Hello beautiful people

My name is Felicity, and I am a pilates instructor at the Edge Pilates Studio in downtown Fort Lauderdale. I am into my 8th day of a nutritional program that has been designed by Taunya Foerster, the owner of the pilates studio. She is also a nutritionist. I have struggled my entire life with weight issues, even though I am in the fitness industry. All those crazy diets! All those promises! The Grapefruit Diet (lose 5 pounds in a week!); The Cabbage Diet (Lose 7 pounds in 9 days!). Actually, I lost quite a bit in the latter diet, but I was in orbit every night because my stomach had so much gas in it. I also had the impression that I smelt slightly of that fine cabbage soup, and come to think of it, quite a few of my friends avoided me around that time as well. Gee, I wonder why? Unfortunately, any weight I lost with any of these “we promise fast results” diets rebounded faster than a rubber ball ricocheting off a wall, so that kind of put a damper on things. It was also becoming harder to lose the weight as time went on, most likely because of my metabolism being pushed around so much and because I was getting older.

One of the things I realized was how much time I spent obsessing over food. This was to be my Aha! moment. My epiphany… I realized that for much of my life I had been using food as a medium to express myself. I used food to punish, but also to reward myself. I used it to sabotage, and to hide behind. I used food as a source of comfort to nurse myself through life’s little hurts and traumas. Not once did I look at food the way it should be viewed - as a source  of sustenance and fuel for our bodies. I had also learnt to ignore my body. I hated my body, so I simply did not listen to its needs. I ignored hunger pangs (when I was on one of those crazy diets) and ignored its “I’m full” signal when I was leaning too heavily in to the chocolate mousse. The relationship triangle was definitely a love-hate one: I loved the food, and hated my body. It was a lethal, self-defeating combination.

The second thing I realized was that in order to change the error of my eating ways, I would have to address these underlying issues. I was going to take the road less travelled. Harder and more painful, but infinitely better in the long run. I am going to discuss those issues a little more in my next posting, but suffice it to say that tackling  these issues played a big part in realizing that the only way to get a handle on food addiction (because really, that’s what it was for me) is to change my perception, and ultimately, to adopt a healthier lifestyle.

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