it is the “marker of truth”, we can live a more vital, active and joyous life, free from dis-ease.
I have stopped eating and drinking foods that don’t feel good in my body. I too have better energy and have lost my excess weight. I also realized how some foods affect my moods too. For example sugar makes me depressive and frustrated. Thank you for sharing your story Debra. It was good to reflect on this subject.
My body weight hasn’t changed much in the last 25 years even though my diet is vastly different to what it was 5 years ago. What is different is how I feel. Now that I eat far more vegetables and almost no food “from a packet” my body feels much better and I have a lot less problems with my health.
I too know the comment “you look to thin”. But one thing I have come to notice is the more I accept my body shape the less I hear that comment. When I start hearing it more regularly I check in with how I am feeling about my body, and generally I have found I am struggling with accepting some aspect of myself at these times. I have found the frequency of this comment a great indicator as to how I am feeling.
This is a great understanding for me to read here, Toni – the comments from others being an indicator of how I am feeling. When I first went GF and DF I lost a lot of weight and got the ‘too thin’ comments, but now that I have accepted my new, slimmer body shape as what feels just right for me and how light I feel on the inside, I don’t get those comments any longer.
All signs point within.
The two are such a different feeling all together it’s amazing to feel, One is always with you While the other relies on everyone else to to confirm it you and when it doesn’t that hot air ballon pops!!
Listening to my body supports me to feel great from the inside out, rather than feel the need to look a certain way from outer expectations or influences.
Amazing when you say: “Inside I feel great”.
This is a fantastic marker and we can inspire others by our own changes!
Thank you Debra. As I was reading your article I was feeling how this relates to what it’s like starting to really connect with yourself, and getting older. How we can feel so vibrant and alive as our body gets older, how this goes against the norm, and how inspiring is can be for those around us as well.
I can relate to the notion of stopping eating some foods like gluten, to observe how that feels in my body. It appeals to me to let go of things to allow a natural vitality to build. This is something introduced to me by Serge Benhayon – that many things we are doing, even under the impression they are good for us actually get in the way of allowing our bodies to gravitate back to a natural, vital way of being, which they will do when not impeded.
In the case of gluten, I have not ever thought of it as good for me and not a great source of nutritional value. When I stopped eating gluten, besides the physical benefits of loosing weight and feeling less bloated, as mentioned in this blog, it also brought up for me a feeling of not getting my comfort food (that soft, chewy bread for example). That felt quite disturbing and made me realise I had a choice. I could either go back to eating gluten despite my body, or deal with the emotional disturbance in my life I was using gluten to not feel.
In choosing to face that disturbance, I actually was choosing to clear another layer of what I was doing to myself that was preventing naturally vital and wellness occurring. What I was clearing was how I was digesting life in an emotional way. As this clearing occurred, I realised how, like gluten, this was contributing to exhausting me. So I was able let go of another form of digestion that was not supporting me.
Awesome sharing Debra of how with simple choices we are in charge of our well being and vitality. Very empowering and so true!
I too am learning how to live from how I feel as apposed to how I look, or think I look. It is a massive difference and one that allows me to feel so much joy within any given moment. It is the most beautiful thing to be learning how to do this through the teachings of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon.
Oh that this could become the catch cry for women everywhere: it’s how we feel in our bodies, not how we look in them. The first being a feeling from within us, the second requiring an external endorsement, measured by some kind of norm or standard. I can personally vouch for how it is so yummy to feel lovely INSIDE one’s own skin, inspite of worldly opinion!
Thank you Debra. It’s the way that we look at ourselves, that you refer to, that is so important. We can change everything externally, but if our connection with ourselves and our self-worth is not addressed, then nothing we do outside, or externally, will ever be enough. And this is what Universal Medicine always addresses in its presentations and courses, the profound and extremely practical connection with ourselves that doesn’t just place a Band-Aid over a hurt, but empowers us all to truly heal ourselves.
How we view ourselves has a great impact on how we see ourselves and treat ourselves, simply believing or thinking we are not enough, in the smallest of ways, has a huge impact on our health.
I love that when you made feeling awesome your focus Debra, things fell into place effortlessly, almost while you weren’t looking. It looks like you have a lot of fun today.
Debra you have shared with us a very powerful truth;
‘This was the start of me making how I felt in my body (over how I looked) the most important thing.’
Nothing on the outside can ever compare with the feeling of loveliness in our body.
“And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling, and no longer my own or anyone else’s expectations of how I ought to look. Because inside I FEEL great.” I love the connection between “ought to look and feeling great inside” – thank you Debra.
for many people the relationship with food is a difficult one, we use it to not feel our emotions, or to reward ourselves or to ‘have a good time” with it comes a relationship with our bodies that is often less then appreciative let alone loving. I have found that the two seem to work well together in making women feel less about themselves, including me for a very long time.
My new relationship with food is to no longer diet but to only feel what my body (not my mouth or emotions) is telling me it likes. This way i am never denying myself anything but i am giving myself a real treat, that of feeling good in my body.
I enjoy that new relationship with food too, Carolien, and I love your assertion that the real treat is you feeling good within your own body.
Much better than chocolate…..
Fantastic! Listening to our bodies is beautiful. Stop and feel and making a loving choice!
For a while I had the logical thought, from momentary experiences, in my head that the body has never really led me astray when I listen to it so why ignore it (?). Actually putting this into practice more and more I am discovering daily just how much there is to feel and understand if I listen to how my body feels over the voices in my head.
Thank you. So great to read this just now. Very confirming and inspiring.
Debra what a thought provoking blog. For me giving up gluten was just the start of feeling the effects of certain foods in my body. As the years have past I have noticed that I feel sensitivity/ heaviness with lots of foods – it has been a very gradual process of letting go my food habits and feeling and allowing my body to express what is okay or not okay. I ,too, am loving my body shape but still struggle at times to express and feel from my innermost rather than from the outside in- a work in progress for me!
Hi Debra, great blog. How powerful is the gentle breath meditation – so simple but bringing exactly what you needed to support you to make the changes that were there waiting to be made. I, too, found that many things changed after I started to participate in the Gentle Breath Meditation, it is so subtle yet powerful in the way it connects you with your body. I found that my body then became the instrument that spoke to me of what it needed. I followed this feeling and I started to feel a loveliness never felt before
Debra, I LOVE your blog. It made me smile especially when I read “And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am”. How gorgeous is that?! By just feeling our body, adhering to what it needs (e.g. food, sleep) and re-connecting to ourselves we are able to see our true beauty again that is always there – no matter how we look on the outside. And so I can be the most amazing and sexy woman even though I just got out of bed. 🙂
and i love what you write her Katrin “and so i can be the most amazing and sexy women even though i just got out of bed” so true!
Dear Debra,
Thank you for sharing your story. It reminds me of my own similar journey with food and in relationship with my body. It is very powerful when we eat to increase the quality of our energy and how we feel. This comes from a truth and regard of ourselves from inside. As apposed to what we look like to the outside world for external recognition and acceptance. Could this be a clue to whether a diet or eating pattern sustainable? Blessings.
Awesome blog Deborah, I think most women will relate to it in some way. The way we look versus the way we feel, it is somehow a whole new way of approaching life. The looking way can only offer limited responses and limited ways of dealing with it, but the feeling way seems endless, with infinite possibilities for change.
Thanks Debra, Yes it is powerful when we start to re-connect to our bodies and how we feel in them and in doing that we can let go of what the outside world is telling us what we need to look like. I spent years trying to look a certain way to fit in with what I thought a man should look like and it was exhausting! thanks to Universal Medicine I have been able to let go of all those ideals about my body and now exercise and eat in a way that truly supports it and I feel amazing!
I love the simplicity of your sharing and you really strong change in your life. In my whole life I have been focussing to on : looking good, being beautiful ,smiling, look pretty etc. etc. It was just all about looks! Until recently, I started to realise that this current looking good did not worked out so well for me. I started to ponder on how much this ‘trying looking and being beautiful’ actually was true. It always seemed to be such never ending and never good enough journey. By pondering on this, I started to open myself up to the fact that this was not real and or true. Wow! By feeling this I started remembering my feelings as a small child. I remember what was being said around me: ‘ you have to look pretty to be beautiful’. I remember how this actualy felt so cruel and wrong, actually very discriminative and demanding(like you had to be something), I remember the feeling of feeling beautiful just for being me, but also remember hearing people say that beauty was how you looked.. so did I slowly felt for what was being said.. and lost the deep sense of what real beauty meant to me. Now, having remembered this feeling I once had as a child, I immatiately felt that feeling again, and even now if I connect with that feeling I feel that beauty within me, it has never gone away. So does this is there still within everyone – we just have to call true beauty back and let go of the made up ideals and believes. Our beauty is back.
Thank you Debra, I experience the same when I look in the mirror I see the beautiful woman because I feel how beautiful I am inside and this is reflected back to me. Some days it can be a struggle because of some heaviness to feel this beauty but when I look deep into my eyes I am able to connect with all that I am.
What a beautiful article.
Something I have found both for myself and also noticed very much in my relationship.
What I found attractive about myself and also my wife is actually HOW I FEEL ABOUT MYSELF, and If she feels great about herself (who she is and not just how she looks) she is Undeniably attractive to me in how I feel abut her. Not just physically or sexually but in how much I Love her warmth, her smile and laugh, the way she moves – everything about her changes and everything about my self and my world around me changes.
Quite simple and yet incredibly powerful.
Thank you Simon, that is a beautiful confirmation of the truth presented here.
Thank you for this beautiful blog, Debra.
Since I have started to change my diet and stopped eating gluten and refined sugars a lot of things have changed in my body. For me the most amazing difference is that I have found a harmonious sleeping rhythm again and finally feel vital and rejuvenated in the morning – whilst before starting the day always required large efforts.
A great article Debra thank you, very inspiring.
Beautifully said Debra and I hope you also appreciate how amazing you are for making those choices for yourself. It is SUCH a gift to start from the inside out than the outside in. I too am enjoying getting to know myself from the gorgeousness that I am within as opposed to being so dependant on how I look from the outside. It is a work in progress but one that I am really enjoying.
Yes Debra, I can so relate to what you share on giving up gluten and taking stock of how much better you feel! The food choices become so much easier when you actually listen to how the body responds. This is my way forward now, and I am so glad I have a real insight on this.
Hello Debra, I agree and I certainly had the same experience with weight, Christmas and gluten. I have seen my life go from the highs and lows, the over eating and the starving, the indulging and the abstaining, the happy and the sad’s, there was always one and then the other and never a consistency of the one thing. Same as you the start for me was the Gentle Breath Meditation and Universal Medicine. Since then the choices I have made for myself have given me a more consistent life and day to day. I found gluten would make me really tired and make my stomach feel really full. After deciding to not eat gluten, I lost weight, had more energy and generally felt better so it made sense for me to no longer eat it. It is amazing how what we think are little things can support us so much. Thank you Debra.
I love the sharing of the feeling of see sawing between contrasting, or even opposite points here Ray, and the tangible difference of a consistency and steadying up – getting off diet fads, off the foods that drag you down and so off the see saw effect. Very cool.
Beautifully simple Debra thank you , to open up to what we feel is to be aware of who we are, instead of being run by what we think we need to be.
“…my focus was never on how I felt but always on how I looked.” I can relate to this Debra. Since discovering Universal Medicine and freely choosing to incorporate some self-loving changes, I feel so different on the inside, which is now reflected outwardly. Deep appreciation for Serge Benhayon and all Universal Medicine practitioners and students, who inspire me daily.
I stopped eating Gluten by choice many years ago too and it’s incredible the difference it has made to my focus and energy levels too. Overall eating light and dairy free too – allows us to feel so much more, just like the author of this blog explains.
Its so true Oliver. What I have also noticed after deciding to not eat gluten and dairy is that there are other foods that my body reacts to in similar or different ways and I have been able to make choices about not eating those foods also, without feeling like I have been given the raw deal with foods taken away, but that I actually don’t want to eat them anymore and I can make that choice.
I am 42 years now and through out my life I had a lot of shape and weight changes. There were times where I was plump as a kid (I ate a lot to not feel) and there were times where I was thin (by doing a lot of sports) to very thin (when I had glandular fever). In all of these phases I did not feel good in my body and I did not feel beautiful.
Since a few years, actually since I take more care how I feel than how I look on the outside, this has changed. I take care of my Food, my sleep, my moods and of my body in a more self-loving way. And guess what – the inside feeling is reflected on the outside. Which means, if I feel good in my body, I look good on the outside too.
A very big thank you for Universal Medicine and all their teachings.
Beautiful Sonja.
This is a lovely article Debra. I also ignored all the signs that the foods I was eating weren’t right for me — the foggy thinking, the sleepiness after eating, the bloating, and I noticed that the tip of my nose would be itchy as well. But I needed someone else — the doctor — to suggest that I experiment and see if cutting out gluten and dairy made a difference. Well it did. It was so amazing to be free of the discomfort of a bloated belly as well as all the other symptoms. Losing weight was a by-product and a bonus. No longer having the discomfort that I put up with for so long, I can now truly say that I feel great from the inside out!
I love the way you experimented in an open-hearted way with food, all the while observing your relationship with it and how it actually feels in your body. We are our best medicine.
Thank you, Debra, for this beautiful sharing. It is so simple – just let ourselves feel what is going on in the body and appreciate it. No more struggle, no more desire to prove anything to anyone-just you being you and feeling it in full, how awesome!
A great and inspiring article
Hi Debra, what i am amazed at is how we as a society grow up with these beliefs around how we look from the outside and all the pressure that is put on us to conform to these. Never truly up until now that is, with thanks to Universal Medicine, have we truly stopped to connect and feel what is going on inside of us, and that possibility there is more much more. Yes there has been phrases such as “beauty comes from within” which is true, but my feeling is these have been thrown around without much true consideration for what is being shared, often making it about what we ‘do’ to be beautiful rather than as you have described truly feeling and allowing our preciousness and beauty we hold deeply inside of us all to come out and be lived.
This is very inspiring to read Debra, thank you. I can only agree there is such a difference to how I feel in my body versus looking from the outside with the critical clouded view on how I think I should look like.
I so relate to that Ariana. My relationship with myself on any day influences how my day flows, and how much I affect or am affected by others.
That is my way too, Ariana you said it. The power we are when we hold ourselves with self worth and love is making a huge change to how we are in connection with others.
Beautifully said Ariana.
“And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling” Debra I love what you have shared, so much so I’m going to put this on my mirror just in case I need to remind myself to feel the gorgeousness inside me.
These were the words that I felt were beautiful too Sandra! I could feel a deep joy in the discovery of the woman Debra and indeed every woman truly is! Yay!!
What a good idea Sandra a great reminder to reconnect and feel your true beauty.
Truly precious when we look into our own eyes and simply feel how deeply gorgeous we are–no matter how we look. Why not celebrate this every day? Thank you Debra.
There are all kinds of tricks we can employ to cover up how we’re really feeling (food, socialising, keeping busy, working hard) and how we look but can’t accept (strategic clothes, styling, make-up, hair), but the choices you made Debra eased through these ways by starting to feel from your own body, to the point where (and this is gorgeous to hear) “I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling, and no longer my own or anyone else’s expectations of how I ought to look.” Love it.
Its really great to be able to talk about the developments in your body, but also the realisations that body image is seemingly more harmful that the actual body shape, size or look.
