457 thoughts on “Eating Dis-orders”

1. “There is no joy, fun or evolution in knowledge; only in connecting to your body, listening to it, and loving yourself deeply.” Thanks Gyl for your honest sharing on your relationship with food. I recently recognised how regimented I am, although I thought I was pretty free in my food choices there is still an underlying fear and control to stick to a certain way of eating, which is not free at all and pretty much extinguishes the conversation between me and my body.

2. It is so easy to get lost in all the knowledge that is around about food, cooking and food/health and wellbeing choices as it is widely spread. The truth on the other hand, that it is always about connecting to our body and listening in order to deeply love yourself, is not common but once connected to it is the only way, a joyfull way.

3. Yep and if we are not choosing love then why not? It makes more common sense to choose love than to not. To not choose love we are fighting with ourselves creating a struggle, stress and exhaustion.

4. ‘if I have no joy in what I eat, I’ve disconnected from my body’ it was awesome for me to read this. I kind of went ….. what 😳, so this shows me that this is something for me to observe and work with as I know I do not have joy in and with what I eat the whole time!

5. “Accepting where I am at, understanding and appreciating myself is key.” So vital to address the giving ourselves a hard time over anything. Talking to myself like a parent I find helps if I’m in beat-up mode.

6. When I was younger I definitely had this in the form of anorexia, I would control all the calories I ate as that was the only thing I felt I could control in my life. Reflecting on this it would have been wonderfull if instead of doing this (controlling calories) I was able to express myself in the way that was true to me and have full body confidence in who I was as a young woman. I deeply appreciate how this has now changed where I am able to express myself more and more in a way that is true to me and definitely am far more confident within my body today, and in this appreciation deeply appreciate Universal Medicine and all within Universal Medicine who have supported and reflected a way to truly love myself and others.

7. In reading this I felt don’t we all (within the world) on some level do this? ‘Eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness)’. Eat in a way where we don’t want to feel what we are feeling or dull our sensitivity, light and awareness even if it is unconsciously. So therefore, if this is the case would it not be the case that most in the world have an eating dis-order? If we just looked at the coffee intake alone we would see this was true.

8. Gyl there’s a few things you mentioned in this blog that reminded me of my past livingness and food played a huge role. It was the most important thing, it kind of felt like the reward from a hard day at work. I saw it in my father, it needed to be tasty, filling and varied.

   My relationship with food has evolved, but there are still remnants of traditions within my body that goes to the past behaviours. I loved your sharing about appreciating the ‘sweetness and beauty in and around you’.

   I am yet to master truly and fully connecting to my body to that highest degree, where my body says what it needs instead of the other way round. And when this occurs, I know there will be some nurturing recipes coming out of my body, instead of following recipes.

9. ‘….any eating disorder is eating in a way that does not deeply honour love and support our body’s natural true light.’ In which case most of the world today has an eating disorder. Sitting in a restaurant in the UK recently I observed so many overweight people, and consuming French fries with most meals. I don’t remember this being so obvious even ten years ago.

   1. Sue obesity is rife globally. Fast food in asian countries is ludicrous, where traditionally seeing lean people, has catapulted to fatness in children. Things are being turned upside down. And to accompany this, multi symptomatic conditions, it is spiralling if we don’t take responsibility of our own bodies, instead it is being controlled by billion dollar industries. Sad state of affairs…

10. So many of us have treated our body ‘ like a machine’, using your words Gyl. Yet so often we treat actual machines, like our cars, with more attentive care than we do our own body, which is with us 24/7. Tending our body with more loving tender care can bring about amazing changes

11. “She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.” It’s so simple really and yet we make such a big issue out of food and how we feel controlled by it.

    1. This was so good for me to read again today. My sweet tooth craving returned a while again, so I need to look for the sweetness in and around me. Simple yes. Easy, less so I feel.

12. There is a natural order to everything but we humans have introduced dis-order to everything, literally every-thing that we do, say and produce is in disorder. We have been bamboozled into thinking that something must be messy, ugly or unsightly to be in dis-order but that’s not true. We humans have produced many, many things that we consider to be harmonious and beautiful that go against the natural grain of the Universe.

13. Most of our industries, most of our institutions, most of our hobbies, most of our pictures about life, most of our beliefs and most of our behaviours are built on ignoring our bodies and hence we have the rather chaotic and pain filled life that most of us currently do. Quite simply life is as it is as a result of ignoring our bodies.

14. Thank you for sharing your experience Gyl, and for highlighting that we are very sensitive beings. How many of us have been told that we are too sensitive and to get over ourselves and toughen up which actually I have discovered is the complete opposite to what we should do.
    We contract to try and protect ourselves –  but this is an illusion because the ill energy still flows through us. If we were to stay open and read everything (being aware) then the energy passes through us as there is nothing for it to grab hold of and stay in our bodies. But if we contract (or react) then the ill energy gets stuck in our body and can cause damage if left undealt with.

15. I used to do things like this ‘Going back to when I was around 13 years old, I remember eating a bowl of ice cream, normal size, no big deal and running up and down on the stairs afterwards, using it like a step machine to burn off the fat and calories.’ And there was a point in my life when I had anorexia and was very controlling with my food, this was because I did not feel in control of my life so felt the only thing I could control was my food. I also know that growing up the magazines I was reading and seeing were not supporting me to just accept and appreciate me for who I was. It was constant comparing with girls on the telly, or magazines and me thinking I was not pretty enough, slim enough, tall enough etc. To this day our magazines are still like this only along with social media everything is currently much worse. The ONLY magazine I know that truly supports women is the Women in Livingness Magazine https://www.wilmagazine.com. So far as I am aware there is still not one or much for supporting girls.

16. This reminds me of the spectrum of abuse, we can think we are not being abusive if the obvious and extreme forms of abuse are not present like violence, which can stop us from seeing the abuse we still live in and truly feeling the quality behind our actions (to self and others), and returning to love. It’s the same with food, if we don’t have a diagnosed eating disorder (extreme forms like bulimia or anorexia) we may not think we have an issue with food, but we may still completely lack true care, nurturing and love for ourselves around eating, and not eat to truly nourish our body and honour what it’s asking for. Everything that Serge Benhayon presents raises standards, it’s not about criticising ourselves but understanding there is more love on offer in every part of life.

    1. When we fail to have love as our marker for truth it is easy to settle for something as ok if we view the world through ideals and beliefs – i.e. it is not ok to beat someone up but to snap at someone or shout at them is ok because we are feeling frustrated and we feel justified in our reactions etc. When we have love as our constant terminal any ill behaviour that does not stem from this quality is easily exposed.

17. If we understood this the road to healing from eating disorders would be much easier. It’s absolutely important to get the body on track but unless the underlying emotional causes are dealt with there can be no true healing.

18. Thank you for highlighting the killer effect of self doubt, self doubt is insidious it literally grows and takes over thats why we need to make appreciation part of our daily ritual. Self appreciation is the antidote to such a poison.

19. Here are great observations to realise how much thought goes into food.. what ingredients do we need? is something on offer? how simple or complicated shall I cook? Feeling what the body wants to eat at any given time is a totally different process where thinking is not involved.

20. Gill this is a very important blog because it gives very practical examples of how the early stages of dis-ordered eating can be spotted and brought back into balance. Taking time to take note and bring a focus to how we choose what to eat, how we make it and then allowing space to enjoy eating it means we are not in the momentum of our day whereby we eat without actually clocking that we have eaten or the impact it has on and in our body.

21. I am sure you would have noticed that the body wanted a break from complex food whilst it rebalanced itself. I find that when I am sick my body calls for light soups that keep me hydrated but do not put added pressure on an already traumatised system.

22. We do not appreciate the harm it does when we champion someones looks. Food then becomes something that we control and not something to nourish our body.

23. That is true Gill. In the past my diet would have been based around how I wanted to look and what I had to do to achieve that look, i.e have a very restricted diet and over exercise. The need for the look overrode the need to be healthy.

24. I reckon one of the main reasons why people find it so hard to change their diets even when they know what is healthy and what is not is because we don’t deal with the underlying issues leading to the food choices in the first place, as you describe here so well Gyl – the eating disorder comes from a dis-order within.

25. Eating what our body needs and not what we crave – that is truly healthy eating and that’s a difference that people will notice.

26. ‘…me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.’ Perhaps this is a clear answer for the whole of humanity’s craving and need for sugar!

    1. Gosh, I do recognise that one. When I feel sensitive to the outside world and go into reaction the 1st thing I want to do is to eat; and in the moment, I eat what I know my body will react to. In this there is a sense of not caring because the reaction feels stronger in the moment than applying common sense.

27. Our ill ease with ourselves can manifest in behaviours which provide a temporary relief and yet the tension of this ill ease will tend to surface over and over again unless we connect and honour ourselves more.

    1. Humanity is a sea of restlessness. Our restlessness as individuals combines with the restlessness of others to form a global restless community. Our natural way is one of settlement, settled in the lived knowledge of who we know ourselves to be. We’re currently a long way from that.

       1. What you have written makes sense to me Alexis
          ‘Humanity is a sea of restlessness. Our restlessness as individuals combines with the restlessness of others to form a global restless community. Our natural way is one of settlement, settled in the lived knowledge of who we know ourselves to be. We’re currently a long way from that.’
          The more we become aware of this restlessness the more we seem to want to bury it deeper within our bodies which is why we have such extreme behaviours in our society as we vainly try to numb and distract ourselves but what are we trying to distract ourselves from? We must know the answer to this or we wouldn’t be putting so much effort into the distractions.

       2. I agree Mary because deep, deep down we do all know who we are because it’s not possible to ever completely erase the fact that we and everybody else are spun from the fabric of God. But that knowing brings a colossal amount of tension with it and so rather than deal with the tension we attempt to distract ourselves constantly (and it has to be constant to avoid even the slightest chink of awareness being revealed). The ridiculous thing is that we create tension to distract us from the tension, rather than deal with the original and finite form of tension and then be done with it and move on to living the gloriousness of God on Earth.

