Avoiding Temptation

Dear Energy Lady,
I am determined to look good in a swimsuit this summer, so I'm working out and dieting.  The problem is that there seems to be temptation everywhere!   Fresh cookies in the kitchen at work; bags of Big Macs and fries at my brother's house;  a big display of my favorite chips at the grocery store; a big window display of gorgeous chocolates on my walk to the dry cleaners.  It's like the whole world is out to sabotage my success!  What am I supposed to do?

Signed,
Salivating

Dear Salivating,
You are experiencing an energetic phenomenon that you might call "the law of contrast."  When you decided to lose weight, you created an image of yourself as thin.  In order to keep up your energy and enthusiasm to achieve this, you need to have its opposite so you can have the satisfaction of experiencing yourself as what you are NOT any longer. 

Think of it this way: if there were no contrast, you wouldn't know you were fat or thin.  You'd just be, and what's the fun in that?  Contrast is there so you can keep creating.   Without it, you'd soon lose interest, and you also wouldn't feel the joy of stepping on the scale and seeing the numbers go down, or holding your waistband away from your belly as your size shrinks. 

This is the way energy works.  As soon as you make a choice, you bring it--and its opposite--into being.   So when you created an image of yourself and took action to become thin, you simultaneously also created the conditions to keep you fat.  So it's not surprising that you should feel "surrounded" by the foods you love--you created them as much as you created the new, thinner you.

But here's the best part:  you don't need to resist them.  Our bodies don't know the difference between a thought and an actual experience, so if--for instance--you really want a donut and find yourself thinking about it, wishing for it, mentally tasting it--your body has the same physical reaction as it would if you actually ate it.  You release insulin at just the thought of eating sugar, and if there is no actual sugar for it to work on, it does the other thing insulin does:  it stores fat.  So the more you resist the donut, the more you are setting up your body to store fat, which makes it even harder in the future to lose weight.

Does that mean you should eat all the junk food you want?   Only if you want to spend every waking hour burning it off--calories in means that eventually, you need to get calories out.  But you can--and likely should--allow yourself to have a piece of a donut and savor it.  Eat it slowly.  Enjoy every morsel. 

When you don't deny yourself, your energy flows more naturally.  But again, "not denying" does not mean gorging yourself.  It means allowing yourself to be in charge of your thoughts about food. Select the foods you want, enjoy them in reasonable portions, and then use their energy to fuel the activities in your life that truly make you happy.  Let life tempt you, not just something in a window, a bag or on a plate. 

Start thinking of ALL foods as "tempting" for you.  Start looking past some of your old favorites and expand the banquet of what you enjoy to the greater bounty of what is available.  This will likely include lower fat choices as well as the higher ones.  Eat both, according to what makes you feel good about yourself.   Then go spend your calories on activities that make you feel happy and connected to life.

Enjoy!
Love,
EL