My experience is that I already had days before I learned about gluten and diary free nutrition through universal medicine where I did not eat gluten nor diary. But I did not put enough focus on this form of diet because it was not normal. I overrode a natural impulse in my body just because it didn’t seem to fit in the usual way of thinking?
This is a great sharing Debra, exposing our habits and showing the positive outcome when we listen to our body.
Thank you Debra. This is a ‘recipe’ for a truly healthy self-image.
I was always slim, eating vegetarian health foods and vitamin supplements, thinking I was very healthy. But my belly would be bloated and sticking out like a red flag from organic wholemeal, brown sugar and yoghurt. That was not only uncomfortable, it also made me feel self-conscious and unattractive. It took a while but I’m now diary and gluten free and don’t miss the old foods at all. They feel sticky and contracting to me when I think of them.
Now I feel more into my body, listen to it and eat what my body needs (mostly, I fall for old sweet cravings sometimes, but only in small doses). And I feel great, light and beautifull inside and out.
So true Debra I also feel the more I listen to my body, nurture and love myself I feel beautiful and it feels amazing. I must add accepting and appreciating are big for me I tend to go into I’m not there yet but when I can actually be with me and truly feel how beautiful I am in my stillness, grace, fragility and delicateness bring me to tears it is so incredible. To look in the mirror and see what I am feeling I see what I feeling is awesome. Claiming it and holding it something I am still working on.
I don’t actually have scales these days as the measure of how well I’m going is how I feel in my body, how present and open do I feel, how connected to me (literally how much of my body can I deeply feel…my legs? My feet? My heart glowing through every part of me?). This blog and comments have allowed me to clearly feel that the way I am eating, if taken to the next self caring level, would leave me feeling more vital and consistently lovely in my body – rather than the old eating to not feel which is still having its way – time to listen to my body and embrace more of my inner beauty in my life. We are worth making loving choices for.
PS – In the past I probably sampled and signed up to most so called health fads that were going…blood type diets, macro this, organic that, see sawing and walking contradiction…eating a controlled neurotic organic anti toxin diet whilst being so ill at ease in myself I smoked like a chimney. The steadiness today is truly a gift, and all the answers were within me, just waiting to be listened to.
Yes the scales are a huge symbol of judging ourselves from the ‘outside’ rather than how we feel within our bodies. Jumping on the scales can feel like we are treating ourselves like a piece of meat – an object that can be judged by how heavy it is. Whereas if we take the time to truly feel how heavy or light our bodies are and how vital we feel there is no need for the scales.
This is a big topic for women, how we look versus how we feel. I too placed all my attention on how I looked on the outside. I paid special attention to the details so there was a look of perfection, that way no one would criticise me. But inside I was in turmoil and nothing that I did on the outside changed that. My quest for physical perfection was deeply tiring.
Over the last 8 years I have been gradually pulling my focus from the outside to the inside and feeling all there is to feel within me, all the glory and all the misery. As I have been letting go of the misery there is more room for the glory, and as the glory increases, this then shines out. I have found that I feel deeply beautiful inside now and equally beautiful on the outside. My outward appearance now matches what is on the inside and this feels truly amazing.
When truly living from your inner heart the love and beauty simply shines so bright. Thank you Universal Medicine and the entire student body , my life has forever changed with all the love and support I feel everyday .
Dear Debra, what a great blog to let us know that we have a relationship with our body. And that we can take care of it as we have the possibility to let ourselves feel what our body needs or does not need. This was like medicine for me – I am now healthier than 8 years ago – no asthma and heavy bronchitis anymore . . . and on top of it this – the health insurance can also be happy because they don’t have to pay any money for this.
My time as a student at Universal Medicine as allowed me lengthy reflection on the relationship I have with my body and how I have used food to medicate everything I don’t want to feel. Food is supposed to be something we consume to nourish and replenish our bodies but how many of us actually eat and drink for this purpose?
You really expose the expectations we put on ourselves as women and our bodies, and we are never ‘happy’ with our bodies….BUT when we make it about a deeper connection to ourselves and our bodies we feel we are so much more and it is very joyful and feels beautiful to be in the body.
This should be send to all women’s magazine all over the world. The fact that “just” gently breathing and listening to the body makes any diet needless and can help to overcome food-issues. That’s revolutionary to the ordinary!
I couldn’t agree more Christina
The yo-yo dieting thing sure is a big problem for women driven to tick boxes about how they should look. What’s not taught about this, is that’s it’s not a simple back-and-forth yo-yo, it’s a downward slide in your health. The way it goes is that every time you lose a lot of weight suddenly you lose muscle and bone as well as fat. Muscle helps you ‘burn’ fat but now you have less of it. Then when you put on weight, again (discouragingly quickly) it’s mostly fat. So when you diet again to lose weight, it’s harder because you have less muscle to help out, and you lose even more muscle and bone (not good). Not to mention the fact that losing fat is a physiologically active process that requires nutrition, and if you are starving yourself you are not getting enough nutrition! So you can see that dangerous wheels are set in motion by the yo-yo diets. Increasingly poor body composition and under-nutrition, leading to problems with health and mood that only exacerbate the despair and depression of not being ‘like a model’. I’m so glad I learned early the hard way. Mid teens, blimped out, consumed nothing but lettuce and water for a month, and gained weight!! Can you believe it? As a young scientist, it was obvious to me that something else was going on, and that was the end of yo-yo dieting for me and the beginning of searching for a consistent, body-friendly way to regulate my weight. Now, thanks to Universal Medicine, it has brought me to the ultimate answer – loving, nurturing and accepting myself. Awesome!The yo-yo dieting thing sure is a big problem for women driven to tick boxes about how they should look.
I love reading stories like this one Debra, thank you for posting it. I can truly relate to what you have written, I had such disregard and complacancy for my body with no self regard, nurturing or care. Thanks to the inspiration of Universal Medicine I now listen and am learning to feel the joy and appreciate my body.
Wow, we eat generally in a way that allows us to not feel our gorgeousness and delicateness. And we do it when feeling gorgeous and delicate which is so much better than any food we could ever eat. That is amazing!
great comment Joshua
It is very inspiring that you write how you can now accept the gorgeous woman that you are and not worry about living up to others expectations. Thank you.
Your words were a timely reminder for me that the quality of how we feel far surpasses how we look. That quality is always a choice. Thank you Debra.
I appreciate what you have written here Debra, it is also a reminder to me to
appreciate the changes I have made in my diet and how much better I feel because of it.
Your blog is so simple Debra, focussing on how you feel rather than what your body looks like, a great way to approach food and dieting.
It is amazing how taking some time to stop and connect back to ourselves with a simple meditation technique and making some diet changes can bring such deep rewards.
Debra, I have also yo yoed in weight over the years although at the moment I am slim and have been able to maintain this for several years, largely through the work I have been doing with Universal Medicine. However, I am still developing my awareness and acceptance of my body so I especially appreciate your comment ‘I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am’. It is a strong reminder to keep bringing myself back to this type of bodily acceptance and appreciation in coming days. Thank you!
Great blog Debra, I share a similar story to you as I used to constantly diet and exercise trying to keep my weight down. Universal Medicine has supported me to eat in a more loving way for my body, I lost weight, gained more energy and vitality and could cope with my shift work much better.
Universal Medicine helped me too Anna to eat in a more loving way for my body. I didn’t have weight to lose but my body shape has changed, it has more shape. When I am enjoying being me I enjoy how my body looks and feels.
I can soooo relate to what you have shared Deborah. I have yo yo dieted all my life and just recently have started the journey of discovering the truth in the relationship that I have with food. A big journey of self discovery is this one. I am noticing now as soon as I feel anxious I straight away feel “hungry”, certainly not a true hunger, just looking for comfort. I now have an opportunity to choose to feel what is really going on in these moments.
My whole life I have known I wanted to feel beautiful far more than I have ever wanted to look beautiful. I spent years working in women’s clothing stores watching women I deemed very physically beautiful curse their appearance. It was confirmed again and again that physical beauty did not bring people any true joy. Your blog shows how powerful it is to love the body you are in and embrace your beauty. Thank you for sharing your experience with us Debra.
This is gorgeous Leonne – feeling beautiful as a glow from within rather than looking tick box stereotypically ‘beautiful’, and the emptiness of that.
Yes Debra! I found: As long I am not willing to change the relationship with me, making loving choices instead of harming ones, I will not change my relationship with food. What food I choose is a result of my relationship with me and the world.
I can totally relate to how you were feeling after eating gluten, – I used to feel bloated and lethargic. It’s so worth exploring our diet and feel how the food affects us afterwards, instead of ignoring the signs and eat and drink out of pure habit.
Hi Debra, I can feel the joy you have in making such a beautiful change in your life. Thank you for sharing this important message in an era when the emphasis is on looks at the expense of how we feel.
Thanks so much for your inspiring story Debra. I am still very much a work in progress in relation to using the ‘feeling’ sense of my bodies amazing way of communicating with me.
Debra,
I can relate to that yoyo dieting. I would start on a
Monday morning and last until Wednesday (if i got
that far) Thinking only about food.
At the beginning I was not even overweight. I was 56 klo.
But after years of trying to diet I got to 75 kilo.
Finally when I made it about how i felt , my weight
just fell off. Im now back to about 56 kilos
I can really relate to your experience here missspringclean
Isn’t that the classic example missspringclean – external diet fads from will power to control the numbers on the scale leave us see-sawing down a slippery slope away from ourselves and the self care, that if made the primary focus, is a total game changer.
Dear Debra,
Thank you so very much for writing your blog. I am at this time experiencing how amazing my body feels, how solid and true it really is. Today I had the realisation that even though I have felt this amazingness I have not allowed myself to truly accept it and trust it. Reading your writing is a true support for me as I now truly trust, honour and accept my beautiful body.
Thanks Debra for your honest sharing, the world has gone mad with a body image that has no true foundation but based on marketing and a competition of I can out do you in the image stakes, without honestly telling the world what that feels like to live in such an empty way . Where as expressing that great inner beauty we all have, out through our body, where we then get to live in the lovely fullness and joy of being connected to our body and the need to dominate our amazing body for the sake of some body image does no longer make sense.
Since attending Universal Medicine workshops and learning to self-care I too gave up gluten and dairy and have never looked back. I have lost at least 15 kgs and feel like myself now rather than a bloated version of myself. I did it from a place of having learned to care for myself rather than a feeling of being overweight and having to go on a diet.
Beautiful – ‘I did it from a place of having learned to care for myself’ – isn’t that what makes all the difference, the weight loss ends up being an aside to the main dish – the looking after ourselves and feeling great.
Beautiful blog Debra. This is a topic that woman everywhere, at some stage in life, make it about what we look like rather than how we feel. What I have noticed is when I feel great from the inside out, anything I wear looks fabulous. And it becomes not about the clothes, but how we are wearing the clothes.
Debra
I love this blog as it’s a simple reminder that how I feel is what I carry in my body every day.
Yes, Debra, how true. We can carry all of the ideals and beliefs around who we think we are or need to be, when all of that time just under all of that, is our natural, gorgeous and amazing beauty waiting for us to accept, appreciate and share in full.
It is so true that when we start feeling great from the insider we become more accepting of how we look on the outside, and the outside responds to how we feel from within us. Great blog Debra — this is what the diet industries and programs seem to be missing.
Your blog really struck a chord with me, Debra. Its amazing that when we are not connected to our inner beauty that we can look in the mirror and see a totally different body than what others can see- often a body that we have many negative feelings about. I too am loving my body shape now but am also loving me!
Beautiful Debra, I can so relate to what you express. I too have been yoyo dieting a long time and all because I felt to improve or better myself. When I started to experiment also with bread and pasta leaving it out, I felt great and it didn’t feel as a diet, it felt as a loving choice for myself. The dieting never felt as a loving choice for myself.
Oh Debra I can so relate and how good is the gentle breath meditation! There is no denying that when you start listening to your body you truly start to feel amazing but when you don’t listen and think ‘i’ll just have a little bit’ your body lets you know about it.
It is almost ironic, isn’t it, that when we stop ‘trying’ to make our body look a certain way and instead begin to focus on how it feels and begin to truly care for and nurture our bodies, that inevitably we become pleased with the reflection we see in the mirror!
That very true Pernilla, my sentiments exactly. Stop the trying, it’s exhausting, as I have discovered for myself, I tried for years to better myself on the outside and it wasn’t until I started to make choices to self care and nurture my body did I start to enjoy being me. After all, isn’t it true that we see what we feel when we look in the mirror?
Yes I relate to what you say here Pernilla, the more I care and nurture my Self and my body, the more wonderful it feels and I can see that it is so.
Thank you Debra, I loved reading your simple honest AND powerful sharing of you coming back to you and celebrating you. I really appreciate all the ideals you had to look at that were running how you felt about yourself before. There are so many that we allow from when we are young that control us – how we are supposed to look, move, dress, speak as women, the list goes on and on. Once you started feeling yourself again, these ideals and their control fell away, leaving you to just feel you – which was great and you are great. Whats so great too is how simply we can all come back to the greatness we truly are – just as you did Debra – so can we – totally inspiring !!!
…. “I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am” …. loving choices feeding you back with loving thoughts, beautiful Debra, thank you for your blog.
Thanks Debra. Looking in the mirror brings up so much. Your blog helps me identify the importance of trusting how I truly feel about my body, and being in my body, rather than falling for the mind trap of judging, comparing and condemning.
Great sharing Debra – I experienced the same when I cut gluten out of my diet and as much as I loved bread and pasta and how that seemed ridiculous to not be able to eat these. When I made that choice to give it a go and see how I would feel with out it in my body at first I noticed slight changes but after a little while it became so much clearer. After about 2 months I had some gluten and was totally blown away on how full on it is. So it was from that day on very obvious – if I could that clear, alert and light with out it and feel this awesome why would I go back to the old way of feeling.
Life is so much easier when those dreaded boxes finally disintegrate and we can stop ticking them. Like you Debra, I’m now comfortable to look in the mirror and see the reflection of who I am and know that my body is the shape it is. I’ll keep that box and put a star on it.
I can totally relate to your blog Debra, its awesome to let my body tell me what it needs. When people ask me what I’m doing (as I’ve lost almost 20kg) I tell them I started by giving up gluten then dairy but the most important thing was I started listening to MY body instead of trusting and following what is advertised as healthy. The body knows what works and what doesn’t you just have to listen.. 😀
Wow Laura this is great, to lose 20 kg by starting to listen to your body and what it truly needs is inspirational. I know when I started to listen to what my body was telling me there was no way I could eat dairy and gluten again, just from eatting a small amount of gluten or dairy I would feel sluggish, tired, heavy and low in mood which would sometimes last for days.
It’s a whole new way of being – assessing your body by how you FEEL as opposed to how you look.
I know that the more beautiful I feel the more beautiful I look – and others feel it too. The more I connect to my body the more the inner smile shows on the outside.
Sandra what a delightful expression. I too find the same, the more I connect to my body, the more I can feel an inner smile, the more beautiful I feel and from the response of others I know they receive the gift of that.
This is true Brooke and an important step for Humanity, letting go of how you look and the main focus being about how you feel what a revelation.
It is so refreshing to read about a woman who embraces her own body and beauty.
I want to eat what I want and when I want to – I also felt that way, and how unfair it was that I would feel so sick after that nice chocolate cake with cream.
I loved reading about your beautiful process of coming to feel from your body what was right for you and then to make choices that were in alignment with the messages your body was giving you. It is very empowering process. I also felt so much beauty and true honouring in the expression “I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am”. Thank you, very inspiring.