28. We need food to eat, but why have so many foods in the supermarket aisles that serve no real nutritional value – the candy and biscuit aisles, the soft drink aisles, the alcohol aisles and the list goes on…If you really think about it, 60-70% of the foods in a supermarket could be eliminated easily and this would only benefit people from a health perspective. Does this not show us all that we have an epidemic case of food disorders happening globally?

29. Eating dis-orders do not need to be of the obvious kind – for it is really that simple that if we eat what the body wants not, or eat amounts that the body wants not, then we are exhibiting the first signs of an eating disorder. So really it is about the degree to which we allow this disorder to take over with the more ‘extreme’ cases being honest in their call out for help and knowing that something is out of balance.

30. Why do we treat our bodies like a present, that is all dressed up and pretty on the outside that distracts from what is inside.

31. Society seems to be one great big eating disorder at the moment. Our obsession with food is at an all time high and, in its many guises, this controls a lot of our lives.

32. This is great to talk about; ‘I now know that what I feel is not wrong and there’s nothing wrong with feeling all that I do.’ So often we don’t share our vulnerability and sensitivities. By talking about and being honest about how we truly feel we allow others the freedom to do the same.

33. Another great opportunity to develop our respect for and the way we listen to and honour our bodies. When I eat in relationship with my body there is a clarity, vitality and simplicity to life that is very beautiful.

34. There is a huge difference between eating healthy and nourishing ones body.

    1. There sure is Esther and is a great point to raise as we can have the ‘best’ so called diet but if it does not truly nourish the body and is not what the body needs then it is actually doing more harm than good. Their is no perfect or right diet rather one which constantly evolves and changes with us and so is very individual.

35. The season of eating disorders is at our doorstep and we are preparing to throw open the door and invite excess everything, to join us at the table in the guise of Christmas.

36. This is brilliant because food is never the disorder, the dis-order comes from an aspect of how we are choosing to live our life and then how we eat is a result of that, hence we need to address life not the food issue.

    1. Very true and well said. As soon as we simply focus on the food as the issue, we completely miss out on the bigger picture. We can think we eliminate the food but if we do not change the way we are living, we either find we are eating it again or have substituted it for something else.

37. There are thousands of pictures, ideals and beliefs around food, diets and eating in general. What is true for one body is not necessarily supportive for another – which is why its so important for each one of us to connect with our bodies and to honour what we feel they are asking of us, whether that be food, rest, exercise etc.

    1. The endless things we can eat all have the same ending when they leave the body. What would life be like if there was only one food we put in our body that had everything the body needed? What could we do with all of that time saved that revolves around food? Just because we eat something doesn’t mean the body needs or can use it!

38. It’s very common for us to eat to dull our sensitivity but what I am finding is that it’s not working as it used to and it has gotten easier to feel the reason why instead of just going for the food or distraction.

    1. Julie I actually think that that goes for humanity as a whole, that it’s getting harder and harder to bury the truth of what we’re all feeling. Hence the forces that work around the clock to keep us from feeling the truth are having to ramp things up like never before in order for us to keep indulging in the distractions that keep truth at bay. Life is getting super-sized in order to keep us from stumbling on the simple truth that we are the united consciousness of God and never ever have we not been. And never ever shall we not be.

39. Food is big business and I see this as a reflection of our obsession and dependence on it. Even when we are not eating we are thinking about it, and yes I agree that the only way I have found to bring this into balance in my life, is to deepen the care and love I bring to my relationship with and respect for my body.

40. “She also helped me to realise that if I have no joy in what I eat, I’ve disconnected from my body;” Another great point. Everything we do connected with the food we eat plays a part, from how we shop or grow our food to preparation, cooking and finally consuming it. What quality are we in?

    1. And I love the word honour used in this article. A quality that when brought into any relationship enriches life beyond measure.

41. “She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.” This is something for me to focus on just now as my sweet tooth has returned with a vengeance.

42. When we start to look more deeply at the relationships we have with food, and discover that we do not truly honour our bodies when it comes to what we choose to put in to them in terms of food and drink, could it be that we come to realise that there are many of us who have some sort of eating disorder?

43. ‘There was absolutely no intention to love and nourish my body, I was treating it like a machine.’ I can so relate to what you share Gyl. This has to be a truth for almost all of us at some point in our lives. The disregard we choose is so normal that we don’t even see it, until we are on the floor and can’t ignore it any longer.

44. It does amaze me when we see the foods we eat and what is and is not an eating disorder, very rarely does someone look at the question of what does the body truly feel to eat? If we did, things would be very different, for example take the staple diet in 2018 – what would people in 1920 think, or in 2039?

    1. Yes looking at photos from back then, there was not a trace of obesity in sight. I don’t know what the diabetic statistics were, but feel sure they must have been lower than they are now. We are what we eat.

45. It is interesting to ponder those areas of life where we can over focus and control, often it seems to have one place in life which we appear to manage can counter the sense of chaos and lack of control in others. In the end it is just a bandaid and does not deal with the ill-ease below.

    1. Jenny I think that goes for most of us, strong in one area and weak in others. And we all like to be known and identified by our strong points, who wants to tout their weaknesses? But if we can address the things that we’re not naturally strong in then the whole kit and kaboodle gets lifted as a result. And because we’re not getting constantly dragged down by our weaknesses, what we’re able to achieve and where we’re able to evolve to expands way more than was previously possible. So the tip is to turn in and have an honest look at where we’re struggling and then to address it with loving care and attention and not an ounce of perfectionism or criticism.

       1. I like what you are saying Alexis if we can look at our weakness with honesty then we have an opportunity to pick apart the strands that keep us from deepening that expansion back to our soul. Which is why we are all here on this plane of life, because we moved away from the one song to make our own songs; which are not in the true vibration of the one song but a mockery of it.

       2. The phrase ‘cats chorus’ comes to mind Mary!

46. On reading this ‘I have grown up most of my teenage years and adult life with an eating dis-order. This has not been outwardly obvious to people as in being anorexic, as mainly people commented on how good I looked, how great my body was and how slim I am.’ I reflected on how easily we go by ‘face’ value (how someone looks) rather than feeling how that person is and what is going on for them … without judgement. With the world currently being all about looks and during the current Christmas period it being all about shopping and what we must buy we are getting taken away from the very basics of what feels true for us. When I was in my late teens I was borderline anorexic as well but although people in my life were aware of how controlling I was with food I cannot remember a time when during this period anyone really connected with me or touched base with me about this, again no judgement. So I guess what I am saying here is whether we see it or don’t, how much do we really care first for ourselves and then for others?

    1. Yes, face value is so easy because it does not call for us to feel what is actually going on and then respond accordingly, knowing there may be no call for anything anyway. Instead we can justify that everything looks fine and walk away with no true care for another.

47. The more we appreciate and love ourselves the more unhealthy eating habits will naturally drop away.

48. We seem to have narrowed down what we claim an eating disorder is – could it be that we are not ready to see that anytime we eat not to nourish our bodies is a dis order?

49. We often associate an eating disorder as being in the range of bulimia and anorexia but what about the millions of us who overeat day in and day out until we reach unnatural proportions. It’s not uncommon today to see overweight people as normal ( I know because I was one of those people) but is it healthy for us and for me I would say no it wasn’t.

50. Eating to nourish ourselves and eating what our bodies needs in terms of supporting our particular days can mean different requirements for different people.

51. No one really ever is perfect with food, so there is nothing to fret about not eating in a perfect way, the awareness of how we eat and the consequences is awesome, and every little point of awareness reached without self bashing is key.

52. Love the simplicity offered here – it is so inspiring … “…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.”

53. ‘There was absolutely no intention to love and nourish my body, I was treating it like a machine.’ even when we feel we are eating to provide what our body needs we often do this from a function point of view. i.e. what we have made our body from our mind overriding it and then eating to allow us to do it again rather than acting and moving from the impulses we feel in our body itself and then making our food choices from these same feelings.

54. You could say the moment we don’t use food as a source of physical support and nourishment but use it for something else we are disordered in our eating.

55. “It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” Yes I agree, there is absolutely nothing complicated about this.

56. We tend to focus on food but what else do we consume in our days that impacts our health?

57. When I started to really take care of myself and connect to my whole body as opposed to just my mind, I started to see the dis-ordered way of my living, eating, breathing, relating, sleeping – essentially every aspect of life. The more I love myself, the more the depth of the dis-ordered-ness is revealed, though that only inspires me to love deeper and at the subtlest level.

58. We are all we are through our own choices and therefore can only change through them too.

    1. One loving choice at a time. There is no other way.

59. When my eating is dis-ordered it leads to further chaos as many foods are addictive in their numbing qualities.

60. Its great to have the insight to know that what we eat or drink is in direct relation to how we are feeling in life, when I found out why I drank alcohol I was able to stop drinking straight away whereas before I had tried to stop many times with absolutely no joy.

61. Anything that upsets the body from its natural state of harmony is a dis-order.

    1. Pretty much all of us are in a state of almost permanent disorder and as the world is the collective whole of us all, it’s easy to see why there’s so much chaos in the world.

       1. Ah yes Doug but in order to get to harmony we have to admit that we’ve stuffed up and that’s something that most of us just aren’t ready to do yet.

62. Many people use food to self-medicate unresolved hurts and feelings of emptiness. Without a true relationship with self we do not feel truly worthy and food becomes the easy ‘go to’ when we feel low or out of sorts. Building a deep relationship with self brings an inner steadiness that supports us to eat to nourish our bodies, not plug holes in our sense of self.

63. Time to re-state the true meaning of eating disorders from one primarily associated with specific ill-health conditions like bulimia and anorexia to the everyday relationship most people have with food that has resulted in vast numbers of them becoming obese and considering it to be normal.

64. “Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve” The Way of the Livingness presents that every one of life’s activities offers us an opportunity to evolve and eating is one of them.

65. For most of my life I thought that I was keeping my life in order by controlling it but now I realise that the control that I was asserting on people and my environment actually interfered with the natural order of all things.

66. Coming back to this blog open up so many doors to our relationship with food and how we become addicted to a way of life through our own interpretation of what has been shared down the years about eating. It feels like a lot of people in my generation (I am 65) have come from a poverty mentality, as we were told that people around the world were starving to death and we had to appreciate all we had. So eating was anything but for our evolution, it became all about eat what you can when you can and feel the blessing any food offered, without feeling what it was doing to our bodies.

