Not Sparing His Belly

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

No matter what clients come to me with: whether they are overweight, with depression, with chronic fatigue, or with some kind of illness (people rarely go to a nutritionist when everything is fine with them), in our work we always run into one and the same breakwater: people generally do not know how to feel sorry for themselves, sympathize with themselves, hear the signals of their body and their psyche. Someone, apparently in early childhood, explained to them that "you can't be different with you", "you only understand this way", "you cry more - dry less" or "you need to be iron so that your life does not broke."

Due to evolutionary reasons (narrowing of a woman's pelvis due to upright posture and at the same time an increase in the brain due to the development of intelligence), people as a biological species are forced to be born immature, in fact - in an embryonic state we spend the first 9 months of life already outside the mother's womb. We have immature nervous and digestive systems, from birth sterile (read - absent) and gradually learning under the protection of breast milk immunity and a huge, seemingly unsaturated, like a black hole - the need for affection. It is completely natural, because attachment is the mechanism that allows immature babies to survive in a world full of dangers. Affection is a guarantee that the mother will be there until the cub matures to self-sufficiency and relative autonomy. And in particular, attachment guarantees the emotional maintenance of the child by the mother - again, until the moment of maturity. And then - maturity does not guarantee full autonomy and invulnerability, because a person from the beginning to the end of his days is an open system and needs a lot from the outside, and when he does not receive it, he experiences frustration and needs support. And this need is not the icing on the cake, but quite basic and vital, that is, one without which, without exaggeration, they cannot survive.

A small child in his pre-verbal period, for many reasons, one of which is the immaturity of the brain, is not able to cope with frustration on his own when some of the needs cannot be satisfied right now. He addresses this to his mother so that they blow on him - literally and figuratively. So that the mother or the person who performs her functions can help to accept the futility of trying to satisfy the need right now. More often than not, it looks like "regret". That is, to admit that yes, the situation is like this, yes, there is a feeling - and it has the right to be, yes - I am here with you, I am for you.

But not all mothers are capable of this, because not all of them themselves received such a service in childhood, and someone did not have a single adult to whom he could be attached. And then children, whose feelings did not help to recognize and live, never learn to treat them with respect. They do not learn to recognize the value of every feeling without exception. Including the value of feelings from the conditionally negative spectrum: anger, irritation, jealousy, envy, pain. For many, it will be news that there are no unnecessary feelings that can simply be thrown into the trash. In the same way, just as it is impossible to simply cut out the "interfering" appendix, tonsils or adenoids without health consequences - because all these organs have their own function in the body, one cannot refuse "unwanted" feelings without unpleasant consequences for the psyche and body. As a matter of fact, every disease has a psychosomatic component and its nature is in non-living, blockage of certain emotions. If emotion is not in the emotional sphere, it migrates to the psychosomatic one. And it will depend on how much we restrain this or that emotion whether we will just have a runny nose or, for example, cancer.

And yet - how many times have the world been told that it is impossible to block the emotions of only the negative spectrum. The psyche does not differentiate them so much, anesthesia will go over all emotions, and the person will eventually become stiff, deprived of genuine joy and sense of meaning. Once the burden of unlived emotions that have gone into the less accessible layers of the psyche will emerge in the form of depression, chronic fatigue or illness.

One of the most common violations in people who do not know how to feel sorry for themselves, caress, comfort themselves, is overweight. This is one of the signs of a loss of contact with the body, with the language with which the body tells us about its needs, with the world of emotions, which are also the language of our needs. The thicker the armor, the less I feel - the logic is that. And to my great regret, it is precisely such people who are the least capable of self-compassion. They piously believe in the principle of "flap your wings or you will die" and live under the motto "rag, pull yourself together!" They torment themselves with exclusionary diets, they drive off seven sweats in the gym, they scold themselves terribly for every extra bite they eat and constantly weigh themselves.

Sometimes, for the sake of interest, I go to lectures to my colleagues, and the most interesting thing for me in this is the discussions at the end, where people from the secret brotherhood of losing weight exchange experiences. More often than not, I want to approach everyone (most often, of course, everyone), hug, pat on the head and say: "It's okay, you won't die if you stop constantly flapping your wings, you don't have to immediately lose weight, you're beautiful, you're in okay. " But they won't believe me anyway.

The first thing I ask people with such a request is to stop weighing ourselves for the duration of our work. Generally. Fully.

This is the first step towards stopping the overvalue of a certain weight. Slowly, the neurosis begins to go away. I explain that any work with excess weight, in which we hope for a long-term and irreversible result, begins with accepting oneself exactly at the weight that we have now. And this is always the hardest part. It is much more difficult than learning how to drink water, eat healthy things and not eat harmful ones.

And I also explain about the stereotypes imposed by the beauty industry. That at different times are considered sexual (the key word is "considered", but not) are completely different things, while in reality there is a lover for absolutely any type. And true love is not at all about how someone looks.

And I also explain that the type that is relevant in the current historical era is very, very far from health. A healthy woman should have subcutaneous fat and should not have a completely flat stomach in cubes. Otherwise, her endocrine system will become clogged, and the internal genital organs simply will not fit in a pumped stomach - there will be poor blood circulation, and, accordingly, nutrition and cleansing.

And I also explain that the lion's share of diet and fitness has absolutely nothing to do with health. Elimination diets lead to deficiency diseases, and the hellish overload in gyms leads to wear and tear. Beauty cannot go ahead of health, this does not happen - beauty must go behind it as a trailer and be its side effect.

But it is really difficult to convey all this to people. Because everything around them tells them that the right thing is when "faster, higher is stronger", "no excuses" and, no less stressful, "the soul is obliged to work day and night, and day and night."

And people who have not sufficiently received love, protection and recognition from their parents in childhood, all their lives piously believe that they have to try very hard and pretend to be something of themselves. Because no one needs them the way they are. You need to constantly improve yourself.

There is nothing wrong with the very idea of self-improvement as long as it is not elevated to a cult and does not proceed from scarcity. From the idea that “if I don’t get better, then I will die in oblivion and my face will be gnawed by a cat after death”, and also “I have to grow spiritually, otherwise I’m fucked up”. If we take as a basis the idea that every person is already good and perfect from birth (if not from conception), then development occurs from excess - simply because it can happen, without super-efforts. And in a gentle, natural way. In the same way, plants grow at their prescribed rate by nature, and they will not grow faster if they are pulled from above. Most likely, the effect will be the opposite.

Refusal to live all emotions (and not only conditionally positive ones) and the inability to hear their needs (including the need for rest, in pauses, to admit in a timely manner - now I cannot / do not want to do this) leads not only to "pay for the advantage", but also to a host of other consequences. Armor, for example, can be built not only with fat, but also with skin diseases. And the most "persistent tin soldiers" are potential cancer patients. Those who "do not drink, do not smoke" and generally lead a more or less healthy lifestyle.

In this place I will immediately make a reservation that "to work day and night, and day and night" without the right to make mistakes and weakness is by no means a healthy lifestyle. This is a very bad habit - not to allow yourself to be just a human being, not a superman. And I will also clarify that a change in activity is not a rest. Rest is when you do nothing at all (no matter how scary it sounds to many). And 8-hour sleep is deeply underestimated these days.

I allow my clients to whine, complain, cry at consultations (although I am not a psychotherapist, but if this makes it easier for them - why not), to change at their own pace. Moreover, I really support them in not fulfilling the five-year plan in three years, because you drive quieter - you will continue.

Take care of yourself in general. Great things await us.