Thanks Debra for sharing , being at peace with your body is an amazing place to be,
As a man I would constantly over eat , stuff myself with food at times so as not to feel.
And after being contantly bloated and tired got medically diagnosed as being gluten intolerant 8 years ago and noticed a massive difference in energy and wellbeing.
As body sizes have increase and more people are bloated by there choices of diet, people also say to me “gee you’ve lost weight ” , as sit at my 18 -20 yr old lean true body shape at 47. It seems to me that the bloated puffy look is becoming the visual norm for many . Instead of the more lean look of say the 1910 ‘s 20″ 40s 50s when there wasn’t so much sugar ,processed / denatured food in our diets.
Its interesting how its not about the shape but about how we feel when we look in the mirror. If I don’t think I look beautiful one day I know that I have to nurture myself more and spend more time being with me, another morning I look and am stunned at the beauty reflecting back at me. A confirmation that I am on track.
Its not about how much I weigh or my body shape as the weight can remain the same yet I wear it differently depending on how connected I am with myself.
Thank you for sharing Debra.
You noted that your friends commented that you were “too thin”. It is interesting to observe that this is generally considered ok, and yet there is a taboo in mentioning that someone is overweight.
Yes! I have noticed that too, that people feel comfortable to tell me I should gain weight now, but didn’t tell me I should lose some when I was heavier. I had a similar experience to Debra of naturally losing weight without ‘trying’ once I went off gluten and dairy. I was never really overweight, but had definitely gotten uncomfortably (for me) heavier after I turned 40, but no one used to say “you should lose a few pounds” whereas now people tell me I should gain a few (even though I am by no means underweight). I feel amazing and this weight feels just right for me.
Thankyou for sharing Deborah, I have struggled with how I should look and been hard on myself and my weight and ultimately have felt no good enough trying to fit a picture my body didn’t fit. It is inspiring how you focused on how you and your body felt rather than how it should look
I find it’s a lot of fun experimenting with food and getting to know what my body needs, when I listen I feel on top of everything, and when I don’t I feel tired and a bit depressed – listening to my body’s needs really does make a difference to how I live life.
I find it a lot of fun when I experiment with food and how my body feels – it’s a great feeling when I listen, and when I don’t it’s miserable! – feeling what to eat for my body really does make a difference to how I live my life.
Amazing Debra! I gave up gluten 2 years ago because I wanted to see how I feel when I cut it out of my diet. I also decided to cut out dairy, caffeine and refine sugar at the same time. I knew that I shouldn’t be eating these kinds of food because I always moody, tired and low in energy but I ignored what my body was telling me. I also used food for comfort. I am grateful to be introduced to Universal Medicine 4 years ago, it confirmed to me loud and clear to listen and honour what I was feeling. To be loving to my body and choose food that support me. How I look on the outside is reflected by how I am feeling inside. By simply choosing food that is right for my body I have been feeling more calm, more energy and lightness.
I was knick named the carbohydrate kid when I was young. I loved bread, Anything carbs basically, crumpets, pancakes, cereal, toast you name it, if it was bready I ate it. I was raised eating a lot of very delicious Italian food because of my heritage. If we had bought my favourite loaf of Pusta Dura (the crusty white loafed bread) when shopping with mum, by the time we travelled home I had eaten most of it in the car. Never in a million years did I even consider I would not eat gluten, it wasn’t even on my radar.
When I was 26 one of my friends chose to no longer eat gluten. I had to ask what is gluten anyway? As I begun to understand I could also see and feel significant changes in the way my friend felt about herself, including not having that bloated look about her although she was not overweight. I was the same. I’ve always bloated after carbs, I kind of thought that was normal or just part of life. Having a mid size basketball for a belly is apparently not normal! Writhing in pain after a meal and having to un-do your top button after a meal is not normal! So progressively over the next 6 years I have not been eating gluten, and never have I felt better, my body shape has also changed as a result without trying. I always looked a bit puffy and obviously uncomfortable in my skin, always trying to hide my body with clothes and just generally in the way I held myself. Not any more! I’m quite content to strut… Ha Ha. No, I’m no show off, well I am a bit, ☺I just enjoy feeling great in myself. Saying no to gluten allowed me to say yes to me. Pretty cool.
So why eat gluten? Exactly. What is it anyway? Questions I’m very glad I stopped to ask, because when I learned through taking space to feel it for myself in my own body I was like oh! This stuff does not make sense. Good-bye Pusta Dura. Too easy. Thanks Debra for writing your very relatable article. It’s amazing how small simple self-loving choices are enough to change your life in a big way.
I love that it’s really as simple as trial and error with food and listening to our body in finding out what makes us feel great. No not for me, yes that goes down well and then a constantly ongoing and evolving thing. From that naturally our body finds it’s own weight, rhythm and sense of harmony.
This is great Debra. As I have connected more to my body and listened to what it was telling me, I have become less at the mercy of how I look to make me feel ok or good and now how I feel about myself comes from the connection I have inside. How I look on the outside is a direct result of this but is secondary to how great I feel on a daily basis.
Yes, and the problem with ‘dieting’ is that the focus is on how much you are eating, without making the real emphasis on what your body actually needs vs. what it doesn’t like so much. Instead of setting your mind on a diet which prescribes what and how much you should eat, actually feeling what your body likes and what it doesn’t like is a great way to refine your diet, so that you can give it more of what it truly needs, and begin to cut out all the rest. And by doing this, as Debra can attest to, the weight just ‘falls off’. I have had the same experience – taking the time and self-care to commit to a focus on what my body truly needs has led to my previous self-indulgent and harming food choices (chocolate, alcohol, sweets, sugar) simply dissolving in the process, without any real effort to let go of them.
Such a gorgeous blog Debra which shows just how upside down the whole body image thing is. We have been fooled into getting out of our bodies to look at our bodies from the outside instead of connecting directly with our body and how it feels. This then makes us so easily susceptible to the outside influences of fade diets, fashionable looks and making up in our heads what people might think of us instead of feeling and listening to the body and expressing ourselves from this place joy-fully.
Body image is such a massive issue for women and men and is definitely worth writing about from every angle – really getting beneath what we have held back or kept in our heads…body image actually seems an odd term when you think about it…perhaps “body idea” would be more fitting as unfortunately our sense of our physical self is so often coming from our heads, a mental calculation, a cocktail of comparison, self-loathing, shoulds, ifs and one-days – not from connecting to our bodies and how we are actually feeling. For some reason it can seem easier to focus on how we think we look rather than how we feel.
Different path to you Debra, but the same outcome…. I had no interest in ‘ticking the boxes’ and what I felt my life was about was out of step with what women were supposed to want. No marriage, children, housewife roles for me. However my weight did go up and down and I hated my body when I was overweight. Me and mirrors were not good buddies! In later years, after learning to love and embrace myself as I am, I do notice that if I don’t feel very ‘with’ myself and not accepting something about myself, I look pretty awful (to me) in the mirror. But even a short while later after coming back to myself, accepting and loving myself, and feeling good with me, suddenly I look great in the mirror! Now how could that be possible if it were only physical? Truth is, the energy of self-love produces a lovely reflection. When I come home to me, I feel fantastic, and look beautiful into the bargain!
We really don’t see the connection between certain foods and how we feel after eating them. It is great to start talking about this. I know I was just as unaware until my body reacted strongly to gluten and stopped me in my tracks. It is also my experience that diets don’t work and when I was dieting I ended up obsessing more about food and feeling defeated when I didn’t lose weight. Just eating what my body needed and caring about myself let all my extra weight fall off with no effort. Amazing that when we stop trying and wanting to reach a goal, we end up getting there!
Caring about myself, to feel what I need to eat for my body is an ongoing process of acceptance for me, as a woman and as a tender fragile being.
Thank you Debra, it is absolutely beautiful to witness a woman who is loving being in her own body. This is true sexiness – being content and enjoying the skin you’re in – because it’s you!
It sounds like you don’t have any second thoughts about the bread! 🙂
In reading your blog Debra, I realize that I have been ‘battling’ with my weight – I am not over weight, but under weight. When I look at myself in the mirror I sometimes see the reflection of a scrawny image that is impoverished and undernourished. Yet I eat well. However there is often an anxiety in me around food about putting on weight and this is ingested with the food so it does not nourish me as much as it could. Also I have been judging myself as not good enough because of the way I look and so I have not been nourishing myself with self-loving thoughts and this is what is reflected back to me. When I feel good about myself I look more full and expanded but I need to be more consistent in not allowing negative thoughts to feed me and ‘embracing my body shape’ feels like a key.
I am up to a weight loss of 70 kgs since I too became aware of the self empowerment of ” feel first what to eat instead of eating how I was feeling”. Thanks to the way I now live as taught and lived by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine.
Thank you Debra, so deeply inspiring to read and feel how you do not hold back from saying how beautiful you are, this can be difficult to claim when we are so often encouraged to play down our beauty in case of upsetting or making another uncomfortable, the fact you don’t hold back paves the way for others to also unashamedly claim their beauty. I also love how you made your change in diet about awareness and not about what the latest diet tells you what you should or shouldn’t eat. You listened to your own body and let it tell you what it needed and what it didn’t, there is no greater science than that.
I know this too well. My body just did not feeling right, sluggish, bloated and just not me. Now, my diet and way of life supports my body. I don’t just eat and live with out listening to the vehicle that I drag around with me. Thanks to the studies by Universal Medicine, I have learned to I listen and work with my body, and O’Boi does it show.. I look amazing the older I get.. People take pills to regress ageing, I just live..
Thank you Debra for your beautiful words that voiced my own journey with dieting and ignoring what my body was telling me. Learning to listen to my body, which was only too willing to tell me what worked and didn’t work, has it humming in gratitude. Beautiful!
Beautiful Debra… I could relate to all of what you shared, the pushing, the dieting, the not looking after the body. I recalled reading it, how I was quite proud and would boast that I always ate larger meals than men and did not put on weight – I can feel how ignorant I was than to what my body was really going through, eating in that way. I may not of put on weight but I was so exhausted to the point of tears, drained and in constant anxiousness. It is interesting the parts that we are often okay seeing (i.e. overeating) over whats really going on.
Reading your blog there was a line that especially resonated with me – “I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am”. I might say that because of growing older this has not been so easy for me, however when I read all you wrote I also came to realise it has been ongoing, not seeing and not accepting the gorgeous woman I am for a long time. So thank you for sharing your experience, it has brought me to looking at myself with much more love and acceptance, and it is starting to feel yummy inside. Thank you Debra.
I too really enjoyed and related to your article. it allowed me to reflect how differently I feel about my body now and how I used to need an afternoon nap because of the heavy gluten and sugary foods i consumed. Also I could make the link between eating a lot of carbs or sugar to get energy so I could ‘drive myself’ through my day and achieve what I thought I had to get done in order to feel okay about myself. Today I can really embrace my body and care for it so much more, as it is not just about a body that I need to have function efficiently in order to get things done.
How inspiring for others to read your journey from being overweight ,trying diets which didn’t work to finally stopping and listening to your body with help of the gentle breath meditation taught by Serge Benhayon, and then feeling and honouring your body re food choices e.g. gluten which naturally resulted in you losing weight.
I too love how you express “today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in your body”
I loved re-reading this part of your blog Debra – “today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body” – very beautiful
So often people comment how great I look,how much energy I have, how calm I became.
I’m answering:”Thanks for the compliment, but you can have it too:It is my life style and in case you are interested just let me know, I love to share the way I live with you.Let’s go for a walk, which is by the way one of my secrets and there are many more to tell you.”This is my way of spreading the loving choices, which Serge Benhayon and the Universal Medicine Team,so kindly and lovingly, did share with me.
Thank you so much Debra.
This is supposed to be a woman’s issue, but as a man, I can share that I have had issues with food and appearance all of my life.
My path was one of eat what you like whenever you like, and then exercise like crazy, to exhaustion, every day.
After being an elite athlete in my teens, and receiving recognition for my achievements, I soon identified looking like an athlete with people liking me, especially women. At least this all gave me a distraction from feeling how hurt and empty I was actually feeling.
It is now over 8 years since I met Serge Benhayon. What he presented to me back then and has consistently presented to me ever since, is how amazing I am, just for being me, and how important it is to truly care for myself, my body, my vehicle of expression.
I have, to the best of my ability, been caring for myself and, can honestly say that at 50 years old, I feel better in myself and in my body that when I was an elite athlete at 20.
Who needs anti-ageing drugs when you can live with self-love.
I can totally relate Rob and Debra, I feel so much lighter and joy-full in my body now then I did 10 years ago, thanks to the awesome teachings of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, and the choices I subsequently made when I could feel them as true for me.
Thank you for this article Debra. And yes – it really is about how we truly feel within ourselves and developing a deeper appreciation and acceptance of ourselves and our bodies, and how we naturally truly are as women. I feel this to be an essential part of truly claiming and hence, living the sacredness that is within us all as women.
Thank you Debra, for so beautifully and simply articulating your experience. Reading your words felt like reading my own experience in so many ways; always ‘trying to be or do’ something and pushing my body so hard to achieve this with out regard or feeling. A big,big thank you to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine for re-introducing us to the beauty within and the grace to live this every day if we so choose.
Wow as I read your words I could feel the shift as you claimed who you really are, a beautifull claimed woman. Thank you for the inspiration.
On reading this blog again this was a stand out line for me – ‘I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am’. I feel that this is what most women want, to see themselves as gorgeous, from the inside out, and to totally accept who they are, every part.
Well said Debra! It certainly is all about how we feel in our bodies not ever about how we look. If we get caught in looking we can find all sorts of things to focus on and be critical about. I know that if I look too closely at anything it becomes weird and distorted. But feel great in your body and you instantly transform into a beauty as this is what true beauty is.
Thank you for your blog , your article is really inspiring , not only because of your sharing about what you have experienced with food , but also i can feel the joy in it having a great body and expressing ” Hey- that`s me!”
A whole industry would be collapsing when the real truth about diet is known by everybody.
A house-proud wife … great wording Debra.
Could it be that we also have a pride of not wanting to feel how we look?
I love your reply to comments about how you look – „well, I feel great“. Thats it, great.
I returned to this blog today Debra and find it still rings so true. The way you describe your experiences makes me consider my life and how I have often got stuck on the way things look on the outside. This goes for other people, places and situations too. I also found this changed over time with the work I have done with Esoteric Practitioners. Now I feel I am returning to enjoy the natural beauty that lives inside me and inside you and well, everybody.
I can so absolutely relate to this ‘Going back 10 years, my focus was never on how I felt but always on how I looked’. Actually to the whole article. ”Everything in my life was all about ticking the boxes’. How indeed I would like to say that I have not felt that way in my life, I can only say that I have actually lived my whole life ticking the boxes.. This could be ticking boxes with my type of friends, ticking boxes with how great I looked, ticking boxes with how much attention I got, ticking the boxes with how much I could do/achieve, how more boxes I ticked – the greater I felt.. WOW – so much about ticking boxes.. My list could go on and on. The more I talk about it, the more obvious the actual crazyness of doing this comes out.
What I really love about this article is – that it is a very honest but at the same time very loving reflection of writing. This writer does not hold any judgement, not to herself when she writes , not to anyone that reads it.. Just a very loving observation of how we can live in a way – that might tick boxes – but is actually very disempowering and dishonoring to ourselves as a woman. How wonderfull. Thank you for sharing Debra.