    1. Also as my mother grew up during the second world was and they had to ration their food, so the mentality on-top of the usual 3 veg, and 1 meat a day diet was that we were portioned or rationed each meal. What transpired was that I actually felt in control when I would pig out on my own food i.e. the hugest bowl of wheatabix with copious amounts of sugar, a freshly baked hot loaf of bread, pizzas were never big enough, and also there was the time where I ended up eating a whole tub of ice-cream 4lts. with half a tin of malt.

       1. And yet again eating because the food is there and it should not be wasted to the point that I got sick. So I end up not being of service to myself or anyone else. I have to learn life is about being there for each other and nothing to do with indulgence.

67. When there is no rhythm to my food or my eating then I can get totally taken off track. When there is a purpose to what I am eating then I choose foods to support that purpose.

68. All we have to do is be honest about how we feel when we make our food choices and eat the food, this will tell us all we need to know to make food choices which support us and further our understanding of ourselves.

    1. So true, I ate something yesterday that didn’t feel right, I didn’t want to see it at the time, but I felt ill straight away, then had a bad night sleep. This is not my normal so it now stands out as a point of me creating a tension where there wasn’t one and therefore an opportunity to not repeat it next time round.

69. Food, we use it as a reward, as a comfort and as a mechanism for deliberately dulling our sensitivity and our ability to read situations. Why would we not want to read? Perhaps we are afraid of our own power, of what we can read, of the impact our knowledge can have on our relationships, somehow we need to go beyond all that, accept what we are truly capable of and not hold ourselves back.

70. What is shared here can equally apply to all areas of our lives. We can nourish or abuse our selves with work, sleep, exercise and relationships. I fully appreciate the gift of Universal Medicine it has empowered me and thousands of other people to transmute our previously abusive ways into a life of nurture and nourishment, thus restoring our natural way of living.

71. Realising that we so often do not eat for the nutrition our body requires unlocks access to food as a powerful form of medicine.

72. I expect all eating disorders can be traced back to a lack of self-worth or self-loathing and this is such a sad thing as we are all so very cool and connected to the same love as everyone else, it is just that so many of us just can’t see it yet.

    1. Where does the source of low; self-worth and loathing come from? Because as you have said, we are all connected to the same love?

73. If we truly love ourselves no matter what we eat or not eat, there is the deep understanding of ourselves so that eating clearly is not because of only food. We treasure ourselves and in no perfection in daily lives, we live this treasure. I never eat perfect food, but I appreciate such opportunities to learn how different foods feel in my body and this is the deepening Love we always have with ourselves. I never judge myself anymore or others on food, and this is what makes life beautiful.

74. ‘if I have no joy in what I eat, I’ve disconnected from my body’ This is interesting because we are educated to taste food and a lot of food is chemically altered to improve its taste. We think there is joy in taste but the true joy is in feeling our connection.

    1. mmmm, thank you Carmel, this is something to consider. How often do we eat distracted from what we are eating by doing something else at the same time thereby justifying the fact that we are not feeling how a food is ‘sitting’ in our body?

75. Gyl – thank you once again for a great sharing that reminds us all of how much deep care and love we deserve to give ourselves and how we are here to develop that step by step.

76. Deep down we know exactly what to eat or what not to eat, the body is very fine tuned in its capacity to let us know what works for it and what does not. Especially when we are sick or recovering from an illness or food poisoning etc and this is usually a time we tune in and listen more deeply. But more often than not we eat from the head rather than from the approach of what the body prefers and then it makes sense that the body must speak more loudly and perhaps get sick in order to purge that which we have put in which really should not have gone in. At least this is what has happened time and time again in my experience!

77. How we feel about ourselves affects our choices in life including food choices. For example when we feel wonderful about ourselves we tend not to be drawn to foods that do not support us but when we feel terrible or are down and out in life we are often drawn to foods that are not that good nor supportive for us. Hence we can use our behaviours and food choices as a symptom to show how we feel about ourselves.

    1. Misery loves company, so it is said. So, why do we make our partner in this arrangement food? Could it be because it is dulling us and it never complains?

78. Self-loathing and the lack of self-worth in women is the basis of many habitual habits of a destructive nature in women.
    “The reason I had an eating dis-order is because of the lack of self-worth and self-loathing I had for myself.”

    1. When we don’t love ourselves to the bone, why honour and respect and adore ourselves in our behaviours, be it food choices or otherwise? And so we can use this realisation to begin to build a more loving relationship with ourselves which then means that as we begin to honour and respect and adore ourselves more and more we then have the strength to reflect that in our practical choices with our body.

79. Your blog clearly shows how emotions and food are reflective in the type of relationship we have with ourselves.

    1. Such an important point you make Johanne. Everything starts with our relationship with ourselves first before we manifest signs of what this may be outwardly.

80. ‘I have come to know that I also eat to not feel all that I do, I eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness). I didn’t and at times still don’t want to feel what’s going on around me, as it means I would have to speak up and be more responsible.’ I am eating more than I need at present. I am finding life particularly challenging and it is definitely ‘comfort’ eating. There is part of me that knows I’d know more, understand more, read more and there’s a rebellious part of me that really doesn’t want to know more.

81. There are no hard and fast rules about what our bodies need, because we are living units of expression whose needs alter depending on what we are doing, how we are living and what we need to deliver. Therefore, true nourishment arises from our ability to listen with great care to what our bodies require and to never hold back on delivering the goods, which calls for us, the being inside, to totally surrender our own food agendas and become absolutely obedient to call from our flesh and bones. Not a very profitable diet programme or regime that anyone can sell.

82. ‘you can still abuse yourself and have an eating dis-order with healthy food’ Yes, we can overeat, eat watching TV, eat in a bad mood, eat with total disregard to the fact that we are eating. The energy we are in when we eat is what we are in truth absorbing.

    1. And, we know the effect these prolonged energies have on our body, but we still choose to carry on in disregarding our selves!

83. The only true diet is the one that nourishes and honours the body and this is discerned by listening to and responding to its need, not what we think or are told is best for us/our body.

84. With regard to eating and food, the more I listen to my body the more in-order I feel within myself; and when I don’t, I feel a dis-order.

85. A beautiful sharing of the simplicity and truth of loving ourselves, nourishing ourselves and being the love we are naturally and how important this is with our diet, what we eat, how we eat and feeling all there is to feel and not taking it on.

86. The science is incredibly simple. You put junk in, you get junk out. Of course the more in-depth medical and nutritional science is important, but let’s not kid ourselves; we all know exactly what is going on.

    1. It’s also true to say that if we feel like junk then we’re much more likely to eat junk, whereas if we feel vibrant and alive then we’re much more likely to eat food that we know isn’t going to tarnish our sparkle.

       1. This is a super important angle on the discussion, Alexis and empowers us to change our eating habits. Nurture the body and our movements and we will find it easier to make the loving choices.

87. “Over the years my body has shared many things I knew and know I shouldn’t be doing.” So many of us struggle through life not knowing what to do, which way to turn, whose advise to take heed of…I love this sentence you have written because it shows us how our greatest friend, mentor, advisor and truth-teller is right with us all along. Our choice as to whether we are going to listen.

88. Yes, it is the responsibility I recognise too to run away from and how easy I can do that by choosing a certain type of food that makes me less aware so I have not to be as responsible as my being naturally is.

89. I hate the advertisements about milk that tell you that milk is good for you and have to consume a glass of milk each day. My body clearly told me the opposite but this advertisement and the whole industry behind told me I was wrong and as a child, this was hard for me to withstand.

    1. I agree Nico, I’ve never been a big milk fan either. When we were young the schools used to insist on us drinking milk every day and we would get into trouble if we didn’t drink it. Now at the school, I volunteer at they give the children fruit as an afternoon snack but the children can refuse.

       1. That is great to hear this compared to how dictatorial I experienced education and my upbringing to be, but I am sure there are still aspects of this way of upbringing alive of which we must be aware of.

90. Healthy food alone does not make us healthy – it is our livingness that will bring true health to the body and from an energetic perspective, this might even mean being ill. Because that is the way of the body, to cleanse it from that which does not belong in it, so actually it can be a healthy response of the body.

91. There is order in every-thing, every-thing has a divine order.

92. Just talking to a friend today about diet and foods that really support our bodies. There is such a plethora of information about what food does what to our bodies, but the best advice I have ever found lies inside me. If I listen very carefully, my body tells me exactly what works for it and what doesn’t, no ideals, dieting regimes or fads needed.

93. Our true relationship with food comes from first returning to a true relationship with our body.

94. A humble-ness comes with the learning of appreciation, so that there is no ‘wow’ factor, just the simple Humble-Appreciative-Ness of the joy it is to be re-connected to our essence, and that no amount of yummy-ness in the mouth can distract us from being connected.

95. “It’s only since attending Universal Medicine presentations, workshops and courses that I have begun to look at my relationship with food.” Agreed here, it’s like we look at life, see the problems and what we have to fix, rather than explore what is going on in terms of our relationship with different things like food, when we do I find I am more open to understanding what causes me to eat a certain way and then I am free to change that.

96. It was not that many years ago that Pizza was the only thing you could call and have delivered. Now we have apps that allow us to order anything, and have it delivered! Is this just another way to hide what we are putting in our bodies?

97. ‘She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.’ This is interesting for me because I’ve always craved sweet foods, and I’ve always seen myself as hard even though others tell me about my quality of sweetness, I can’t feel it for myself. So yes, I need to appreciate what is already there and not crave anything from outside of me.

98. We can use food to numb ourselves in the just the same way we might use sports, hobbies, alcohol or drugs. Some activities seem very innocent, others evidently harmful but they all serve the same purpose, to divert our attention away from all the abuse, deceit and corruption that we feel all the time while living in this world.

99. ‘Accepting where I am at, understanding and appreciating myself is key’, absolutely, I have just started to do this, and I have observed how much more relaxed I am with my food choices. I have gone to town on the granola, but that’s also okay because that is what happens when you deny yourself a certain food when you are not quite there yet to give it up!

