Skewed View

So has anyone read the book on Oprah that talks about women, food, and God or whatever?  I never saw the episode, but I've been hearing about it repeatedly from other people, and just had a super long conversation with my mom about it.  She wants to go buy it.  Apparently the premise is that once we learn to see ourselves as God sees us (and I'm repeating what my mother said, like I said I never saw the episode), we will not have the need to keep stuffing our negative and feelings of "lack" down with food.  And once we quit eating to numb ourselves, we can develop a healthy relationship with food and also lose weight.  Obviously, these lessons also extend passed weight loss as well.

Of course I'm super intrigued by this.  Intrigued because lately there have been several experiences - in my life and in the life of others around me - where I have realized that how I'm viewing a situation could be/is wrong.  But because I view it (or viewed it) the way that I did, I started feeling a bunch of guilt and feelings of "I'm not enough"...and "why am I not enough?", and my friend did too in her experience.  Especially with my friends situation, since I was on the outside, I was able to look at it and tell her- you're wrong.  It's NOT you- it's him.  And it was true- I could easily see that she was taking on feelings of remorse, worthlessness and "lack" based off of his issues that she translated as something she must've done wrong, when in reality it was his problem that was affecting 'them'.  A different friend was able to point this out to me about my situation, and amazingly I realized she was right and that I was looking at the situation all wrong.  It wasn't me; but I (wrongly) thought it was.  Which in turn caused depression and the need to eat and stuff/numb.  My point is, through these experiences, I'm starting to realize that it's totally possible and LIKELY that I'm not viewing myself as I really am or as God sees me.  

I've been thinking a lot about this, and I'm coming to the conclusion that when/if we can't see ourselves in the correct light (as we really are- beautiful, intelligent, compassionate loving creatures daughters (or sons) of God) then we can't reach our full potential, and we end up stunting our own growth.  In this issue of weight- we stunt our ability to overcome our food addictions or our ability to lose weight.  We feel negative or disappointed in ourselves for whatever reason, so we keep eating, in turn sabotaging ourselves...which in turn cause us to eat more.  It's a vicious cycle.  And I'm over it.

I'm not about to go buy the book.  My mom wants to check it out, and if she likes it then I'll look into it.  But I keep thinking about this- where's the limit if we tap into our full potential?  Is there really a limit?  How skinny, beautiful, happy could we really feel/be if we saw ourselves as we really are? This reminds me of the Nelson Mandela quote I've put on this blog several times in the past.  The line that comes to mind is- who are we NOT to be beautiful, talented, etc?

Now if I can only learn to really absorb these concepts and apply them to my life...I wonder how much different my eating habits and life would really be.  I feel like things would be drastically different, honestly.  For whatever reason, I think I've been kind of headed in this general direction lately anyway, since I've been thinking a lot about NR's eating habits lately.  She's not an emotional eater; I am, and it's become clear to me since we've been living together.  In the past I've always lived with other girls that have had some kind of issue with food, so no one has really shown me how not to be.  But NR, without even realizing it (or knowing it) has taught me so much just by being herself.  Her relationship to food is normal; she's healthy.  She eats when she's hungry.  She eats healthy foods.  She stops when she's full.  It makes me want to change.  

I meant to write a post that was more about eating healthy and how it's better for our bodies, but this came out instead.  Hopefully I write that one soon cause it was a good one (I had an extensive conversation with a friend about it last night in the car) and it inspired me the most of all the things that have attempted to inspire me in the last month.  But this one came out instead- so I hope it touches someone or someone can tell me more about the book.

D