When how I look doesn’t match any of the ideals that I see around me, then I undermine myself worrying about it. When I focus on how I feel, there’s an amazing freedom in that to be absolutely me. There’s no exterior measure. It’s so light and lovely.
Beautifully said Amanda. I so agree.
Thank you. As a man I can totally relate to what you describe about food. How amazing is it that when listening from within (that voice in the silence) has so much more effect than the push from driving ourselves to reach certain goals (in weight, fitness, etc). The thing that supported me the most – as far as I am aware of – is the cutting out of all dairy. It’s been a long long time since I had dairy and before I had all this slime in my mouth and a belly like a balloon (100 kilo’s instead of the 72 I am now). Thank you for this blog. A good way to appreciate :-).
This is an awesome article Debra, it is a continual learning for me to observe and feel how it is that I feel in my body? and what it is that I feel about my body? They sometimes appear to be similar and yet worlds apart – As I know I can be feeling alive and beautiful within myself and consequently if I do eat something that I don’t feel to, or more than I felt to I can sometimes forget how lovely I really am and find myself disliking my body (and especially taking it out on my appearance).
What I have been able to learn with the support of Universal Medicine is that what I am really feeling in my body is the result of the choices I have made, but also that I don’t have to take my view from a point of hardness on me, continuing the self-abuse, but with an honest approach to observing what may have happened or what I may have felt in a moment and that this can only come from the acceptance of how I feel about who I truly am ~ a very beautiful woman.
“Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body”. Debra these words capture the key for all those wrestling with food addictions, diet and health problems. It exposes that the focus today is on what others expect us to be or look like, rather than their own feelings. Every woman deserves to read this blog and see through eyes that “are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman” they are!
Love your blog, Debra. ‘Sure I would eat when hungry, or sleep when tired. Actually as I write that, I realise….’ I can so relate to being exhausted for years but not even realising I was exhausted and so then eating whatever junk food was at hand to boost my energy to get me through the next hour, the next day. I would push myself beyond my limit and wonder why by early evening even junk food wouldn’t sustain me and I would be ready to collapse, lose my patience and feel so stuck in a cycle I didn’t know how to do anything about or get out of. Through attending Universal Medicine workshops I too learned the gentle breath meditation and how amazing it could feel to stop long enough to check in with my body and truly listen to what it was telling me. It is an ongoing process that supports me on a daily basis.
cool – so how you feel is essentially what quality you see in the mirror… on the days you feel amazing theres a cheeky smile and a wink and on others where you don’t feel great you wont even make eye contact with you own self. this is how it goes for me and it’s pretty fun to play with and observe.
So true Ariel – I’ve begun to take more notice of this myself, and the reflection in the mirror is always how I am feeling inside…, So even those days where I might look good on the outside – if I’m not feeling great inside my body – the reflection just doesn’t feel right and I find things I’m unhappy with (my clothes, hair, makeup etc….). But when I feel great inside my body, I don’t focus on these details and what I see and feel is the beautiful me!
Hey Debra, I twanged on the sentence: “… how I felt in my body did not rank high on my list of priorities.” … how I feel in my body has NEVER ranked high, until very recently and still how I feel in my body can lose out to mouth-taste-sensations, with the resulting uncomfortable bodily consequences – however I am getting there more and more! So thank you for sharing your experience.
And another thing, your comment, ” I was left to contend with the failure of not sticking to the diet plus the failure of letting myself down even more.” reminds me of an article I read recently called, Diets Don’t Work But There Is Another Way … a great read which discusses this ‘failure’ we all have with dieting.
Don’t our bodies respond well to a bit of TLC and I respond so well to my body feeling well. I learnt this from my feet. I go through phases of thinking/feeling my feet are ugly, but when I care for them these thoughts leave.
Abby what a profound insight. If I let my mind go I find it is easy to go into what I ‘should’ look like or have or do, and invariably judgements of myself and often some degree of dislike. There is so much in society feeding that way of viewing ourself incessantly. Yet when I choose to invest love and care, that way of thinking breaks, and acceptance, appreciation and self-love replaces it.
Thank you Debra, Abby and Golnaz – I love your reflections! We invest in the hair dresser, the beauty therapist and in clothes, the gym, etc. and that can be a lot of fun, but what about investing into the love and care we can bring to our own bodies? I will ponder on this more deeply.
And yes Golnaz with everything that is fed to us we need to establish a daily practice that counters it and supports us – that really makes sense.
Thank you for sharing Debra, I too struggle with loving my body shape. I love how you shared its all about how you felt and that you feel great and that’s what matters. Great point to take into consideration.
I never understood the correlation between food and how my body felt until changing my diet away from gluten and dairy. How my body feels now without those foods is so different in all positive ways; no bloating, no asthma, no sinus congestion, etc. When I feel great I know that I look great, the focus is now on the inside not the outside 🙂
I was obsessed with my weight all my life up until about 10 years ago and would think that ‘when I lose weight my life would be great” I would continually weigh myself and exam myself in the mirror to see whether I looked any skinner.
After attending Universal Medicine courses and learning to love my body for the shape and size it was the ironic thing was that after I accepted my self, my body and how I looked the weight simply dropped off.
It is amazing how the choices of food can affect the body inside, if we are able to feel the after effects of our choices. I can so relate to people’s comments about looking skinny and needing to put on more weight. I actually feel healthier with more energy and vitality now then I have ever felt in my life. It’s how you feel inside that counts not the appearance on the outside.
Yes I can relate Debra, what I have found is the body always knows.. when I started to truly listen to what my body wanted to eat and not from what my mind was choosing for gratification or stimulation of some sort, my body changed very naturally as a result. I was never an overweight person but I always had a puffy bloated stomach and it wasn’t until I gave up eating foods containing gluten that my body shape changed. I think I also knew I was reactive to gluten but at that time I was attached to the ‘comfy foods’ which were also very dulling and heavy in my body.
Cutting out gluten was one of the wisest thing my body has ever suggested. After eating gluten my stomach would balloon and I would crave more and more of the starchy, gluten rich foods, which most definitely satiated my emotions and taste buds, but most certainly did no favours for my body!
I had a very similar experience; I used to feel very sluggish, especially after breakfast and when I cut out gluten, that totally disappeared and I also needed much less sleep.
In my past the way in which I looked would have been everything to me to get the attention I so desperately was seeking and how my body was feeling would have been something unheard of! While reading this blog it made me realise how disregarding towards my body I have been and still am although I am getting better. I love how you are giving priority now to how your body is feeling instead on how it looks. Very Inspirational blog Debra! Thank you.
It is very inspiring when you say “Today I’ve embraced my new body shape, not because of how it looks but because of how great it feels in my body”. How wonderful to hear a woman now accepting the gorgeous woman she is.
This is a really great sharing Debra. I feel it is pertinent for women and men. I used to be so hard on myself, focusing so much on how I looked and never seeming to live up to the expectations I placed on myself and my body. After being introduced to Universal Medicine I started to bring more awareness to this within myself and at first I found this super exposing. I had to then feel and deal with a deep lack of self worth and love for myself and I discovered just how reliant I was on things and people outside of me to bring me this. Because the inside was so empty, the outside became my focus.
What I have found now is that the more focus I bring to the inner, through deeply caring for and nurturing myself, the more I love what I see in the mirror, because I am beginning to feel and build my own true sense of worth. I’m no longer judging my body shape, but rather embracing it. The more I accept myself, the full package that I am, the more I see that my body is actually perfect just as it is. Thank you for offering the opportunity to express this.
It seems very wise to value the way we feel by actually HOW WE FEEL. To much does society hold up the outer beauty.
It is beautiful for a women (and even a man for that matter) to be appreciating the loveliness within and then appreciating the outside as well 🙂
Awesome sharing Debra, its about how we feel when we look in the mirror and not how we look. I never had weight problems or any issues with my body image, I was always slim and liked my body very much so I didn’t even thought of that me feeling myself could be improved in any way. When I learned through Universal Medicine to truly connect to myself and develop an ever deepening self love I was astonished of the level of wellbeing I reached and I am still deepening every day. I never felt as awesome as I do today and the most beautiful thing is that I can choose to deepen this already amazing level of wellbeing every day! So powerful!
Thank you for sharing your awareness Debra. I am at those cross-roads now of choosing what I eat based on how I feel rather than taste. I have been obsessed with how I look since I can remember, looking for a reflection in anything to confirm that yes, I am beautiful (in my face). As soon as I hit my waist and down I start to pick at what I see. All I am being shown are my choices and how I’ve lived and I don’t like it! So here’s to taking responsibility for choices and starting to feel into what and how to eat, move and be.
What you all write is so inspiring. I have always related my self-worth to how I looked. When I say it like that it sounds so superficial, and yet it is true. It was a pretty constant preoccupation, and even though to a much lesser degree today, it rears its ugly head at certain moments. The difference now is that it is not a constant distraction, and I often feel so great that my looks are all about my eyes and the reflection of my true inner beauty I see in them.
I think identifying with our looks is the plague of women.
Identifying our self-worth with the way we look is an an insidious illusion that was imposed upon us at some long ago point in evolution, was taken on as truth and has continued to stop us connecting to our true inner beauty and sacredness.
Thank God for Women In Livingness and Esoteric Women’s Health, Universal Medicine and all you beautiful women who have learned to love yourselves enough to shine your light on the way forth out of the illusion, back to self-love and releasing our inner-beauty to the world
Love what you have shared Debra as I can so relate. I too have found it how I feel on the inside not my weight or shape (even though it too has changed) is that makes the biggest difference to how feel about myself as a woman.
This is beautiful Debra thank you for sharing, I can relate to so much of what you have written. Perhaps the best kept beauty secret is acceptance and connection. I have found the more I accept that I am beautiful on the inside and choose to live in a way that I am connected to my body in every moment then I feel super yummy in my body. This feeling of connection and acceptance gives my true beauty permission to shine out of every pore. The best thing is it doesn’t cost anything and every woman can live like this by developing a nurturing relationship with herself.
Being greatly overweight for a good part of my life and having a very unloving relationship with my body i can relate to much of what you write Debra. I always thought i would love myself more once i would be slimmer or look better. But when i actually did lose the weight i did not suddenly love myself more.And neither were the issues i was avoiding through food suddenly resolved. So other then my dress size – and the feeling of ticking the ‘look’ boxes – nothing truly changed. Not until i came across Universal Medicine and learned how to heal my issues and start to truly love and honour myself. Now i know from within that i a beautiful and this shows, more then ever on the outside. So now i do not only feel beautiful and sexy and lovely within my own body…i look it too. The great thing is..today the last part does not even matter any more. As i am feeling it within, i do not need a confirmation from outside.
That’s gorgeous Carolien because what you just shared means that to start to feel and know our beauty from the inside, means that we treat ourselves more lovingly – and as a consequence the weight drops away, but also having lost weight it no longer becomes about how you look but about how you feel, so the societal pressures drop away too!
Carolien, that’s an amazing blog in itself!
I can relate to what you are saying Carolien, I have spent a large part of my life perceiving myself as overweight, and thinking I would love myself more if I was slim and the slimmer I was the more I would love myself and be loved. NOT true. The truth is, once I started making self loving choices (cutting out gluten, dairy, caffeine, alcohol and starting to honour my feelings) and healing my issues (thanks to Universal Medicine) my weight has stayed constant and I am starting to feel my beauty within. No more yoyo dieting and more appreciation of me!
You are a beautiful inspiration Carolien. I saw you last week and thought you looked amazing and more sexier than ever, and I told you this. And you are right, you dont need a confirmation from outside, because I could feel how much you walked (or lived) your beauty, sexiness, self acceptance, confidence and grace… You just shine with all of you. A beautiful woman you are.
A great celebration of a women truly appreciating her beauty
Hi Debra, so lovely to hear how you are listening to your body and how it feels rather than going into how you think it should look – this seems to be a trap and shows how easily this can lead to yo-yo dieting which is so common amongst women.
I love this quote:
“When I gave up gluten, I wasn’t intentionally thinking of doing it to lose weight, but more on how not eating foods with gluten made me feel in my body (great) and energy levels (increased). And without trying the weight just fell off me. My battle with food and yoyo dieting was over!
We as women are really sold dieting as the solution to so much, but in your case the solution came from listening to your body, cutting out gluten and then the weight righted itself. How many other people are looking for that solution outside themselves, which is marketed so well as the diet that will ‘fix all’ but it never does. Beautiful how you found your own solution and your body responded. Awesome wisdom shared!
I too often have found myself concerned or worried about how I look putting that as more important than how I feel. But what I have noticed is that when I am feeling great then I tend to look at myself in the mirror and be less critical, more loving and more accepting of how I look, where as when I have a bad day or a bad moment, the criticism of how I look and the self judgement comes in strongly. So really I have come to an understanding that the perception I hold of myself has much more to do with how I feel rather than how I actually look. And today I know that if I am being hard on myself in the mirror then it is not because of how I look, but rather because I have allowed something to come in and make me feel or think such depressing thoughts. And I tell myself that that is not the type of thoughts that I want to allow in my body and in my mind and I tell myself that I am a loving person and and that I choose loving thoughts for me and my body instead. This simple ‘trick’ has helped me lots with many negative thoughts that sometimes creep in! And so I am having more and more loving thoughts to support me.
I love what you have shared Debra about how we feel rather than how we look. I have not really ever yo-yo dieted over the years but I have tried out lots of new health fads and trends etc plus training more in the gym, running, yoga, heavy weights all of which were based on the intent to make my body look better from the outside, bur never really truly was it about stopping and feeling how I felt from within first. Now I do, and the by product of this is that when I feel me, amazing, gorgeous and sexy from within first this naturally can be felt and seen as I can’t help but be my playful loving self. There’s a spring in my step, my face glows and people notice and comment upon it. And no longer do I reach for the next new health fad or trend, I listen to what and when my body feels to eat and how this affects me, just as you shared do I feel heavy or bloated or tired after a certain food ( if so it’s out) or do I feel vital, nourished and satisfied after what I eat.
I am still coming to terms with an ageing body but there are times when I have decided to have a lovely soak in the bath instead of showering and know just how great my body feels after spending time massaging cream into it. My whole body feels alive and vibrant.! I also thank Universal Medicine for supporting us as woman and reminding us we are beautiful and growing in wisdom and Love for self and all.
Thank you Debra- I can totally relate to everything you share in your blog. I also in the past fell for the needing to look a certain way and I tried to achieve this through a number of ridiculous ways that did nothing but keep me, still feeling the deep lack of sell worth and unsettledness about my self and my image. Now today, I care for myself, I express as I need to, I adore taking moments to dress, put make up on, gentle put cream on my body, eat foods that support me etc Because the quality I am with myself is the focus and as is the ways I support myself and my body- I know who I am, I am present and confident and feeling amazing. I simply know I am enough as I am. I no longer worry about weight or look because I know that I feel amazing and look amazing because of the care I take with myself.
Thank you to Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon for presenting true care to me.
I can totally relate to what you say Debra. I have discovered that what I eat has a direct impact on how I feel, heavy, tired or light and full of fun. When I eat foods that really work for me I feel amazing on the inside and this seems to pour out of me – making me feel and look beautiful.
Debra, I can relate to so much of what you said. I now feel for the first time in my life
(I’m 58) that I love my body.I don’t have to be perfect. I feel that since I gave up Gluten and Dairy that I also let go of so many ideals and beliefs around weight, body image, that I had felt that I was trying to look how I thought others wanted Me to be.Now I feel amazing and it’s to do with me, how I feel about myself. What I choose to eat, why I choose to eat. when I choose to eat.