100. Movement is our greatest register of the order of the universe. Know and live this and we’ll know God intimately.

101. Giving children sweets so that they shut up or don´t scream is a way to enhance eating disorder for their adult life- in fact we introduce an eating disorder.

     1. How weird is giving children sweets to be good, that is full of sugar and chemicals that make them hyper?

        1. The moment we as adults carry the consciousness that sweets are a reward and as a result “good”, we are blind to see the actual harm that it does to our bodies, whilst consuming it.

102. Tanya Curtis has turned the wording around to say ‘Disordered eating’ which completely changes the focus from having a ‘disorder’ to having an unhealthy/unhelpful relationship with food. Then you can start to look at what is going on underneath the symptom of eating in a way that is disordered.

     1. Absolutely Vanessa, I’m going to present this for a course I’m doing. Disordered eating in families is very obvious and also very subtle. Look at how, we celebrate, forget our problems, indulge, connect etc. using food. This is where our relationship with food begins and either fosters a responsible loving relationship or a dependent and negative experience with food.

     2. ‘Disordered eating’ has a practicality about it and does not have the emotional judgment that is associated with having an ‘eating disorder’ and therefore much easier to approach the subject, discuss and address.

     3. I love that new wording and when words turn into their original strong meaning, before they got placed in a way, that keeps you in a comfort. It asks you way more to step into your own responsibility like that way.

103. Just asking the simple question before we reach for food “am I actually hungry, or….” is a massive step in understanding what else might be at play. The answer will be different for all of us, but it is the willingness to be honest that opens the door to a grander truth.

     1. Even after you ate something you know was too much or not the right thing, it is wise to be honest about why you have chosen to eat it. By not lying to yourself with shallow reasons you will be more supported to change the pattern after all.

        1. One lie leads to another lie. Always.

104. Are eating disorders the same as other secret things we keep hidden from the outside world? The list of these hidden items is endless! Why do we shield them from the outside world? Could it be the judgement from others we avoid? How many of us are walking around with invisible sticks, beating ourselves?

105. Attempting to diet in order to lose weight by controlling how much I ate never worked, I just didn’t have the will power to starve myself. Making the space in the day to stop, be still and allow myself to connect to how my body felt enabled me to make huge changes in my diet based on the quality of my feelings not high-minded ideals. As I began to relinquish all the foods that made my body hurt in various ways the weight just fell off, which just amazed me as it was the last thing I was expecting.

     1. The moment we listen to our body it has the chance to shape into its true way of expression.

106. Feeling from our body brings a deepening awareness and this is a great attribute as you have shared Gyl. We all have the ability to feel from what our body is sharing but the way society is set up we are consistently being told to think from our head and override our bodily feelings. This gets us to a place where we think from our head and that we are our emotions, to the point where we would be nothing without our emotional issues even the so called good ones!
     Returning to our body starts with being Gentle with our bodies again and one of the best ways to re-start to feel our Gentleness comes from practicing for 5 minutes the Gentle Breath Meditation. Sure we need more than one go but it is still only 5 minutes and every time we feel an issue that has clouded our mind with emotions we can always bring a focus back to our Gentle Breath.
     For more on the Gentle Breath Meditation go to;
     FREE GENTLE BREATH MEDITATION
     http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=Free+Gentle+Breath+Meditation

107. We seek dis-order when we do not accept, appreciate and embrace the stupendously Grand Order we belong to. It is our way of doing it ‘our way’ and not The Way it actually is.

     1. So true Liane, for in the Grand Order we belong to we feel the call to simply surrender to obedience.

108. Food is a great subject that clearly reflects how we live and how we treat ourselves. We can avoid awareness or take every meal as an opportunity to be more honest and aware without any goal or pressure, just the true point we are at. To restore love we need to start from truth.

109. Numbing ourselves with food is a doorway to put on a few pounds that can become a theme that causes physical side effects on our body. The strain, the extra weight puts on our body moves us even further away from the original issue that caused us to overeat, to start with!

     1. When we over-eat not only do we bury the original issue as you have shared Steve, but we can then also end up having to medicate our-selves because of the conditions that come with being over-weight and to make it worse we think this is okay and normal. We have learnt phrases to justify our being over-weight like I am big boned etc.

110. “my body has shared many things I knew and know I shouldn’t be doing. ..” Yes, once we begin to pay attention to our body, it gives clear indication as to what is and is not supportive. The relationship we have with our body/ourselves is primarily the most important one.

111. When we hone into quality first, who we are on the inside, it becomes impossible to hide behind the perfect façade and far easier to spot the fake. We can do a lot to deceive our selves and others by the way we look and behave, but we can never truly disguise the quality of the vibes we emit.

112. “I now know that what I feel is not wrong”… this is a fantastic line to have published on this website about medicine.

113. Finding and reconnecting to live the understanding of our Inner-Joy started for most with being Gentle with the Gentle Breath Meditation as we have all learnt that our Gentle Bodies do deliver deeper wisdom when we are willing to relearn and listen to what the body is sharing.
     FREE GENTLE BREATH MEDITATION
     http://www.unimedliving.com/search?keyword=Free+Gentle+Breath+Meditation

114. The moment you eat to become something, you have an eating disorder.

     1. Simple and profound.

115. I observe this so often in the gym i attend and in my educational background in sport and exercise science; those leading, teaching and coaching others are not living or moving in a way which is conducive to good health and wellbeing – always pays to discern carefully from what we feel.

116. To me, anything that doesn’t agree with the body is a dis-order and hence an eating dis-order.

117. To control and be obsessive about food is no different to having an eating disorder; both behaviours towards food are abusive to the body. Therefore dieting where we eat food controlled by the mind and what it thinks we should eat cannot be good for our body regardless how healthy the food is. Unless we are aware of this wisdom then we cannot say we have a healthy relationship with food.

118. As you say we often eat not to feel things but we have already felt them or how would we know to eat to not feel them. As it stands we all feel everything all the time – the only question is how much we allow ourselves to be aware of what we feel. Eating is a useful tool at numbing our feelings and awareness if that is what we want to do.

     1. Numbing ourselves does not protect us as we think it does – quite the opposite. The best protection is to feel everything in full, but it takes most of us quite a bit of development to keep allowing and expanding that because there seems to be no limit to how much we can feel and observe and then that brings a whole other level of responsibility!

        1. Not only does numbing not protect us as we think it does but it also adds another layer to be dealing with; as the emotion or thing we are avoiding doesn’t go anywhere with the numbing. Then we have a two-pronged problem. Then there is also the layering of all the problems we haven’t dealt with like the strata of sedimentary rock… the issues/problems can get settled into our infrastructure.

        2. Very true then we have to deal with not only all the clutter and stuff we have already absorbed but the additional stuff we have taken on by numbing ourselves and not discerning!

     2. Unlike any other substance we use to numb, food doesn’t have any stigma attached to it and so it is very easy to be dishonest around it or to not admit that we are using it to medicate.

     3. Same applies to many things such as certain music or over exercise or drive etc – really we can convert pretty much anything into a numbing technique, even our so called private thoughts if that is our intention.

119. ‘There was absolutely no intention to love and nourish my body, I was treating it like a machine.’ true Gyl but sometimes it seems we have more regard for machine and technology than we do for ourselves and people.

     1. The denial of our sensitivity, in the belief that life is all about function, has a supported a global community that likes to make it look good on the outside at the expense of the inner. We have got to the point however where the outer is breaking – educational, political, economic and healthcare systems are broken and it is only by admitting to and honouring our sensitivity that this can change.

        1. Function is simply another method we use to reduce ourselves away from the grandness we truly are. By accepting less, we seemingly ease the tension of the eternal pull to return back to the All that we are.

        2. … except that that tension keeps escalating as the eternal pull is not only a constant but is always increasing. As we are seeing to our detriment, the more we fail to acknowledge the cycles we live under and that the laws of the universe are equally applicable to us, the methods we use to ease the tension will only ever get more extreme, which is precisely what we are observing in our current times.

     2. Yes we are more fascinated by machines and technology, than by the miraculous body ( no technology could ever equal) we are living in.

        1. Agree with this Stefanie. Cars are amazing and fun and I love precise engineering. Mobile phones amaze me. Computers blow my mind. I still don’t truly understand what electricity is. Key-hole surgery defies belief and I love the genius inventions of loads of other gadgets. But none of these come even close to the body. A miraculous combination of zillions of individual examples of mind-boggling technology, divine precision, absolute engineering harmony and communication technology that makes us look like we are still using smoke signals to talk to each other. Strange how we give it so little attention, respect and adoration. We should be in absolute and 24/7 awe of our bodies.

        2. I love the point you are making here Stefanie. How often do we stop and ponder on the amazingness of the human body; how intricate, delicate, strong, interconnected – all the parts working in unity in all its infinitesimal detail? But it’s not just the mechanics that are mind-blowing, it’s the fact of the body’s wisdom, what it is connected to – its particles being of divinity and how it communicates to the indwelling being, responding to cycles and energy asking that being to keep up.

120. Makes sense.

121. “The choice to change didn’t come from being told what to do, or what to eat by Serge Benhayon.” What I appreciated most about Serge Benhayon’s work is that I have never been told what to do, but immensely informed about what happens to my body and to me when I eat, drink or do certain things. Understanding how different choices affect me has empowered me to observe, evaluate, experiment with my everyday choices and begin to refine my whole way of life. The result so far has been a resounding and very vital success and shown me just how much we can kill or cure our selves with our simply daily routines.

122. There are leaders and followers. We can be the one with the whip or the bull with the ring in its nose. Or, we can be responsible for ourselves and the vessel we occupy. These are our choices

123. I noticed myself recently eating something to dull my awareness and bring down my light just before having a reunion diner with my colleagues. I use not wanting to stand out as an excuse, but actually I am not loving us all, myself included, in full. The measuring is actually very selfish.

124. The focus, dedication, amount of time spent on food, buying it, cooking it, eating it or thinking about it is gigantic. Miracles can happen when we would dedicate this to our connection with our true origin and our Soul.

125. What influences me most is the energy of the food I eat and the energy I am in when I buy and cook the food. And even when all of this is perfect I can still let myself get affected by how I eat the food and what kind of conversations or thoughts I have when I eat.

126. ‘I have come to know that I also eat to not feel all that I do, I eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness).’ Perhaps this could explain our obesity problem worldwide and all our addictions with food?

127. “For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.” By this definition most of us have an eating dis-order. The question is how do we deal with it? Self criticism is not the way – I tried that for many years and the discipline it took was harming for me – little evolution. Since I let go of that I am listening to my body more – no rules about what I should or shouldn’t be eating and it’s slowly working….. .

128. The old saying ‘we are what we eat’ is true on so many levels, it is not till hearing more about the ancient wisdom that I started to understand that what we eat plays a huge role in what we allow ourselves to feel and opens the door to a greater connection with our soul.

     1. This week I must be a lamb.

        1. Barr None! as we All feel and have closed the door and turned a blind eye to those first times, which there are many, as we overrode those feelings to fit into the crowd. As a simple example among many who can honestly say they like their first taste of beer or scotch?

129. Very often we react and reject the very medicine that is the perfect remedy for us. This is a symptom of the disorder within so many of us where we seek comfort of the spirit instead of the magnificent glory of our soul.

130. Recently I have become aware of strict I can be in my diet, and actually at times leaving myself so hungry that when I actually did eat, I couldn’t eat fast enough. Not very loving at all! With this insight, I have relaxed around food, and am giving myself foods that I still wanted but denied myself. As a result I am being more honest with myself and where I am at, and that feels great, and the new level of honesty has ripple effects in other areas of my life too. A win, win!

131. ‘She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away’. Thankyou for sharing Gyl, very timely, as I too still crave sweet.

132. “Over the years my body has shared many things I knew and know I shouldn’t be doing.” And for so many years the signs and signals from my body fell on deaf ears. It is an extremely empowering moment when we start to pay attention and respond to the messages from the intelligence that resides within our bodies, there is no greater source of wisdom in this world.

133. It may be impossible to live with perfection and this imperfection in life is then quite likely to show itself in our choice of food, amount or timing or any of the other influences on and components of food.

134. For many of us treating our body like a machine might even be progress – machines tend to get the right fuel and maintenance but would that be true for many bodies?

     1. ha ha that is very true or should that be boo hoo that is very true or on third thoughts really it is about taking care of and being loving and honouring with body, machines, each other – everything!

135. We can continue to ignore the results of being bombarded with images of what we need to be like as women and men, and we don’t need to have an eating disorder to say we are affected, however this is one of the extreme cases. For me it has been about calling out what I have always known to be true but was following along with as everyone else is doing it syndrome. Our lives, our choices our future in our hands.

     1. Is ‘normal’ the world’s most damaging opiate?

136. These days if I ever feel ill, which is quite rare now, I will always look to what I have eaten first that may not have agreed with my body. And then I look to simple remedies to support my self, such as drinking lots of water and/or taking a nap, both of which support my body’s immune system to work its magic. A very different approach to the days of ignoring what I consumed and blaming my ill health on a bug, virus or some other external misnomer.

137. Accepting that it is OK to feel whatever one is feeling, to then to understand and deal with the cause of the feeling is like solving a puzzle which is empowering.

     1. Absolutely Jonathan. Being honest about what we are feeling is the first step to understanding the root cause.

        1. And it is when we get to the root cause that true healing can occur, which is resolution and not a solution.

     2. True and in accepting what we feel we stop the process of reacting to it and resorting to a previous behavior and action to numb, bury or escape from the feeling, meaning we will only have it arise again in the future without any understanding of it.

138. Taking care of one’s self is something that you can not hide!

139. I love the honest way you write Gyl, by being this honest with ourselves it gives us the opportunities to change what in truth doesn’t work in our lives.

140. How we are with food can’t come from a knowledge, as what you eat and how you eat is no different to another person say one who has a deep fried mars bar and another who has the latest health bar. Knowledge serves no evolution, or joy. And believe me if you have lived that way for some time, it can be hard to come out of. But it’s beautiful to appreciate that we / you are.

141. Looking into eating disorders more I read that 70 million people in the world (at least), 70 million!!! have some form of eating disorder. That is a lot of people and I used to be one of them in my teens, as a borderline anorexic, controlling my food and calories because I felt that was the only thing I could have a say in and control with regards to my life.
     To me what this shows me is not so much our relationship with food, but our relationship with ourselves and not completely allowing ourselves to embrace, appreciate and deeply accept ourselves as we are, including our sweetness. There is a lot of work to be done here with this or should I say so much appreciation and self love to be truly felt.

142. “… the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat” – yes as i’ve been exploring over the years when it comes to foods and food types is that it’s not what I eat per se but the energy I’m in when I eat – if the energy of my present state of being is unloving or disregarding then the digestion of food will be of that quality too.

143. This is an amazing thing to realise – ‘I have come to know that I also eat to not feel all that I do, I eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness)’ for it offers the insight and choice to understand what is on offer if we do accept and step into our awareness. That in each moment we do this we are offered the next and so our awareness continues to deepen.

     1. And also to appreciate that when I do / we do eat things we know are to fight our sensitivity, is to become more aware and appreciate that, rather than go to the negative, something I am working on.

144. Sometimes we eat to dull ourselves, sometimes for comfort or just pleasure but I can’t help think about how important it is to just eat to fuel our body with exactly what it needs and nothing else. I wonder on what scale illness and disease would decrease if we did, as the old saying you are what you eat is so very true.

145. I, as have as many others, have fallen for eating what is meant to be good for you. We live in the world’s greatest laboratory ever built, our body! We just need to listen to what it is telling us when it analyses what we put into it!

146. After having a highly tumultuous relationship with food all based on fulfilling a body image – I have come out the end of it knowing for sure that my body is the shape and size it is that is needed for others – and I cannot try to control or hinder this. As soon as I get in the way, my body can no longer support others.

     1. I think we all need to stop being so hard on ourselves.

147. It is amazing how we can make our selves look the perfect model of health, but on the inside be the complete opposite. Further proof that it is not the external that truly matters, but our internal health and well being that truly makes the difference. When we really nurture, cherish and nourish our bodies from the inside we simply glow with health.

     1. Dear Rowena, I say this with no judgement, there are many many who look like this, I am sure you could speak to all walks of life from fitness coaches, models, doctors etc who all make look ‘good’ on the outside but scratch the surface we are a mess.

148. So true Elizabeth, And this is the same all over life. For example; the suicide figures in society now are horrendous…but what of all those others who are living in deep mental anguish, but haven’t yet become a statistic.

149. Dis-order; not in order, in a state of disarray. There is no need to be anal or dogmatic about what we do or do not eat, but if we can have the wisdom to consider how we feel after we eat, then we can easily sense whether we are in disorder. The question then becomes about what we truly value.

     1. I think we can get far too caught up in what we eat, end up being arrogant, preaching about it, or judging others. It’s simply having a relationship with ourselves and our body and appreciating and accepting where we are at.

        1. Agree entirely. As with all things in life; do not run before you can walk, do not talk what you do not walk. Honesty and acceptance – two super solid building-blocks for evolution.

        2. It’s true abs there’s actually a joy and simplicity in learning to walk.

150. I was at a petrol station the other day needing to buy some oil for my car. I walked up and down the aisles of food looking everywhere for the oil, finally finding it tucked away on a bottom shelf in the corner. It was a service station!! Where you get petrol and other stuff for your car!! But we live in a demand and supply world and so every aisle was rammed with food because that is what people want.

151. The judgements we make on ourselves for the ‘bad food choices’ just add fuel to the emotional state that triggered the eating. Catch what lead us to eat way back down the track and we have the opportunity to address it, and feel the dis-order dissolve.

152. I have noticed that those that are the wisest are those that listen and deeply honour their body. It is not rocket science that there is enormous benefit in our health and well-being if we do not ignore how we truly are feeling deep within.

153. If our food tastes like cardboard and we feel no nourishment from it – we have to look at how we are treating ourselves. The inner affects the outer, and vice versa the outer can nourish the inner.

154. ‘I have grown up most of my teenage years and adult life with an eating dis-order. This has not been outwardly obvious to people as in being anorexic, as mainly people commented on how good I looked, how great my body was and how slim I am.’
     We are so focused on what we see and the appearances of things around us, that we often settle for what lies on the surface rather than going deeper and allowing our senses to tell us more, the deeper truth of the matter. This is not because we can’t, but because if we did this, not only would we know more about others, but we would know more and need to be more honest with ourselves too. Therefore, we become complicit to a choice to not know but simply accept the appearances we work hard to maintain.

155. Our bodies continually change and we must be responsive to it. I’ve just observed that certain foods that were once accepted by my body are now being rejected forcefully – a kind of instant feedback. This shows me my body is refining and as it does, I need to be more discerning in the foods I choose to eat.

156. Once we know that so many of us eat in a way to dull ourselves or not to feel what is really going on, then at least we now have a choice to change, but so many of us are oblivious to the fact, so are unable to and what is marketed or on display in shops and service stations does little to help our circumstances.

     1. True Kevmchardy, there is a product for any evasion of deeper awareness. We know exactly the proportion of salt or sugar or creaminess to avoid what is coming to awareness.

157. “There was absolutely no intention to love and nourish my body, I was treating it like a machine.” And you are not alone in this Gyl. I know that for years I saw my body as a machine that only existed to enable me to do what I wanted and totally ignore its preferences. Consequently the quality of my health was extremely erratic. These days I deeply appreciate my body’s fine sensitivity and intelligence and pay much more attention to what is it communicating, gone are the days of over-riding and bullying it into choices that seriously hurt me.

158. Eating without discipline but regard for the body is so liberating.

     1. No special diet needed. Just listen.

159. Food- the cooking of it & eating process is a highlight of the day for many people & cultures. Food is the means to bring people together- family, friends, work colleagues. And as mothers each day we think about what shall we cook for the family today?,,, I now realise the missing link has been the connection to our body and soul. Truly listening to what it needs to support it to stay aware, not dull, suppress the tension we feel in our body with food or drink.