Debra
Embracing your body and how it feels regardless of the way it looks is the start to true self care and love.
The way we move and express then seems to come from a different place and we are more self accepting..
Giving up gluten was for me also the start to transforming my eating and the way I felt in my body.
Like you, the gentle breath meditation was a stop moment that gave me an opportunity to start to make changes also. These changes are transformative.
Thanks for inspiring us all and sharing your beauty.
I relate to this blog too Debra. I used to battle with my body, oscillating between weight gain at times, then points where I be unhealthily thin form excessive stress and overexercising.
Right now I am experiencing some health issues that have caused me to gain weight. I have a great doctor who is supporting me in my healing. Although I understand why I have gained weight, that old critical voice was in my ear until last week when I was looking at myself in mirror, and recognised that my beauty is not about my shape, it is about the essence of me. It is in my eyes, and the gorgeousness of my gestures when I move and act from connection to that essence.
My body will in time heal, from the care and attention and medical support. In the meantime I can appreciate the loveliness of how it feels.
Thank you Rachel your honesty and openness is super inspiring and I love how you say ” my beauty is not about my shape, it is about the essence of me. It is in my eyes, and the gorgeousness of my gestures when I move and act from connection to that essence.” So true.
Debra I so relate to your years of yo-yo dieting and the changes that took place when you attended to your diet. Thank you for sharing.
I love the feeling when I just look in the mirror and not just see a part of my body that I don’t like or think can be changed but when I see and feel my whole body in that full length mirror. I can feel how sassy, sexy, divine, gorgeous, and who hot to trot I am 🙂 Its so playful to celebrate my beuaty and not compare my self to anyone around me. Thank you for a beautiful article ❤
Awesome Debra, I too can relate to changing the way in which I eat food, and for what reasons I would eat, constantly wanting to numb myself from life. As I am learning to honour my body more and listen to the way it feels. I can accept it when I don’t feel so great, take responsibility, be gentle on myself and appreciate the day I have had. I no longer feel the need to or want to numb myself to life.
A really self honouring blog
Lately I have been feeling so much more gorgeous and sexy, and what I noticed is how this effects my body, how I walk and how I am with others. It is not that my body shape has changed that much, but because I feel this way inside, it just emanates out. Yesterday I was walking through our central train station and I walked in full beauty of myself. I felt just as big as the station. So yes, it all starts with how we feel about ourselves!
How I feel rather than how I look – great suggestions as to my way forward. Dressing to please myself, not others now.
There is so much focus on body shape and how we look, especially now, with the new year. Many people want to make changes and start going to the gym, work out and put themselves on a diet. But what I see is that all these choices people make, all have to do with outer appearance. Looking thinner, having more muscles, it all has to do with body shape. An honest and great question would be: but how do we feel? This question should be the starting point.
‘How I feel versus how I look’ – If how I look is prioritised, then that dictates how I feel and it is a shaky ground. If how I feel is my priority and I take care of this, then how I look takes care of itself.
Brilliant Debra and Matilda. The more I embrace this also, the simpler and easier everything becomes.
Attempting to live up to some never-attainable outer standard (that will, as history has shown us, ever be changing its criteria) is a cruel way to hold women enchained, and apologising for our mere presence.
Claim the beauty within, and honour how we truly feel, and we can all, together, break down such ridiculous constraints that serve no-one.
‘Im seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling, and no longer my own or anyone else’s expectations of how I ought to look. Because inside I FEEL great.” Such a great blog Debra and so needed at this current time, the more women who claim that undeniable beauty that is inside each and everyone of us the more we can get rid of the imposed ideals and beliefs that abound so many women. I love that you are now claiming your own beauty- bring it on!
I can relate to your comment Debra, “Everything in my life was all about ticking the boxes. For years how I felt in my body did not rank high on my list of priorities.” I too placed all my priorities on things outside of myself rather than looking and feeling inward at what felt right for me.
Rachel same here, box ticking was most certainly the priority rather than looking and feeling what was true for me, which led to the inevitable frustration I felt growing up. It’s great to start reflecting on some of the beliefs around how I should look and letting them go.
A great little reminder for me that beauty isn’t what I look like, it’s how I feel. If I feel beauty-full, then it doesn’t matter if I have messy hair or no makeup on.
Thanks for sharing Debra.
This is so lovely Debra, I have also been feeling this, ‘Really loving my body shape and how I feel versus how I look is a recent new awareness for me.’ And now because my body feels lovely to me it also looks lovely to me and I now look in the mirror and see this absolutely beautiful woman, a very different feeling to my past critical and judgemental looks and thoughts.
I really enjoy reading this blog – and seeing just how relevant it is for us to be aware of how we feel first, before how we look. It is easy to want to be ‘perfect’ from a physical perspective, and easy to beat ourselves up for not ticking the box. But we can’t deny how we feel from within first based on how we are living. So that is such a lovely way of looking at where we are at.
Way to go Debra really great uplifting blog.
I love your reply ‘oh i feel great’ when people say that you are too thin. I have been very focused on body shape all of my life, my own and other women, and i still have that. It’s like looking at the body shape first of a woman, like checking it out, before really meeting the other woman. And i also have it the other way around, that when i walk into a room, i can feel how other women are checking me out, looking at my figure and how my body looks. Over the years, i have been working on accepting my own body and, like you said, that it is about how you feel, and this is what you emanate. More and more when i look in the mirror, and this is very much work in progress, i can see the gorgeous beautiful woman that i am and i can see this in other women as well. No matter what body shape, wow, we are all so stunning and amazing.
Beautiful Mariette, and very interesting to contemplate how judging our own bodies ensures that we will judge other womens’ bodies too, but that as you are finding, as you appreciate your own body you also see the beauty in all women. The key to ending much suffering surely lies in what you have shared here.
I love what you wrote Mariette. It is so true, that when we feel how lovely we are on the inside, the judgement of the outside whether of our own bodies or other women we meet, simply disappears. To be so focused on the outer all the time creates another barrier to connecting more deeply to ourselves and others.
Yes I get this from people too…”You are too thin. You need to eat more”. My response is always “but I feel great”! This doesn’t seem to be a very popular answer! I certainly seem to rock the boat sometimes just by walking into a room as people can react. Perhaps this is because I feel amazing and I am claiming this, and this is not a usual thing for people to experience.
Thanks Mariette, this is another way we reduce ourselves and others, instead of connecting to and feeling the amazing person inside.
I have realized that nowadays I feel great about my body, and so when I look in the mirror I love it! first time in my life, is it because my body is perfect? no, it is because I love it so what I see is that loving reflected back at me. Totally new for me, I am also grateful.
My body may not be perfect to others, whatever their perception of ‘perfect’ may be. But to me , it is, because I live in it, and it feels great.
Dieting seems like a bit of a set-up. Because if you starve yourself to then just go back and over eat and feel terrible again, doesn’t this raise the question about what is dieting truly for? And where did it originate from?
Shami, I also question where does dieting come from how did it come about. You are right, when many people diet they starve them selves, as soon as the diet stops they go back to eating the same thing or over eating and feel worse than when they started. It is a crazy cycle to get caught up in.
‘Crazy Cycle’ is a great way to describe it – I find that when I give up foods because I feel I ‘should’ then I end up bingeing on them when I hit a low patch. As I develop a deeper appreciation for my body and how amazing it is, I find that certain foods naturally drop off and I simply don’t feel the inclination to eat them again. Not only that, as I eat more nourishingly, I hit fewer low patches, so it’s a win-win situation.
I so agree with Carmel below, when I feel that I ‘should’ no longer eat certain foods, they become a temptation thats hard to resist. But when they naturally drop out of my diet its so easy.
So true, there’s a big difference between resolving not to eat something, and choosing not to eat something because it’s a loving choice, and something we agree to in union with our body.
It is lovely to enjoy how you now honour your body. Like others I have tried satisfying my empty feelings with food, and being so focussed on the food I was unwilling to feel the consequences of what I was doing. It is still an ongoing process for me as I gradually let go of my need to numb my feelings. I just know that when I honour my body and listen to what my body is telling me I feel vital and full of life and my body feels really beautiful.
I love your comment Susan, as similarly to Debra’s article you have not made it about losing weight or getting to a particular dress size, it is more important to honour your body and feelings so that you feel “vital and full of life and my body feels really beautiful.” What a different way to approach self-image, it is refreshing – thank you
Jessica that’s the key honouring the body so it feels vital and full of life, Love it.
HI Susan, food is a great distraction for us human beings so we do not have to feel the emptiness within, or our choices and over eating is the plague of our times. Why do we as a humanity love food so much; is it possible that the over eating and the comfort food provides, is because we do not want to feel our deepest hurt… that we separated from the love that we all naturally are? And as long as we are not living love, we are constantly hunger not for food but for love and connection back to ourselves.
So true, food is no longer something to nourish and sustain us but has become a source of indulgence and quick fixes for uncomfortable situations and feelings we don’t want to feel. No coincidence the number of food outlets is forever increasing to support our need to numb ourselves, wherever and whenever.
This is a really good question to ask and to start to honestly look at.
It is amazing how much we can numb the affects of what we eat on our bodies, I have seen time and time again people returning to a healthy weight for them when they start to pay attention to themselves both on how they feel and how their body feels. It is amazing and quite against the trend of obesity common place in our population.
Amazing quote Susan!
“I just know that when I honour my body and listen to what my body is telling me I feel vital and full of life and my body feels really beautiful.”
hi Debra, It is so lovely to hear a woman celebrating her shape and body – very refreshing, thanks for sharing.
Hi Debra, Loved reading your blog, I could relate to so much. Thinking of my own relationship with food in the past highlights just how much disregard and neglect I had with my body. I would and could go for hours without food, then just snack to dull any hunger pangs, and then eat a large meal in the evening having ate very little during the day. I would be so hunger, I would eat whatever was the quickest food to make, eat quickly without really tasting my food, which left me unsatisfied and then I would put on the kettle and reach for the sugar top-up in the form of biscuits, chocolate or cake. These were my eating habits for a long time. These days I eat food that nourishes my body, and eat 2 or 3 small meals a day which helps with not over eating or eating quickly. I am finding I need less food and yet I have more energy and feel more vital than ever. Thank you Debra for this awesome article.
Feeling to me feels natural when I allow myself to feel. What gets in the way of this is my expectations of how I should feel based, compared, judged and measured against outside factors. Other peoples lifestyles, my weight, my health to name a few and if my body or lifestyle does not match then I feel less for not living up to this picture. Just typing that sounds really controlling. If feeling is natural and something I do all the time then I can choose how I feel, if I do something and it leads to a bad or good feeling then is that not a more solid guide than my expectations?
Brilliant, Shirley-Ann. Honouring our natural body shape and liberating ourselves from the rules and confines of other people’s opinions. That is evolutionary. My relationship with me in the mirror is evolving all the time and is testament to the changes that can occur: from brutal self critic to ever deepening self appreciation. Thank you.
That’s so true Matilda, I find how self accepting I am or not and how appreciative I am of myself, can most definitely affect the way I see myself when I look in the mirror. That’s a very lovely example, to use your own reflection as confirmation of the deepening relationship with yourself.
I can really relate to the words, “I ate all the time to deal with how anxious I was feeling and used food to comfort me if I was feeling emotional, and didn’t want to deal with difficult or hurtful situations”. Our emotional state is the real battle and the way we use food is just a reflection of that. I notice that when I feel under pressure or insecure I turn to food to numb this feeling. When I am feeling “full” in myself, am calm and still I have no food cravings and I feel and look great. When I am feeling “empty” in myself I don’t feel great. I feel anxious, busy and tense. I overeat and bloat and don’t look great… my shine gets dimmed. Choice of food is definitely a great barometer for how we feel emotionally.
Indeed, Rachel. Isn’t it interesting how food becomes less of a focus when we are feeling great in ourselves, but when something challenge us it is one of if not the first thing we turn to for comfort, or to dull the body so can avoid feeling etc. Food is such a huge barometer of our inner world, as you say.
Absolutely Rachel, ‘Our emotional state is the real battle and the way we use food is just a reflection of that. I notice that when I feel under pressure or insecure I turn to food to numb this feeling. When I am feeling “full” in myself, am calm and still I have no food cravings and I feel and look great.’ Spot on, I feel this too.
Debra your article has made me think how many things I’ve done based on how I look, would look or may appear compared to how I feel. I remember being fixated on how I looked as it being the ultimate goal to look the way I thought other people would want me to be in order for them to like or want to be with me. It was only after attending a number of Universal Medicine events and the support I felt that I started to make it more about how I felt than how I looked. With the focus on how I felt my diet then also naturally changed and I get a clear picture of how I’m feeling by the foods I reach for.
Your comment I feel is indicative of how a relationship is with food for most people and it is quite imprisoning. This article demonstrates how first building a true relationship with ourselves, we naturally build a true relationship with food.
I was speaking to my beauty therapist this week. A beautiful woman who I can feel is very sensitive. She says she loves food, but the problem is things are getting serious with her current boyfriend, and therefore she must go on a diet so if they get married in a few years time, she looks good for him.
When I first heard her say this I completely associated it to how I used to think. That I need to control how I look for the benefit of others and to be accepted. That I can’t love food because it is the enemy.
But what if women don’t have to have a restrictive relationship with their bodies and food. What if they looked beyond the physical and were able to feel what supports them first. Therefore making better food choices and not beating themselves up about how they look or what they eat.
This blog presents just that – to feel what is going on in our bodies first! Amazing.
Your comment about a therapist going on a diet before getting married to look good for her boyfriend shows how we easily do it for others but not truly for ourselves.
Food is such an important part of our lives and deserves to be enjoyed. Although I have always treated my body with a level of respect, I find as I become more aware of my choices there is an opportunity to go deeper. It is very easy to excuse what and how one eats, putting it down to circumstance, etc. when really for me it’s showing the true level of self-commitment.
Ooh, Andrew, that hit a nerve when I read your comment, about feeling hungry after the evening meal when it’s obvious we’re not. That emptiness or discontent is not every night by any means, and it’s not food related. For me. it’s usually when I’ve got overtired and have probably absorbed some emotion in the day. So the best thing I can do is to go to bed early and let it go.
Great Blog Debra I love reading it and all the comments and the realisations about hunger and food and the comfort of it is very revealing when we stop and take a moment to see what is going on for us.
It is very beautiful to see and feel you embracing yourself and the love and amazingness you are.Thank you
Great points raised in this blog and in the comments. I especially love the discussion about what is hunger really and which part of me is hungry? I have also noticed that sometimes when I think I am ‘hungry’ it is more of an emptiness or discontent inside, particularly in the evenings even after I have had my normal dinner!
Thanks for this Andrew, realising it’s not just me who has after dinner feelings has given me the space to realise that when I was a child if (and only if) I ate up all that was on my plate, I was deemed to be a good girl and I could have a dessert. So maybe when I have eaten up there is an expectation that there should be something else….which takes me into the huge ‘food as a reward’ minefield.
Interesting meal times ahead.
I can so relate to eating because of an emptiness or discontent inside and then no food is enough and I end up feeling even more awful. Recently I have started to look at this and last night chose to go to bed without having a last snack (I used to worry about waking up in the night and being hungry – at one point I even had snacks in my bedroom just in case) so I got to bed earlier and slept better and woke up more refreshed. Amazing how powerful beliefs around food can be and how this then stops me from appreciating the awesomeness of me.