160. It is a forever deepening process to feel what is happening in life, observe and not take things on personally and not try to avoid it.

161. The amazing increase in food outlets and cafes around our high streets and local shopping centres and even village shops serving food clearly shows the world’s issue with eating more all the time to dull our awareness and what we do not want to feel. Food is a great suppressant, as is the massive increase in sugar in everything for stimulation and energy from our exhaustion, so looking at ourselves with the way, the reason and what we eat and the abuse to our bodies, there is the call for a deepening relationship with our selves that is paramount for us all, for our future that is calling us now.

162. The joys of youth! We are told not to do things, and our reaction is to do them to find out why! The way we interact with our body becomes a personal laboratory for us to test our limitations, disregarding the damaging side effects. Or, do we, do as we were told and live a sheltered life. There is another way of feeling what our body requires and not being controlled by our head and forces outside of us.

163. Food and eating consumes our lives. If we’re not eating it, we’re thinking about the next thing to eat, or preparing and shopping for it. Increasingly we eat all the time, not just when hungry. We’ve made food the centre of our lives, not people. If we gave as much attention to be of service to humanity as we do to eating food, we would have answers for many of the world’s problems.

164. The complex ways in which we grow, cook and produce food these days is in itself in disorder. Our bodies run very smoothly on simple fresh foods, anything else is just creating a distraction that dulls our awareness and diverts our attention away from what truly matters in life. The question to self is “why do we want to do that?”

165. What and how we eat is but a mere symptom at the end of a long trajectory of a variety of factors, from exhaustion to fear of jealousy to needing to numb what we are feeling.

166. It was interesting reading the sentence that you treated your body “like a machine”. I feel that is true for most of us as we expect the body to perform, deliver the goods and never talk back, let alone break down. I have just been delivered the bill for putting my body on the line for three and a half years of physically and mentally very demanding work and am coming to terms with fragility, delicateness and continued absence from any paid work. It shows me that we always get the bill, at times later and seemingly unrelated to what has been but it is not ever.

     1. Our body is our trusted servant, but if we do not give it the servicing and love it deserves, there will be a pay back further down the line. To be forced to stop, is a blessing and opportunity to give back, fully nurture yourself until you heal and bring your body back into balance.

167. I am very aware that the quality of energy in which I eat is as important if not more important than the actual food that I’m eating. I became aware some while ago that I can be overly focused on the food on my plate and consume it with a certain intensity. I can be acutely aware when the food starts to dwindle and be scouring my plate for scraps, thinking about getting more food even though I’m not at all hungry.

168. I used to be what is called a “foodie” – a lover of good food; often wining and dining at expensive restaurants. Your article is brilliant because it exposes the fact that an eating dis-order is any form of eating that is used to suppress a pain, hurt, issue, emotion or unsettlement in the body. And so when I look at the way I used to eat and my relationship with food, I can absolutely see how it was designed to try to alleviate the emptiness that I was feeling….and if the food was expensive and considered to be ‘top quality’ then I felt that was all the better. The way I now eat and what I now eat has changed completely since those times. But I love this article, because it shines a bright light on the absolute details that our eating habits can show us, not just in what we are eating, but in how the process plays out. I also love what Miranda said to you about sweetness and can see how this can play in similar ways across many food types, choices and cravings.

169. If you look at any high street and compare the ratio of retail shops/food outlets to what was on that same street ten years ago, it is very clear that society has an ever-expanding eating dis-order.

     1. I also look at the amount of cooking programmes that are on the television these days and wonder if this is the same, we need more distraction and more dulling, so we need more food in as many varieties as possible to keep us from the connection that we are truly longing for.

        1. It feels the same and also if you look at the amount of sweets and chips you can buy in the cinema nowadays, there is always a big area for that now. Plus, people simply have to eat in front of the television. Only television is not enough anymore, food is often needed as form of treat and fulfillment.

        2. The latest cooking show in the UK is about baking! The list of confectionary delights is never-ending, what better way to keep distracted than being in the kitchen baking pies and cakes.

     2. And, the coffee shops that are everywhere that also sell things we used to make at home to go with our coffee: cakes, muffins and other impulse snacks. Whereas, pubs in the UK are currently closing with 18 per week, that as you have said, Otto, the food outlets are rising from their ashes.

        1. Chocolate bars are more than triple the size they were when I was a kid…crisp packets, soft drinks..the list is endless and also the placement of these items in shops is fascinating to study. The carrot of distraction and numbing dangled right in front of us at every moment, constantly calling us to check out.

170. One but needs to look at the explosion of fast food and coffee shops that are appearing everywhere. The shops have risen to support our need. Even grocery stores have now provided these gastronomic items with their own section. These packaged meals that all is required is for you is to warm up or nuke if you don’t have the time. The rat race we are living in just keeps adding more pitstops to keep us driven. And we believe this illusion is taking care of ourselves!

171. In my experience our relationship with food is to a large degree an outcome of the rest of our life and more of an indicator. Therefore fixing the indicator can at times be helpful but will it get to underlying cause?

     1. An important point made Christoph – healing comes from dealing with the cause of the disease not just the signs and symptoms.

     2. Agree Christoph – much more about how you got to the fridge, than what you take out of it. And if we then spend the next 24 hours beating ourselves up about the choice, we totally lose touch with how we got there and the opportunity is wasted.

172. Beautiful to be supported by Miranda Benhayon to understand that when we appreciate sweetness in and around us, our craving of sweet things diminishes.

173. “… the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” And hence we meet an understanding that empowers us to form a whole new relationship with our bodies, with food and with love. When we learn to lovingly listen to our bodies, we cannot help but begin to nurture our selves with truly nourishing foods as opposed to the latest fads or fashions.

174. We have a choice to change all of the time, the honesty of the body gives us an opportunity to see our behaviour and change that and through increasing our awareness we can understand more and more of this communication. What we often do is we tarnish this awareness with food In order to remain stuck in our well carved patterns.

175. The truth is always simple when we honour the body and start to come from love the way we eat will change without any strict diet or rules what we shoud or should not eat. No investment in losing weight or the opposite of gaining any kilo’s as it is just about nourishing the body to let our light come through.

     1. So true Annelies. The more we focus on nourishing our bodies, the more they find their natural shape, vitality and radiance, as we make life about re-building a strong connection with our inner light.

176. We live within a grand Universal order that is constantly calling us forth to expand and deepen with it. To introduce a disorderly way of being into the equation is our way to fight this expansion and ultimately delay our inevitable return to the far reaches of our true selves we long ago departed from.

177. We are all potential portals for God, there are many things that interfere with our ability to allow God to flow through us, food is just one of them.

178. Eating has become anything apart from just eating.

179. The more I appreciate and claim that my body is my marker for truth the easier it is to eat in a way that supports my body to communicate what is going on for me. What I also have experienced is that the more I love people the more ‘clear’ I want to be in my coaching and training and how sugary foods don’t support this at all, but do the opposite and affect the quality of my sleep as well.

180. I would say we have a new definition for in the dictionary: ‘For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.’

     1. Important to find the true meaning of words and to know we can always re-define them. And this one worthy of being re-stated: “any eating disorder is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.’

     2. This is a very powerful new marker by which we all need to be measuring our relationship with food and our body.

     3. When we have an eating disorder we are in reaction to the lovelessness in life not being able to access the love that we are. We, therefore, have a responsibility to support each other and reflect what that true light and divinity is. We all disconnect from it in childhood because we don’t see it around us, so, so few of us really know what it looks like in adulthood.

     4. Monika agreed, I’d not seen it like that but it makes sense, if we take that as having an eating disorder then we would be more honest with the real state of society.

181. I am noticing how so many of us are using food to dull down what we are becoming aware of. It would be far wiser to embrace our increased awareness rather than harm the body with excess food or foods that do not suit us.

182. It is so liberating to actually honour what we feel in our bodies and not discount it or think it is wrong.

     1. Especially when you able to sustainably do so.

183. We don’t put anything in our cars that do not support it to move forward, but we will do it to our body to slow or stop it from evolving!

     1. I think about this a lot Steve and often use this metaphor when considering food. Most petrol pumps now have two versions of fuel available for our cars – one that makes our car run very well and one that makes our car run even better. No other choices. Very different to what we put in our bodies.

184. “It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” Absolutely Gyl. And when we love ourselves more, our eating habits change in ways that start to truly honour and nourish our bodies so naturally without us even having to try.

185. I also had an awesome revelation about sugar and sweet foods, recognising that I was using these substances to make up for a lack of connection to my sweet inner sacredness. It has been a powerful tool in enabling me to cut out the sugar in favour of coming home to this awesome feeling deep inside my body there is nothing on this earth more delicious than that.

     1. Our connection with our soul is the most delicious nourishment we could have.

186. The way we are with food is a true and honest reflection of where we are at and what our priorities are.

187. ‘She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away. ‘ This is very beautiful. For me it’s about giving myself permission to feel everything, get the support to be with what I’ve found unacceptable and totally appreciate how lovely I am. Then food eaten in an abusive way isn’t needed because I can be fully me in life and not flinch!

188. Exactly Richard… We are designed to feel, and that’s one of the main things that humanity has a problem with.

189. It really is all we are with ourselves more lovingly we eat… there is so much to learn in this simple awareness.

190. Anything less than connection to our heart puts us into a state of disorder. So no wonder that our thoughts and choices get crazy too – when we are missing this link to the truth.

191. Coming from that basis of love changes everything, it allows us space to see and feel what truly works for us with food and indeed everything.

192. I used to do exactly what you described, going into full maniac sports to burn the calories that I ate and avoided to put weight on from. It is more evil to hide a disorder like that, as you seem to be normal from the outside: you eat, you do sports. Both attributes that are accepted as “normal”, so it needs a deep awareness from the outside- friends, family, partner- to see and uncover or support you out of the controlling, dismissing behaviour of your body.

193. Sweetness comes from true surrender and stillness. The moment we eat sweets it does have the exact opposite effect- it brings us out of our stillness and covers the innate sweetness with raciness. It might look sweet but never has the grand emanation that our true delicate sweetness has, that we carry in our heart.

194. Then body is so forgiving in the sense that as soon as we start to love from the truth of it – we can bring so much healing to it.

     1. Very gorgeous and so true which makes me wonder why on earth would we not want to love our body!!! We are like an enemy to something that loves and supports us to its best ability continuously.

195. A beautiful truth-full expose about our universal food issues!

     If we were just functional physical life forms maybe eating a diet derived purely from information (like, doctors say this is ‘healthy’ so I will eat it and be healthy) would work… but we are so much more than a machine that needs fuel… we are a being inside a body and both need to be honored with love and care.

     What Serge has presented over the years is so basic and simple and I realize I already knew it, I just haven’t wanted to stay aware of it, I have not been listening to my own innate wisdom.

     I have come to realize that when I run myself like a machine, I crave and need sugar and other ‘rewards’ to make up for missing the ‘so-much-more-in-me’ that I am not taking into account. I miss the sweetness, the richness and the fulfilling way of living that I feel and have when I reconnect to the greater aspects of who I am.

     A huge and endless thank you to Serge for reminding me to look within and trust what I feel and know.

196. When there is a lot going on energetically, when our bodies are being invited to live in a higher vibration, that’s when I tend to overeat or eat specific foods to avoid stepping up, to stay comfortable with whatever is familiar.

     1. I know that one too Carmel and it is very supportive to nominate it and be aware of what we are choosing nothing more nothing less, beating ourselves up would be another trick of our spirit to not step up and live in the comfort of this pattern.

197. Can we please teach this to our children and everybody in the world? Workplaces would be an awesome place too:
     ‘Accepting where I am at, understanding and appreciating myself is key.’

198. Thank you for your honest sharing: ‘I was training and advising people on health and well-being, yet behind closed doors I was a mess.’ This is the case for so many people in various jobs, advising people without living it themselves. As I have experienced on both the giving and the receiving end, this does’t work and doesn’t inspire another as much as if we share from what we live. This is where Serge and also other members of the Benhayon family inspire and support us to make different choices ourselves.

199. If we are all honest I am sure we could all say that we have experienced some tension with food or some kind of eating “disorder’ at some point in our lives… even if not an extreme version of it.

200. We eat to be ‘healthy’ without discerning what is truly nurturing for our body.

201. ‘I eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness).’ Bringing these two words together in this way: sensitivity and awareness, helps bring understanding and appreciation of our delicate nature.

202. Never in a million years I would have thought I had an eating disorder but oh dear, in all honesty I’m probably up there with the best of them.

203. I too used to believe that I led a healthy life, complete with glasses of organic red wine, ‘real coffee’, full fat milk, wholemeal bread and proper butter. When I finally gave myself permission to really feel the effects of said ‘healthy’ things, I discovered how much they just laid me to waste instead.

     1. Yeh surely if it is organic, free range and all that it is just got to be good for you. I used to binge on fruit thinking I was doing myself a huge favour, oblivious to all that fruit sugar I was ingesting. It is such an important thing to get wise on what we eat and listen to our own bodies as that is where the true wisdom comes from.

204. If we were all really honest then you could say that humanity has a eating disorder, not to appreciate what you have shared here Gyl. In the sense that are we truly eating what we need, what supports and what evolves us, if not there is a dis-order in the way we are eating, what we are eating and how that has an impact not only on our bodies but the quality in how we are moving in our bodies.

205. It is common sense really the more we love ourselves the more everything will change accordingly in our life ‘It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat’ this is my experience as well.

206. I can see how eating in a way that is not nourishing is not supportive. And how I have gone into an addiction with my eating rather than choosing to listen to my body.

207. Eating disorders exposed with truth: ” For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve. ” And this then includes the classic eating disorders of bulimia, anorexia and more…So how much do we all struggle to embrace life and hence eating?

208. Spot on Doug – we have the sweetness and joy of life and those things around us to enjoy as an every day snack! Life can feed us back amazing nourishment depending on what we choose to see/register/feel…

     1. Beautifully said Henrietta. There is more than just food that brings us nourishment, and the more we learn about this, and live that understanding, the healthier our bodies are.

209. Food choices, what we eat and how we eat really are the symptom picture of something else underlying that is going on here. And so we can ‘fix’ the symptom if we like, but this does not address the root cause. If however, we address the root cause, the symptom will take care of itself. How cool is this?

210. Awesome sharing Gyl – and this certainly exposes that far more of us can have an eating disorder in terms of the control and regimentation and lack of joy and deep care for the body when it comes to foods and how we eat!

211. There are so many behaviours we employ to ingrain a self-sabotaging relationship with ourself and dull our light. Looking at our food habits offers a very physical and in your face reflection of an aspect of this tendency. It is fascinating how detailed the choices of food can get and how specific to dealing with aspects of us in the moment we wish to undermine, which shows there is an aspect of us which knows exactly what it is doing and is very deliberately making the choices. The question then to ask is: Why?

212. It is common in our world to have a facade of perfection and seek the picture perfect life but we often feel like a mess on the inside or behind closed doors. This lifestyle is not sustainable, sooner or later our facade may crack and we are left with an empty shell, feeling exhausted and beaten for chasing a life that is void of truth and love. When we let go of seeking perfection and live who we truly are, life becomes very simple, joyful and heaps of fun.

213. It is an ongoing process reflecting the way I choose to it, what and how much, which always needs refinement, the more I say Yes to my power. The moment I settle for a certain way of eating, I am plateauing, and holding back, what my body is able to let come through energetically.

214. When humanity will finally believe what Universal Medicine presents, that how we move distinguishes our everyday choices, what we think, what we crave, regarding food etc. it will change everything. Nothing ever comes out of the blue, it is always to what energy we have chosen to align that gets played out.

215. Sometimes my body acts quicker than I can consciously think. I might be at a social event where food is laid out that I would normally not buy… and before I know it those crisps or sweet goodies are in my stomach, swallowed and chewed before the word ‘no’ is uttered! Sometimes, I have a craving and I will have an inner more prolonged dialogue and it’s a do I or don’t I situation, but honestly, even getting to this stage the craving usually takes over and I cave in. There is much to question about why the cravings are there in the 1st place and why I am prepared to go through the bloating, dulling, increased adrenal response and lethargy that eating unsupportive food brings. At the end of the day, it is a form of self-abuse but one that I am very accepting of and in the moment, don’t care about. My sense in changing this is that I need to truly value, appreciate and honour the feeling of clarity, lightness and openness that can be physically felt and the word ‘no’ wouldn’t even be needed.

     1. What’s fascinating Rachel is that I’ve started to notice that my initial impulse to eat a certain food has been felt and set in motion some considerable time before I actually eat it. For example yesterday I opened the cupboard in the morning to get some oil out and and I could feel my body registering the peanut butter, even though at the time I had no interest whatsoever in eating it. However whilst washing up after dinner later that day all I could think about was eating spoonfuls of peanut butter! And this process I have noticed many times.

216. No matter how righteous or ‘good’ something looks if it doesn’t carry within it the quality of our heart, then it’s not Love.

217. Oh, I love that – ‘… appreciating the sweetness…’ inside and out and there is always a greater depth of appreciation for the sweetness that lies within and around us.

218. It truly is a science in itself the way we eat, why, what and how much we eat and the only professor in this science is our own bodies.

     1. I agree Kev – and I love the notion that ‘the only professor in this science is our own bodies.’

219. I had many eating dis-orders for the first 50 years of my life, caused by eating foods that my body couldn’t deal with, like dairy, gluten and sugar. I was never advised to remove them from my diet, but at 50 I made the choice for myself and my health improved dramatically. But there was still something going on in my body at times and it was from attending the presentations by Serge Benhayon that I began to see that on many occasions I was feeding my emotions and at other times, feeding my exhaustion. Healing these disorders is taking a little longer but well worth the commitment.

220. Good or bad, an ideal is still an ideal.

221. “For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity.” When we truly regard healthy eating in this way, it exposes the massive level of disregard we have allowed our selves to fall into, particularly in consideration of the amount of sugar, additives, colourings, hormones and chemicals added to everyday food and drink. We have not really fully understood yet the devastating effect that these things have on our finely tuned hormone and chemical systems within our bodies.

222. What a fantastic blog Gyl, I love what you share and all of us can relate.
     “It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” Gorgeous – this takes away all that unnecessary to be something and someone else. We are beautiful and the more we claim this the more our choices confirm this. A cycle of love confirming back on itself.

     1. Thank you Sam your words say exactly what I am feeling,”the more I love myself and my body the more loving will I be with the way I eat”.

223. when I feel good about myself I don’t need to eat so much so it makes sense to develop self love

     1. That is the same for me Carmel and since developing more self-love I have let go of so much that was unhealthy and not good for me. It ranged from food choices to ill behaviours, addictions and ill patterns. It was amazing, no one telling me what to do, I just knew by listening to my body as to what I needed to discard by choosing to embrace self-love. 

224. If we cannot first be honest and accept where we are at, without judgment, it is very difficult to acknowledge that we have disconnected from the truth of who we are.

     1. So true Jennym, this is so key because, without honesty, we cannot begin our evolutionary path, we just stay stuck in our wayward ways, living in misery and despair.

225. Our eating behaviours can be damaging and destructive in many cases, especially over the long term but they may simply be a reflection how we live the rest of our lives and not be a separate disorder and may simply disappear when we work on the other aspects of our lives.

226. Appearances can be deceiving but what we feel will always reveal much more.

     1. We are more than a book cover unless that is what we choose to show the world!

227. When we teach in schools about food and nutrition, we really should be discussing, at the table (excuse the pun) all the ways we use and abuse food to numb, bury or distract ourselves from what we are feeling. I am sure this would support students to become far more aware about the choices they make.

228. Everyone has a true shape- the moment we interrupt with ideals and pictures how we think we need to look like, we are dismissing the angle we are here to reflect by our body shape. We build a body that is not true but accepted in society, which gives us security and seemingly control. But the security never equals the contentment and self confidence you have by being who you really are.