Yes, I agree Andrew, and its those times of emptiness that the reward of nuts usually comes in. It doesn’t happen very often but when it does I know that my day has been more tiring than others probably because I have had more reaction in my day or have simply overworked.
It’s great to re-read your article Debra, I can really relate to what you have written, I have noticed recently that I know when my body has had enough food, this is very clear, but I can go into my head with thoughts such as “you won’t be eating for a while so you better have some more” or “it’s all healthy food, remember what you used to eat” and so I can override this feeling that I have had enough and eat some more and every time it leaves me feeling tired and bloated, so I’m learning to listen to this feeling in my body when I have had enough.
Debra great to read your blog, I too used to indulge in food and then go on detoxes in the new year, but it wasn’t until I started to give up gluten I really noticed my bloating disappeared and I was not feeling as tired any more. If I eat gluten now and again I can feel it straight away, heavy, tired and bloated. Not worth feeling like this when you know how it feels without it.
Debra, this is such a great blog, I can distinctly remember the 4pm slump I used to get at work after eating a bread sandwich at lunchtime, sometimes I would literally want to fall asleep at my desk but in order to overcome this I would load myself with caffeine and sugar. Since taking gluten out of my diet I have noticed just how much it makes me feel sluggish and how energised and more effective I am without it. They ought to teach this to children in schools.
Absolutely love your blog Debra – re-reading it was awesome, in the past I have identified so much with my weight or felt bad because of the number on the scales – but this doesn’t actually change anything, it just makes you feel worse about yourself, which can lead to more eating! Recently I have felt the difference between my mood being influenced by how much I weigh or how I look, to feeling like I have more control back in my life as it is about how I am feeling in myself not how I look – which as you describe, is fantastic
I have always hated having my photograph taken, always feeling that I look nothing like the person in the photo, because all I could see was someone ugly and childish – and I didn’t want that to be me. Today I got dressed up and with a few friends we had a photo shoot, a proper one that completely changed my view of myself and having my photograph taken, because I felt beautiful, and so in my photos I looked beautiful. It was amazing and just showed me that it is how I feel that is important, not how I look.
Thank you, Rebecca. I know you to be beautiful, through and through, and it is inspiring to hear it claimed, loved and lived by you.
Thank you Matilda, right back at you 🙂
It is becoming clear that what others see and feel in us, is beauty far deeper, richer and more golden than we are prepared to let ourselves feel within ourselves. Isn’t it crazy then to restrict and limit our true beauty to those images of ‘beauty/sexy’ that we are fed from all around.
“I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body”. So lovely to read this Debra – thankyou. I too have noticed that my body shape is changing again recently without any effort on my part – just living, being me.
What an inspiring blog. It’s so true, when I feel great because I’ve been looking after myself with love and tenderness I feel amazing. My body shape is just evolving to where it will be and wherever that is will be totally cool because part of treating myself with love is accepting myself.
…’making how I felt in my body (over how I looked) the most important thing.’… This is exactly what I’m learning at the moment Debra – thank you for sharing what it feels like to live this way.
I agree Susie, I am learning this too it is all too easy to look in the mirror and judge myself from what I see rather than how I am feeling.
You are indeed gorgeous Debra. It is so worth taking the time and care to come out of old yoyo patterns and embrace our natural selves, whatever shape we happen to be,
It is great what you have shared here, and now returning to this article it is clear that these simple life choices are easy once you start the process and truly feel the benefit that they can bring and having know you for a while Debra I can say that you are an inspiration to all women.
Every now and again people will say “wow you look slim”, However, I eat regularly and well, I have never have and will never starve myself. Becoming slim has been a slow progression of more than 10 years, and one that has happened in parallel with my growing awareness of myself and my body. I eat food in a way that supports my body and feel it to be more than sustenance but also medicine and nutrition for my body’s physiology. Letting go of my hang ups and insecurities have created a slimmer me, looking at the reasons for eating certain foods in the first place. The result of being slim is a small consequence after the commitment of building self care and self love. I still have a think about why I eating certain foods and listen to how they feel in my body, I still have more to find out and learn – there is no set goal, this is an exploration and an evolution. I am still learning to embrace and embody my body with love.
“I eat food in a way that supports my body and feel it to be more than sustenance but also medicine and nutrition for my body’s physiology” – revolutionary Samantha
As women we are experts at using food to make us feel less. It can be a constant fight with food and mirrors – and for me it has been in the past. If I didn’t like what I saw – I blamed myself because I was the one making the food and exercise choices. But what I didn’t want to face was the ‘ideal woman’ I’d created and never saw staring back at me.
Like you Debra – I’m beginning to let all of those ideals go – so that I can start to appreciate me for me, and cut all the hiding that comes with not accepting myself. It’s also pretty incredible to see how much I was holding back to other people because of this guilt I carried round with me. I now appreciate myself more, and others more. Thank you for sharing your experience Debra.
Wow Debra, how many times have we heard a woman honestly and lovingly declare as you have in your opening line “Really loving my body shape and how I feel”. It is a sad testament that what abounds women today as role models, example and inspiration, means we cannot in general say that we enjoy our own bodies or the way we feel about them…and hence that we are consistently unable to feel completely content with the way we look or the way we are. Thank you for sharing your own enjoyment of you!
Thank you for sharing Debra and what a great subject to talk about on a forum like this. I definitely had this body shape stuff going on where I would always buy clothes that were a bigger size and it kept me ‘comfortable’ and I was not challenged as I was not ‘morbidly obese’.
The bread thing was big for me and giving up gluten was really life changing. It sure wasn’t overnight. I started with gluten free bread and as it was awful back then and felt like cardboard, it was easy to cut out. The biggest thing I noticed was how exhausted I was and then eat bread and cakes to get some energy to keep going in my super busy life. Once the gluten was out and never coming back, my vitality levels increased because I started to take my sleep seriously and focus on the quality in which I was going to bed.
Today I am a slim sexy 52 year old woman who looks and feels a lot younger and I have accepted me and my body shape and I no longer need to put effort and focus into avoiding how I feel when I look in the mirror. What I now see is how I feel and that is a depth of beauty that radiates the real true me. It was well worth making the changes and reaping the rewards now which remain constant.
And gorgeous you are Debra 🙂 I love reading about the changes you made and how you now feel towards yourself. Inspiring with points made worth considering in regards to our relationship with our bodies, thank you.
“For many years I battled with my weight.” Similarly to myself but my own recent experience has given me another understanding of this very used statement. I have found it is an internal battle between two choices within myself – to care for myself or harm myself.
Reading your blog and feeling the difference from the beginning to end, of the choices you have made Debra, looking with eyes that are willing to accept the gorgeous you, is a true game changer in your life. A great example for everyone to read, thank you.
Super lovely to read this confirmation of how what feels right in the body is worth listening to. I also used to override that feeling with, “I should be able to eat anything I want” yet eventually the heaviness and bloated feeling I would get after eating breads and pastas led me to cut down on these foods and as a result I naturally became more aware of the effects and I ate even less. Yet, not knowing anything about gluten at this point, it was in my first encounter with Universal Medicine just prior to a session with a practitioner, that finally connected the dots! I was still indulging in the odd croissant or cherry danish, but swimming regularly (thinking the more laps I did, the more I’d get away with it!) but felt so amazingly aware in my body following this session that I knew that the jig was up! Nothing compares to that awesome feeling of fullness and once connected to, all interest in ‘getting away with it’ vanished.
Beautifully said Peta, ‘I knew that the jig was up! Nothing compares to that awesome feeling of fullness and once connected to, all interest in ‘getting away with it’ vanished.’ couldn’t have put it better myself.
Thats a great line to read, “Because on the inside I feel great!” just that turns on its head how most of us live, we live to be seen by the outside and waiting to be confirmed from that place. Where as living from how YOU FEEL on the INSIDE really changes the focus and the result is you walking smiling to yourself! How awesome is that.
‘Where as living from how YOU FEEL on the INSIDE really changes the focus and the result is you walking smiling to yourself! How awesome is that.’ Very awesome, a very different feeling to wanting acceptance from the outside world.
Beautiful appreciation Debra so lovely to read and very inspiring. I am learning so much that its all about how i feel that counts for everything and creates my day.
Taking responsibility for truly loving choices in how i live with myself in every moment is an amazing way to live . It is thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine reflecting this way of being bringing this that has made this appreciation possible.
I just realised this morning how much I have been governed by thoughts about what I should look like , how much I should weigh, what I should, or should not eat and how I should, or should not, exercise. Now these thoughts are rarer and rarer, I hadn’t appreciated how freeing that actually feels – and it’s not because I am caring less, I am caring more. Beautiful. I celebrate with you Debra. And for me, also I know it is because of the inspiration and support of the Universal Medicine teachings and the sessions with practitioners and my own commitment to the Gentle Meditation. Awesome.
I agree Elaine, I too have been kept small by ideals and beliefs around food. What and how much should I eat, how often ? How much should I weigh ? I am working on freeing myself of those ideals and beliefs and I feel lighter for it.
Beautiful sharing Debra, the realisation and understanding about what we eat and why we eat it – is so powerful. Realising that dieting isn’t the way since it is just a sticking plaster on an issue. Finding your own true beauty is an inspiration for others ‘I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am’.
“Because inside I FEEL great.” This statement beams right off the page. Our true feeling s always emanate outwards.
Lovely Michelle, it says it all, how we feel inside first, the truth of us.
Wow thank you Debra, it just goes to show we can diet all we like, put on or take off as much weight as want yet it will never ever leave us truly satisfied if we do not have a inner connection with ourselves.
I have loved hearing how you embraced your new body shape, and that you are now accepting the gorgeous woman you truly are.
Absolutely Samantha; it is highly unlikely that dieting will change or increase our self confidence/acceptance unless we start accepting ALL of our choices, even those that have led us to reach that weight/body shape.
Lovely lovely blog, I so relate to much of what you share, and you’ve taken it deeper still, I can feel where I can still get caught in how I look and then loose that connection to feeling great, but this stands out now as yuck which just shows how much has changed. And your comment about having been someone who wanted to eat what you want and not have to put up with the body reaction, this i know well, and actually this is endemic in our society where we deal with the symptoms we don’t like rather than just addressing the issue or the true root cause
Thank you for presenting here the absolute prison that a dysfunctional relationship with food can bring to our self worth, our body image, our vitality and our general wellbeing. Food is such a toughie to crack as we need it to survive and yet it’s been turned by society into a source of relief, comfort, excitement, indulgence, entertainment, reward, you name it. It’s been dressed up, artificially enhanced, denatured. We’ve lost our natural relationship with it in many ways. So it’s great to read that by choosing to respect how different foods made your body feel, you’ve re-established your natural body shape and that your vitality has improved. A true testament to the power of the body to show us the way back to our natural wellbeing.
Well said Cathy and I agree that food is a toughie to crack. Walking down the supermarket aisle now is like wandering around a strange planet, full of foods that harm the body. What species do that?
Yes Lorraine, supermarkets would be smaller if we did not have all that harmful, complicated food. And to answer your question : the more complicated the food the more complicated the species !
I love this blog and it’s following comments, for how well it brings out THE ART OF TRULY LISTENING TO OUR BODIES. I too have learned that is not about reacting to the first glimmer of “I feel hungry” or “I feel tired” because too often these surface “awareness’s” are our coping strategies. I am learning to take a moment out and really ask and feel what is UNDER the impulse. It is so much about getting curious and discovering deeper and deeper layers of honesty and the true guidance our body is offering underneath our issues.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, coming back to appreciating and enjoying the body that you are in.I loved the quote that “…Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body.” That is what life is all about, expressing ourselves from within and treasuring the vessel that supports this expression. I have had a similar experience through the inspiration of Universal Medicine.
Everyone really knows that diets don’t work, but women are at a loss of where to turn for advice, help and support. The whole dieting multi-million pound industry will cave in when women realise the simplicity of how they just have to feel inside how things are for them and connect to why truly they are overeating. I hope it’s in my lifetime.
I think there is a stat Gill that 90% or even 95% of dieting does not work which is staggering and clearly not shared by weight watchers etc! I agree it would be great for this industry to no longer exist.
These are quite staggering statistics when we consider how huge the dieting industry is and the beliefs that many people hold about dieting.
So true Gill, it is well known that diets don’t work as the issue is not food but underlying causes. However, a lot of money is made from companies that produce special diet foods and the media is ‘look obsessed’ so a lot of changes need to happen for the penny to drop! As more of us share how our lives have changed by looking at how we feel inside, the ripple effect will happen!
And what is insidious about diets and the diet culture, is that you start off with not feeling good about yourself, you put yourself though one hardship or another and then on top of that you fall as over 90% do and feel a failure. So all this effort to end up where you started off but feeling even worse about yourself! It is such a wonderful turnaround to realise that all we need is to build self love and honour ourself and our body and everything else naturally takes care of itself.
Absolutely Golnaz, this is a revolution ! Women empowering themselves and connecting to their self love and worth and by doing so the diet culture and industry crumbling down and disappearing. Out with the misery !
That’s very true Golnaz; at the beginning of a diet often we feel super committed, positive and excited, but as you say, almost 99% of diets are unsustainable so when that point when you just can’t take any more occurs, the feeling of failure overcomes any bliss or ecstasy.
Very true Gill, dieting and the other more worrying practices like reducing the stomach are not true resolutions to our issues with food and body image. I was struggling with my weight and at a real loss as to what to do about it, as I felt hugely uncomfortable and very depressed. Beginning to stop and feel and ask “why I am feeling this way?” and “what am I searching for?” enabled me to truly alter my relationship with food and my relationship with my body. I never focussed on losing weight, I focussed on how I felt when I ate certain foods. Take certain foods out of my diet and hey presto I lost weight, without trying to. It was a revelation and the improvement in my emotional, mental and physical health has been enormous and my body has found its own natural weight and shape as a consequence.
Just feeling again this morning what you say Debra, and not to mention the diets and exercise regimes women so often use to find a solution to looking ‘right’, I am now struck by the years of misery, self loathing and therapy that so many women also endure to try to resolve their body image issues. What you are presenting here is gold, the simplicity of reconnecting to how we feel through the Gentle Breath Meditation and gently refining what and how we eat according to that deeper connection with ourselves.
The Gentle Breath Meditation is pure gold Rosanna and something that cannot be sold to us in a packet or regime. Debra is living proof of just how much this gentle observation of ourselves supports us to make huge shifts in our way of life that our bodies truly appreciate. The feeling of true wellness and vitality is the real treasure and one achieved through consistency and responding to the wisdom inside our bodies.
The Gentle Breath Meditation is always part of my day, it gives me so much awareness of where my body is at, how calm and still I am or how racy and anxious I can be. When I feel this stillness in me there is no need for comfort via food, I feel i am with me and how awesome and spacious I am. I am filled with love nothing is more nourishing than that.
Hi Debra, I love your honesty in presenting how you abused your body with food, as most if not all of us have done to some extent in our lives. Our unhealthy relationship to food is a colossal/global problem, and yet we have not scratched the surface in addressing it. I deeply appreciate the work of Universal Medicine in educating us about why and how we eat what we do in relation to our emotions, and how to start listening again to what our body truly needs.
Yes, Janet, I agree, our abusive relationship with food is, ‘a colossal/global problem, and yet we have not scratched the surface in addressing it’.
I too, am learning to eat in a way that truly honours what my body is telling me, and how I feel with this. Thank you for sharing your experience Debra, inspirational.
“Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body. And when I look in the mirror now, I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am, based on my own feeling, and no longer my own or anyone else’s expectations of how I ought to look.” This is gorgeous Debra. I too am becoming more aware of how I feel after eating certain foods, and choosing to no longer eat gluten or dairy made a big impact on how I was feeling – for the better!.
Great point Ariana – I know when food is calling me in an effort to shut down or dull something uncomfortable that I am feeling, and it is that awareness that gives me a choice. And its a very powerful statement “the cost of dulling myself is unacceptably high”
I’ve always thought of the yoyo method as the will power method – for a time you can force yourself to act in one way, but eventually I would come to a weak moment when the underlying reason for that behaviour resurfaced and the same pattern would resurface and hey ho… back to the old pattern. In the end it was just something else to feel bad about myself.
Its lovely to hear how your focus has been on that underlying pattern, and about what feels good and not the outcome. That shift allows a change which becomes a byproduct and therefore seems effortless.
Yes that is key Simon, that the effortlessness comes from a deeper acceptance and love for yourself not the will power and deprivation that occurs with yoyo anything.
Very true Simon and Vanessa. I never even got as far as the ‘yo yo’ stage, my will would crumble (pun intended) at the first ‘yo’. Trying to force myself to diet was pointless. What has been much more successful has been to address the deeper, underlying emotions that drive the behaviour. Once these are seen, felt and released the changes in behaviour are effortless, simple, harmless side effects of Universal Medicine.
It’s amazing how simple choices can make such a difference to how we feel about ourselves – as I can see from your blog, it’s life changing
Lovely to feel you enjoying your own body rather than go into the criticism that women so often reserve for themselves. It’s the diet of images, steroetypes, ideals and unrealistic media that harm us. The images we are fed are so ready to get you to believe it is the look that makes us beautiful/slim/sexy – rather than give it away, as you have done Debra, that it is the way you feel that is beautiful and sexy.
So true Rosanna, we are constantly fed this diet everywhere we look, continually pressured to be something we are not. I know that in the past I have made myself look great, but felt absolutely awful inside. And the feeling wins out not the outfit! When we really feel beautiful and sexy inside, then it does not matter what we wear, how our hair is etc, we feel gorgeous and that gorgeousness radiates out of us, its unstoppable.
So true, Rowena, when we feel gorgeous inside we can be wearing anything – we just radiate that love for self and we connect with the world in a way that is so open and loving. When we tie ourselves in knots trying to look good on the outside with little heed to the inside, the world just sees the sadness and the ‘aching void inside’ and avoids us.
I smiled a smile of recognition as I read your comment Rowena and know that I too have made myself look great but felt awful inside, coming home with the sadness and loneliness that I took out with me, whereas when I feel beautiful and joyful inside, it matters not a jot what I am wearing. As you say, gorgeousness radiates out of us.
Rosanna, I love how you say ‘the diet of images, stereotypes,ideals’. Traditional food diets are defined as how we restrict our food choices to achieve a certain goal. So in the same sense, it feels that we are restricting our understanding of true beauty by accepting the stereotypes that abound.
You have made it very clear, Debra, how when we have lost touch with our bodies and neglect them and the healing messages they give us, we are not able to truly discern what we feel. I hear so many people saying “I eat when hungry”, but what is that hunger? As we become more in tune with our bodies we can feel how hunger can be the deep aching void inside when we feel lost, incompetent, lonely, among many other emotions, and that food, our earliest form of nourishment through the mouth, (breast milk which is sweet and salty), becomes the comfort for those baby feelings of abandonment we have not yet healed.
Agree Joan, I find it really interesting to observe when and why we eat. Often to distract or avoid ourselves and as you say, even convince ourselves we are hungry when we may actually not be so.
Yes Joan a great question as I too have recently felt that what I have always known to be hunger, is not in fact hunger, just a deep void inside. Eating then numbs and satiates this feeling for a while.
This is an interesting discussion, I too am feeling that I’m not just eating because of hunger, I’m noticing in the evening I’m eating a lot and it feels like it could be as a reward, great to ponder on this.
I wonder how many of the sayings we heard through childhood are still lurking somewhere, it’s not good to go to bed on an empty stomach, finish what’s on your plate, eat up to give you energy for the day.
It’s great to have the support to realise there is a whole other aspect to eating
I agree it is a great discussion started by Joan – do I experience hunger pains and then eat or do I eat because it is breakfast, lunch or dinner time or because food is put in front of me? and then how much do I eat – do I allow someone else to serve me and then eat every last bit, because of ‘the starving kids in Africa’ or do I serve myself and feel how much my body requires and then stop when it gets to the point when it has had enough?
So beautifully said Joan. I know I have used food to attempt to fill up my sadness and depression. It is the most natural thing in the world to attempt to re-connect with the feelings of nurture and comfort we had when young by eating and drinking. The gentle breath meditation is such an amazing tool, as it gives us space to stop and observe ourselves. It gives us space to discern true hunger from emotional distress and once we can feel the difference, we have the power to make different choices.
And to know that we hold the power to make choices from moment to moment is an important revelation that we all have an opportunity to live and explore.
I have observed very similar patterns with my own food consumption. I realised recently that for quite some time I actually hadn’t had a hunger pang due to my constant ‘grazing’ on snacks throughout each day. What I have learnt is that it’s a very useful feeling of confirmation – confirming that it’s my body that needs food, not just my mind.
Yes, I agree Cheryl. I have made a point to not eat so much or snack and allow my body to get hungry, so that I can discern clearly what that feels like as opposed to the pangs from emptiness or upset. It has helped me to realise that we do not need as much food as we think we do, and when we lessen the burden of food in our bodies we can generally feel lighter and have more energy. There are times though, when I feel I do need to eat a substantial meal if I have had or going to have a big day, and this feels true too in such instances.
Brilliantly put Joan, so often we eat from every feeling but hunger – it is well known and accepted that when you feel off, sad, depressed or have had a bad day, you turn to chocolate, cake etc – it’s so common it’s often part of the advertising. But despite it being normal, it’s like the significance of it hasn’t sunk in – that with all the obesity and ill-health we are knowingly turning to food to deal with our feelings and emotions – because we know the food will dull the ache of a break up or the incomplete feeling of a bad day at work. But what about when we eat so much dulling food we no longer have a sense of how we truly feel, and so we have to base it on other things, the way we look, the compliments we get, the friends we have, how much we can be seen to be doing.
Lots of food for thought in the above comments. Yes I admit to going to the cupboard when I feel in need of comfort but now the chocolate isn’t there, have to look at what is going on! Shedding all those ideals and beliefs around comfort food has taken time but I feel so much better and my body is thanking me!
Brilliantly put, Rebecca, and i love the way you have taken it further to what we choose when food has become so dulling we no longer feel.
The madness beautifully exposed, Rebecca, thank you. We lose touch with ourselves so come to rely on responses and rules (that are forever changing) from the outside world about how we feel. To know, as Debra has shared, that when we honour and appreciate that our beauty is an emanation of a loving relationship with ourselves, is inspiring.
What you write is so true, Rebecca, that when we eat ‘dulling food we no longer have a sense of how we truly feel’ and look for other markers that can be totally outside of ourselves (a great looking outfit, a compliment, a sense of accomplishment from having a ‘productive – ie, busy! – day, etc…) to tell us we’re ok when in fact we’re not aware of the truth that our bodies are telling us that we really aren’t ok!
Very true. It is staggering to feel the amount of energy that goes into avoiding what we truly feel underneath the obvious tiredness or hunger but actually feeling why one might be feeling that way.
As I write this it feels like we (humanity) are actually ignoring the truth and conveniently covering this up with thinking that is the way human life is. But it is not and does not have to be like that as the lives and testimonies of many around the world have shown
Ah yes, the advert and all the subtle messages. After I gave up eating chocolate, I felt it wouldn’t be appropriate to give it as a gift. I then became aware of just in how many circumstances I would give chocolates, thinking it was supportive and showing that I cared.
Yes I have found that when I feel ‘hungry’ if I stop and ask myself ‘which part of me is hungry’ I often find that it is not my stomach! Hunger can be from a longing or a feeling of wanting something other than food and we use food as a substitute. I know that if I wait until my stomach is actually rumbling and actually asking for food I feel so much more alive and vibrant than if I force feed myself for a completely different reason.
I love that tack Rebecca. Asking ‘what part of me is hungry’. Recently I have been noticing how there are certain situations in life, such as when there is something I would rather not feel, that consistently triggers my ‘I must eat’ button. It is easy to think I am actually hungry in that moment. But when I consider your question I do know it is not my stomach that is calling the shots.
I’ve found the same Rebecca, and ‘force feed’ is exactly how it feels. Afterwards my body feels heavy and dull, its not nice, but it is a marker that is slowly teaching me how NOT to eat.
I love the point you raised Rebecca “which part if me is hungry…. If I wait until my stomach is hungry I feel so much more vibrant” I can really relate to this feeling and the difference it creates in the body. The dullness or raciness from emotional eating or the feeling of vibrancy and sustenance when you eat to nurture the body. So great to be building the awareness of how different it feels in my body and learning from the choices I make.
I love that, Rebecca – ‘which part of me is hungry?’. This question gives us a pause to consider what is really going on inside us to feel if the hunger is true or a substitute, as you say.
Rebecca, that’s so interesting what you share. As more and more now I wait for my stomach to rumble before I feed it. Where as before I would eat because it’s time to eat, even if I was not hungry. I remember when I was younger I use to only eat when my stomach rumbled and I never over ate, I knew when to stop. My mum always use to say to my aunty, she eats exactly what she wants to eat, never more, and as I grew for child to teens my portion size never increased. But somewhere in my adulthood I stopped connecting to my feelings when emotions and wants started creeping in, it is interesting how we allow other things to creep in.
A great point Joan. I know there are times when I have had a feeling that I am trying to avoid and pretended I am hungry to avoid the feeling. More so now I will take a moment and ask “Am I hungry, or avoiding” this offers the opportunity to know myself a little more and address what is there to be seen instead of burying the feeling in food.
A great observation about hunger Joan. Are we really hungry or are we filling an emptiness with confort ? This behaviour is all to familiar to me as my relationship with food continues to evolve.
What you have expressed is so true Joan. That aching void inside, the feeling to put something in our mouths that offers comfort and yet the emptiness continues until we look at the issues to be healed. Our body gives us feedback all the time if we listen to it and with the help of the various techniques offered by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, we have the tools to get to the root of the problems.
Wow Joan, a great discussion on how our relationship with food goes so much deeper than the impact it has on our weight and health and how easy it is to ‘use’ food to numb us rather than deal with what is going on.
Spot on Joan, a great comment. I find it interesting to observe what I am actually feeling when i have the urge to eat. I have to say it is not always hunger! Great to watch out for those avoidance tactics when we feel something and try and distract away from it by using food.
It is interesting to observe how we feed children today there is CONSTANT snacking, and I mean constant: rice cakes, fruit, yoghurts, It is the parenting answer to feelings; if your having a grizzle or cry – rice cake, if your happy – rice cake, if your angry – rice cake, if your scared – rice cake, if your bored – rice cake, if it’s car journey time – rice cake, if your waiting in a queue – rice cake. This next generation is being numbed significantly. Why? Pop into the mix numbing devices of iPhones, iPads, xboxes and we have a generation that are going to need some serious help as they become adults, it is really quite frightening.
Vanessa you have just helped me to realise where I was coming from when I was bringing up my children and used food as an excuse not to deal with any issues that were going on. I also used it with visitors to cover up my uncomofortable feelings. I was trying to feeding them to cover up my OWN feelings of emptiness that created this great fear of the awkward moments and having to express myself.
It is great to be honest about how we use food with young children to pacify them and basically shut them up. What kind of message does this give them – don’t express your feelings to me and eat this? We are encouraging them to check out instead of being in relationship with them, and this is a sad reflection on what has become the norm, as Vanessa so clearly describes.
Great question Joan, what is hunger actually, is it an emotional discomfort we feel and respond to or is it our body that asks for nourishment and nutrients?
yes, Nicky, and discerning that is the key, but even when we start to notice and stop ourselves and feel what is going on at the point of helping ourselves to something that will fill the emotional emptiness, there can still be the mental excuses that arise to convince us it is alright to go ahead and eat it.Then we have to learn through the consequences.
Hi Debra, I can relate to what you say here – I began cutting certain foods out to treat my acid reflux and come off the tablets I took for it and in the process lost loads of weight as well. I am now pretty slender but even when I eat too fast or when I’m distracted, I still bloat and have a massive hard tummy by the end of the day…!
Lovely to read your journey Debra, thank you. For me when I decided to stop eating gluten and dairy it had hugely beneficial effects to my health, my energy levels increased , digestive problems calmed down, sinusitis stopped completely to name a few. I had for a long time worn clothes to cover me up but as I am now enjoying how I am feeling and being me I am wearing very different clothes and someone said to me yesterday ‘ you have shape ‘ which I do and I love it.
Amazing, your experience with yoyo dieting, weight problems and judging yourself based on your looks is very relatable. I have never personally dieted or gotten overweight, but for me my relationship was with exercise, trying to get a type of body shape that way. And because I don’t put on a lot of weight even when I eat junk, it means I don’t have a physical marker to stop me – it has to come from the way eating those foods makes me feel, as you have shared.
Such a beautiful shift from how we look to how we feel and developing this relationship with ourselves from the inside out. Really inspiring, thank you Debra.
To look in the mirror and ask ‘How do I feel’ has been a very positive move for me as well. I no longer look with a critical eye wondering what other people will think of what I am wearing and how I look. I feel what my reflection in the mirror is shining back for me about the way I live and how this makes me feel. Inspired by Universal Medicine I have learnt to feel the effect of different foods in my body rather than just eating to fill me up. It is certainly worth it.
Mary & Deborah – I remember so clearly the moment a wise man once told me “when you look in the mirror what you see is what you feel”. I wept because i knew this was the truth. Make up is another great marker for me, it either enhances my already beautiful eyes or when i am feeling stuck it just sits on my face like paint. With food i am still learning but what i have been struck by lately is how important it is not to graze but to prepare myself a supportive, healthy meal – this will keep me vital for far longer.
I can relate to what you have written, with yoyo dieting and the latest exercise craze but then when I started to look at the foods I was eating, especially gluten and dairy I no longer needed to diet and I felt relieved in the knowledge that my weight would eventually sort itself out. I felt better for it and my illnesses started to disappear and the weight did come off in it’s own time with no pressure from me.
Now I am really pleased with how I look and for the first time in years I actually enjoy clothes shopping and not because I am thinner but because I am content with myself and the way I look.
I love how you have changed from a life of ‘ticking boxes’ to a life of true choices. Life can be mundane and mechanical if we make choices to achieve an end result, or full of beauty and life if we make living choices to lovingly support ourselves in each moment. A beautiful sharing, thank you.
Making life about how my body feels and not how it looks is a compete turnaround of what we have been taught and shown by society.. How inspiring it is to be in the company of women who emanate their beauty from the inside out.
Debra, I love how you said that you gave up foods not to lose weight or change shape but because of the way they made you feel, and that the weight loss just then happened naturally. Thank you for a beautiful sharing.
Yes, Michelle. That is a completely different perspective making it all about how feel instead of how we look. If we feel great we are going to look great as an end result.
I can relate to what you are saying. I have used food a lot throughout my life to numb myself and not feel. When I was a teenager I abused alcohol, when I gave that up I indulged myself with food in particular sweets, like a spoilt brat who had no boundaries around what and when I ate. Dulling my light and not feeling was clearly what I was doing when I look back now with no regard for what it was doing to myself.
Inspiring how such simple, loving choices can change a pattern of overeating that lasted many years. Thank you Debra.
You reminded me of the times, the many times when after breakfast (whenever i gave in and had a traditional continental with all the bread and pastries against my feeling that i already always had that it was not my thing) I felt not only bloated but totally uneasy in my body, a kind of dislike and discomfort with everything around me. It took me a serious illness to give it up, and to realize that even whole, organic, “healthy” choices of bread and cereal were having the same effect in my body. I no longer have that unpleasant weird feeling all morning, I actually go for many hours feeling ready and working with no uneasiness in my body.
Hi Debra. I love your blog. Body shape is a huge subject for us, especially as women, always wanting to have or be something different instead of really appreciating and allowing ourselves to feel the absolute delicatness that we truly are in our being. I get that smile too in public when I feel my body and how it moves. Working in a shop and standing on my feet all day, there is a lot of movement and I can feel how gracetful I am when I move and how beautiful that feels.
This is great Debra, I can feel the joy and bounce you feel in your writing. Thank you for sharing your experience on this topic, as body shape and how we look is often the measure in our society of who we are. It is fantastic that you have turned this around and that NOW the world can see a woman shining from the inside out – loving her body and loving herself at the same time.
…’the world can see a woman shining from the inside out’ – and hopefully more and more women will begin to live this way!
What a great sharing Debra, i can so relate to this. For such a long time i have been focused on my body shape and always wanted to look a certain way. For me it always was really important to be thin, going the the gym and be aware of how much i eat. From the inside i was not feeling well, because there was always this empty feeling, like i was missing something. So then you can have a great shaped body, but if there is an empty feeling inside, then that is what takes over in the end. I love how you have put the focus on how you feel, because when a woman feels great, this is what emanates, this is what we actually ‘see’. I can really enjoy watching women who feel great and who have accepted their body and who they are, they are for me a true inspiration.
Loved your blog Debra. The only yoyo dieting I ever did was eat the biscuits that looked like yoyos, the ones with meringue outsides and the filling in the middle. I also found that after attending my first Universal Medicine event my life has changed forever. The food thing was the first thing I tried and as you said it was not a way to loose weight but more of a healthier life style change… and the weight fell off. This is still a work in progress but I am loving the way I feel and look.
Great blog Debra. I also used to get the afternoon sleepiness after a baguette lunch and my body used to bloat. When I cut out gluten from my diet my energy levels were so much greater and I did not get the afternoon sleepiness anymore. No brainer really.
Lovely blog Debra. Thank you for sharing your story. I’m sure you are speaking for many when you speak about caring more about the way you looked than the way you felt. Many people still associate food choices with weight and trying to attain a certain body shape. Yes when we make good food choices it results in looking good, but that is purely a bi-product of feeling great!
One simple change and the gorgeous impact it has had: a choice made just from listening to your body and being willing to consider there might be something afoot. Thank you, Debra. Giving up gluten for me has been such a revelation: the fact that I can be in the driving seat of how my life is lived; that every day does not need to be a peak and trough roller coaster of energy levels and mood swings; that my body communicates with me openly and wisely all the time and that what is accepted as the norm in society is not necessarily what is naturally supportive for us.
I’ve experienced something similar Matilda – by CHOOSING the things I want to eat, what time I go to sleep and how I live my day I feel very much ‘in the drivers seat’, rather than sticking life on an autopilot based on what others deem the ‘correct’ way of living.
hi Debra, because we have made the body about how it looks as opposed to how it feels we have created many bad habits with food – for me, I found that I used it to over ride my emotional issues. What a difference we can make by taking care of how and what we eat and the beneficial effects that this has on our body.
I love it Debra – awesome blog. “I was left to contend with the failure of not sticking to the diet plus the failure of letting myself down even more” – double ouch! This is such a common experience for almost every woman/person who has tried to diet – I have also experienced it not only in trying to diet but in my every day promise to ‘not eat that food’ or ‘not eat as much today’, which when it ‘failed’ I would bully myself over it as well
I love the simplicity here of choosing to do one thing differently, not eat gluten because you became aware of how bread was making you feel, and that this choice was based on seeing if you would feel different in your body. This is very inspiring as it is not based on losing weight but the knowing that we deserve to feel great, wonderful, amazing etc within ourselves. I will be very aware of the choices I am making today and the impact of them on my body, thank you.
Awesome blog, Debra, one that many woman can relate to on different levels. I recognize myself not listening to my body, but pushing it because I wanted to be the perfect mum, employee ect. And not liking my body shape at all. Once we had to draw in a course how we saw our body and I drew a bag filled with potatoes. Stopping eaten gluten gave me much energy and so much clarity in my head, like a fog left. And now I feel so content with my body. I treat it with much respect and take care of it in an constant deepening way. Allowing myself to feel to eat, how to move, when to rest needed for that point in my life.
Your article is so honest, reading it I could feel I was being asked to go to a deeper level if honesty within myself, really inspiring. When I read your comment “This was the start of me making how I felt in my body (over how I looked) the most important thing.” again it was asking me for honesty and I could see how many times in my life I have put ‘how I look’ over ‘how I feel’ when as you have found out the latter is far more loving.
A beautiful blog written by a very beautiful woman – I can relate to all your write here Debra and you FEEL amazing and certainly very ‘easy on the eyes’ too!
Gorgeous writing you have shared here Debra. I feel that I could have written exactly the same thing about my experiences with body image, dieting and a general dislike of my body. But right now I am sitting in front of my mirror and enjoying some time with me – enjoying the beauty that is shining through my eyes back at me. Enjoying seeing myself more truly and fully than ever before. It is such a blessing. No diets, no need for me to be any other way. I am me, as I am and that is not only enough, it is magnificent.
Debra I can really relate to your comments about eating foods which contain gluten and sleepiness. In the training world the session after lunch is called the ‘graveyard shift’ as participants are so prone to sleeping having eaten a gluten loaded buffet lunch .
It was feeling so different after eating a gluten free lunch on Universal Medicine events which led me to change my nutrition. Now at business briefings I request a simple tuna salad and enjoy being fully alert for the afternoon session.
Thank you Debra, this is beautiful. I can very much relate to what you are sharing here. I had looked at myself a life long from the outside wanting to have a certain body shape and weight living in a constant battle with myself only to find that I was always focussed on what to eat and not to eat from a ‘weight’ point of view, which I could feel is utterly exhausting and self destructive. Through the work of Universal Medicine I have slowly learned to focus more on how I feel and taking this as a marker instead of judging myself by my outer shape. And, yes, I can only agree I feel really great in my body most of the time regardless of my outer shape.
I can so relate to that cycle of indulging and over-eating food and alcohol, as a result feeling terrible, both physically and mentally, then imposing a strict and impossible to maintain regime on myself as some kind of purging – which in effect was a punishment coming from a deep feeling of loathing for my body. I was obsessed with how my body looked but because I was overweight and bloated most of the time, I was always a failure in my own eyes – not living up to the ideal of how I should look based solely on external appearances. I too have made enormous changes in my life thanks to the support and presentations of Universal Medicine and it’s practitioners, and can now also relate to what you are sharing here Debra, that it is how my body feels that is the only important marker. How I look has always come from how I feel – it’s just that today I know this to be true because I have chosen to feel it.
This really is a new way of how women are with their bodies.
We have such a tendency to look in the mirror and pick apart or compare what we see on the outside, but it is hardly ever about how we feel. Taking this to the mirror is an amazing gift. It shows us whats there beyond the skin and marks a point of progression.
I am truly excited about trying this as I feel I’ve never really done this. I really feel a need to shift the emphasis I put on the physical vs on how I actually feel. Because for so long, i’ve let physical dominate – and that fixes nothing. A beautiful sharing Debra.
I can really identify with what you say here Debra. I have lived my life this way too with regards to not having hardly any true awareness of my body and how it felt. I would override the tiredness I felt just to keep up with life and everyone else and eat food for comfort and to keep myself from feeling how sad and exhausted I was. What a way to live! The problem was that I just didn’t want to feel the effects of how I was living so I ignored my body. Thankfully Universal Medicine came along and showed me another way; I gradually began to make some simple changes to my daily routine and started honouring how I felt. Result? Feeling wonderful and loving feeling more of me 🙂
What you are offering her Debra feels potentially huge. The number of women and men in the world on yoyo diets which never work long term must be measured in the billions and all we need to do is stop and feel and to then follow what our bodies are telling us and our shape will change permanently to one that truly supports us. I can verify the truth of this as it worked for me too.
Thank you for the reminder Debra, it is so easy to look at ourselves and criticise how we look physically and in doing so, deny how great we may feel inside. I have done this when I look at myself in the mirror, I will look to find things I don’t like and focus on that rather than celebrating the fact I feel amazing.
This is so beautiful and inspiring to read Debra and I really appreciate you sharing your journey to truly embracing your new body shape. Thank you.
What a beautiful article Debra sharing the real truth about our bodies and how through loving ourselves , our own shape and changing how we eat with this intention, we get to care for and feel lovely and who we truly are.Our body shape naturally changes and responds to being loved as we all do and naturally allows us to feel our amazingness.
It’s beautiful to feel your love and appreciation for yourself ! Thank you
How I feel follows me around everywhere non-stop throughout my day, I may only look at myself in the mirror, in a store window etc for a couple of moments within the day. I loved the part in this blog where you claimed that it didn’t matter what anyone on the outside said about how you looked because you felt great inside. What I get from this blog is that putting focus on the constant inside feeling brings more benefits then focusing on the surface factors.
Very poignant comment Leighoflight, when we truly focus on how we feel, everything within us changes. To address our feelings rather than attempting to alter our looks brings lasting change, while attempting to just alter our looks can bring endless frustration.
This is beautiful Debra, thank you for sharing this with us.
Celebrating choices that support you is the key for me here, I have learnt to choose things like food and sleep that truly supports me to further allow me to feel more connected with my body. As you say feeling more connected with my body is a fantastic place to be as you can really start to act on how your body feels and simply enjoy the magic as it happens.
Debra it is great to read this. There is such a difference between looking good and feeling it. Even on a deeper level between feeling good and feeling great. Sometimes we can feel good, but with that it feels more like fleeting moments, whereas to feel great suggests more of a well rounded consistent Livingness. When you say “and I would reply: “Well I feel great” – because I truly did!” You can feel it through and through, with that there is no questioning about what you are doing or how you are doing it. Clearly it is working for you and others will not only be able to see that for themselves but also feel it too.
Totally agree Jenny, and for me, truly ‘looking good’ can only happen when I feel connected and in touch with my body on the inside.
Thank you Debra for your honest account which I can very much relate to. It was also a great turning point for me when I started making decisions based on how it will make my body feel, rather than treating it as something that needed to keep functioning to get me through the day. I now feel that my body is my greatest support as it tells me everything about my day, so I am beginning to really care for it.
This is great Debra and I relate well to what you share. On removing gluten from my diet I found I had much more energy and felt so much better on many levels and my weight changed to the amount which I had previously tried to achieve with rigorous dieting and here it was happening with little effort. Choosing not to eat gluten products has been a great support for my body and I know that this conversation offers huge support to many people. Thank you for sharing.
Very true for me too Beverley. I went dairy free first and the weight just fell off my body without any effort. Going gluten free to was the next natural step. My body weight has stabilised and my health improved drastically. It is a much needed conversation, as it can support so many people to find their own true body shape without all the rigors and disappointments of dieting.
I feel the same too, before when I ate dairy, gluten and wheat I would be and feel bloated, tired, sleepy in the afternoons and also depressed. Since no longer eating these my body feels a lot stronger and clearer, I have a lot more energy and no longer feel bloated. It is empowering to make choices that will help you, your body and health feel be the best it can be.
Beautiful Debra, this is such an inspiring comment “I’m seeing through eyes that are more willing to accept the gorgeous woman I am”. Sensational! I can completely appreciate the yo-yo dieting, using food to comfort yourself, working hard to prove yourself and then hating how your body looks and feels as a consequence. The gentle breath meditation is a truly amazing tool. Very simplistic, easy to apply throughout the day and a great tool that supports us to step back, observe, experiment and make different choices in our lives. You are a gorgeous woman and the way you have claimed it is so joyful and uplifting. Thank you for sharing your journey with such an open heart.
This is lovely Debra, ‘Today I’ve truly embraced my new body shape, not because of how I think it should look, but because of how great it feels in my body’, I can relate to this feeling, after many years of disliking my body shape I now love how it feels.
I too noticed a huge change in how I felt when I dropped gluten from my diet. It made me sleepy too, so I now have far more consistent level of energy throughout the day.
Thank you for sharing Debra – inspiring to read how your relationship has changed soo dramatically since attending Universal Medicine courses and learning the Gentle Breath Meditation. Also it is great to hear how you now no longer try to impress others or look to them to confirm how you are or are not feeling rather confirm yourself by how you are feeling on the inside, something i know I can do more of myself!
This is the empowering step and one that we are all learning to develop: to confirm and feel confident in how we are feeling, rather than rely on others to do this for us. Debra is a shining example of this.
I agree Shevon – ‘to confirm and feel confident in how we are feeling, rather than rely on others to do this for us’ is extremely empowering, the more i do this the less I look outside to others for the answers and the more I look within, which builds my confidence and increases my awareness about what is going on all around me.
It’s pretty incredible to read that by making the choice to stop and feel how you are has had such an effect on you and changed the way you look, for the outside to see. It seems to me that actually tuning into what we feel all the time is very different from how lots of people live. It’s great that you feel so great Debra!
Similarly for me Debra, when someone tells me I look well, I know that’s because I am feeling at ease with who I am, the inner feeling transfers to my outer appearance.
Letting go of living up to others expectations is so freeing.
‘Letting go of living up to others expectations is so freeing’ – absolutely Wendy.
Amazing how such a simple change like cutting out gluten has such a profound effect on how you feel, and also on your weight, having struggled with it for so long. Very interesting to read your experience. and lovely to hear that it’s about you feeling great and not looking good for any other reason.
I love this blog, Debra, I so recognise the yoyo dieting effect and the misery of feeling so bad after binge-eating but being unable to stop. Like you I have experimented with letting go of gluten, dairy, sugar and many other foods that truly don’t support my body and I feel great as a result. I particularly like the way you emphasise how we FEEL rather than how we look, because if we feel great, the ‘look’ comes from deep within. How we feel affects how we walk, how we dress, how we speak – every aspect of our lives – and if we feel great on the inside, then we can inspire others by the gorgeous way we look on the outside..
So true Carmel, ‘because if we feel great, the ‘look’ comes from deep within. How we feel affects how we walk, how we dress, how we speak – every aspect of our lives – and if we feel great on the inside, then we can inspire others by the gorgeous way we look on the outside..’ I really notice that if I’m feeling confident and lovely and I look in the mirror then I look beautiful, I look alive, there is depth and beauty to my eyes, my skin glows and I can see how gorgeous I am, but if I’m in self-doubt and not feeling confident and I look in the mirror and I look different, my skin looks duller and my eyes don’t shine brightly, so I really notice the difference between how I’m feeling about myself and how I look.
Carmel your comment ‘if we feel great on the inside, then we can inspire others’ started me pondering on that accepted inspiration, the Mona Lisa.
Some time ago a friend asked me to look at her hands, her hair, her décolletage, hardly impressive compared with others of Leonardo’s paintings. Maybe he too was telling us something about inner beauty