229. ‘I eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness). I didn’t and at times still don’t want to feel what’s going on around me, as it means I would have to speak up and be more responsible.’ Sometimes this speaking up is directly to another or more than one person, other times it can just be a reminder to oneself. …and quite often these reminders to ourselves are crucial to our growth as a loving and responsible human being. At times we can ignore what we know is good for us and then feel horrible afterwards….feeling horrible can be a ‘good; thing because next time we can remind ourselves of that feeling and choose to go a different route- make different food choice.

230. Some of the things I used to eat people would swear blind that they were healthy and yet my body would reject them but I would persevere because they were on the must-have healthy list. I can see now that in itself is abuse.

231. ‘I now know that what I feel is not wrong and there’s nothing wrong with feeling all that I do.’ I think a lot of people will be able to relate to this as we feel so much but we tend to turn that in on ourselves; believing that it is wrong to feel certain things and that we are the ones with something wrong with us. As you have expressed, there’s nothing wrong with feeling everything that we do. It is actually a great thing.

232. There are a myriad of tantalising treats out there to eliminate feelings- from foods, exercise, certain conversations, arguments, reactions etc the list is endless. The key is that we use them to not feel.

     1. And therefore are more of a symptom than an underlying cause and changing a symptom without dealing with the underlying cause may simply shift the symptom with no benefit.

233. We are highly sensitive human beings and sensing everything in every moment however we may find ourselves in reaction to the behaviours of others, although in truth we are in reaction to Our movements, to find ourselves scoffing food and consuming alcohol in large quantities, however we don’t have to eat and drink in excess to distract and bury ourselves; eating what is regarded as a ‘healthy’ food can also be used to numb what we are feeling.

234. If I just consider the 3 words, honour, love and support and apply these to my relationship with myself I have got some great tools to review where I am at, how to deepen my commitment to life and how to feel the magic, learning and fun that is available in every interaction.

235. So many of us treat our bodies like machines without any intention to love or nourish them often totally abusing them with harmful substances or over the top fitness regimes. Even if it looks like we are eating healthily by what others deem to be a heathy way of eating, it still may not be what our body truly needs for us to keep on evolving.

236. Do we eat to support us to be who we are or do we eat to support us to be who we think we should be?

     1. Or, do we eat to ignore who we truly know our selves to be?

     2. Deepening our relationship with ourselves/life or continuing to modify ourselves to fit an arbitrary external picture?

237. Eating disorders, self-harm and any form of shutting down exists when we do not adore our body and absolutely cherish who we are. Like you’ve shared Gyl, eating disorder doesn’t mean it is just the more obvious choices but to simply overeat is already a disorder.

238. Giving up alcohol was easy, my body never liked it anyway; giving up smoking was harder, and took a few turns, but my body knew it was bad for me and supported me to give up eventually. Giving up certain foods has been more tricky, because the amount of food I eat constantly dulls my awareness and my sense of purpose is less clear. There is within me a deep knowing but there is also my recalcitrant mind which is constantly overriding the knowingness in my body and setting myself up for ‘failure’ so much so that after giving up gluten and dairy for over 13 years, I have ‘naughtily’ returned and snuck in the occasional sugar-filled, dairy laden fully glutenised cake and biscuit. My body is suffering – it is putting on weight, my nose has been blocked, and all the symptoms I have been free from are returning. Rebellion serves me not. My body is in pain and I need to stop back pedalling and allow myself to face the future, to be the future that my body knows itself to be. Life has become more challenging and instead of burying myself in food I know I need to face those challenges and pull through, let my inner light be seen in all its glory.

     1. It’s can be so easy at times to fall back into the old patterns & behaviours as they were once our ‘automatic go to’ survival techniques I know. How awesome is it Carmel that you can hear your body now where once you didn’t and your coming back to what you know your body needs where once you would have just continued eating. As Gyl shared: “It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat. Love is the answer to not only support us with our food choices but with everything.

     2. It can be easy to self-castigate and in the outplay of our actions believe we are going backwards, but what if you are simply deepening Carmel, but there is a resistance to that, for whatever reason.. and that is all? It is so important to bring in understanding for the tensions and challenges we are facing in life, deepening our love for ourselves in the appreciation of how far we have come and how much we have already learned. There is so much in you Carmel that inspires others; something in you that is so steady – a true stalwart who keeps things grounded and real but also warm and all-encompassing, inspiring trust. In this, you offer all others the potential for more in the natural beholding you bring. I am learning too and I am learning that when we allow ourselves to surrender more we can let go of the trying and the need to pull through; we can start to naturally make the choices needed when we come from a platform of tender gentleness for ourselves – from the all that we are rather than the perceptions we have of failing, being less or not good enough.

239. Isn’t if fascinating how we can be so convinced that what we are choosing and how we are living is normal and that we have no issues yet when we start to be honest and transparent we start to see that actually there are many things that are not from who we truly are and honouring this.

     1. Absolutely, that´s why it is so important, that we get and are different and true reflections, because without them, we can stay in the conviction that we feel great and nothing is wrong, as everyone is doing it. Although I have to say, whenever I was having my eating disorders there was a knowing in me, that something does not feel quite right. But the overriding of that feeling was much stronger, as the hurt underneath was too huge and unresolved.

240. We are taught to finish our food, not waste any, to sit at the table properly, have table manners and not speak with our mouth full, but we are not taught to eat in a way that is loving and supportive for our body.

     1. So true Alison. It’s like we have the cart, the harness and the horseshoes, but no horse! Put ‘learning how to eat lovingly’ in the middle of all of that and then our everyday meals become our everyday medicine.

        1. Yes we don’t realise that food can also be part of our medicine. I know if I rush my food or don’t take the care in how I cook it that it doesn’t nourish me in the same way and I either feel awful afterwards or feel I need to eat more. We underestimate how much food plays a part in either healing or harming our body.

     2. How can food ever be more important than our own well being and body?

241. You make such an important point here from your own realisation Gyl that diets and beliefs we hold about what should be healthy for us do not work and actually do us harm if we do not listen to our body for what it needs in terms of nutrition and therefore learn to understand why we sometimes feel like eating food which is not this.

242. This blog takes dieting to its truth. I remember when I first started cooking for myself after leaving home and thinking about what I should eat, what is best for me, when is simple etc. It was only when I reconnected with my body I actually found cooking very simple fun and easy and supportive for my body. The body does not work with shoulds and nor should we pun intended.

243. Recently I could sense I was not enjoying the food I was eating. It had become dull and boring. I had become rigid and disciplined and this didn’t feel good or supportive in my body. I began to let go of beliefs and ideals I had been holding in my body based on what I should or not should eat and see how that felt in my body. I noticed I was reaching out for foods that I hadn’t eaten in a while and experimented with making soups and meals on what would support my body at that time rather than come from my mind. Immediately I began to enjoy what I was eating. I am also exploring the effect of how present I am with my body when I prepare food and the quality I choose to be in when I eat knowing this has an impact on my body and the way it feels.

244. “She also helped me to realise that if I have no joy in what I eat, I’ve disconnected from my body” For some people it is very black and white and when we react to foods or are overweight we can blame the food and stop enjoy eating. But this is just as much a reaction and it can come from a feeling of guilt of having overeaten or eaten the wrong foods for so long. So eating and enjoying it is very important to me and is possible to be done without indulging in food.

245. It’s great to get to the bottom of why we eat certain foods and look more deeply at the cravings we have, I would never have said before reading this blog that I even slightly had an eating dis-order, but now if I’m honest I certainly do.

     1. What I love about this too is that it wakes me up to the responsibility we all have to raise our relationships with food, rather than stigmatising the more overt cases of eating disorders.

246. It has been so helpful to be aware of how I feel when I eat certain foods and not only that, to also be aware of the quantity of food and quality of how my food was cooked which can affect how I feel too. So, I like to check in and ask myself, do I feel light, heavy, dull or racy after I have eaten?

247. “For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.” This is a great definition of an eating disorder and if we are honest most of us could say we have some level of an eating disorder under this definition.

248. The more I listen to my body, the simpler my diet becomes, the more I recognise how we can develop serious eating disorders that don’t have the usual labels, but do make us sick, tired, numb and headachy. That to me equals an abusive eating disorder and most of the population do it on a daily basis without batting an eyelid, just as I used to before meeting Universal Medicine.

249. For every person who has found a way to be open about an eating disorder there are many who do not and who are still on a journey with it – the more who share their experiences like this the easier it is for the next person to talk about that which is often so well hidden and so on.

250. Reading your description of your eating habits I found they strike me as either very normal or better than most. This shows me what standard in eating is considered normal.

251. Recognising that beating ourselves up energetically when we eat something we feel does not support our body is a double hit – thank you for your beautiful sharing from your time with Miranda – ‘She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away’.

252. Most of us would have disordered eating, I know I do. But part of the learning here is to not self blame but to care for myself and appreciate myself even more. This is what will support me to have a more true relationship with food – with no ideals and no pictures of what it should look like.

253. Doug incredible isn’t it that we are all able to side step what is ‘in our faces to be learned’.

254. Very significant observation that you sometimes eat food that you do know doesn’t support your body, but that the answer is not forcing yourself to not eat that type of food and how with Miranda Benhayon’s support you deepened your understanding about your relationship with food, for example “to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.”
     Often in life we try to use will power to change our behaviours, yet how much wiser it is to address the underlying issues that got us to those behaviours in the first place.

255. When I first considered the thought to eat to nourish your body that meant to me to eat healthy food. Of course that is part of it but what I have come to understand is that it is about nourishing your body from a point of where it is coming from me nourishing my feelings and impulses in how it wants to be looked after and cared for. I have come to realise that this a whole other dimension that I haven’t considered in the detail you can do this for ourselves. I’m still exploring this and can see how it will always be and exploration as I grow and evolve. This has all been supported by the teachings of Universal Medicine and the depth of what we are truly capable of and that is truly our natural way of being.

256. Here here I completely agree that there is no fun or joy in following rules or knowledge or information we have picked up from outside of us. It feels completely different when we listen instead to our inner wisdom through what our bodies are telling us.

257. We don’t truly get how abusive our eating patterns are also abusive ; as you say, anorexia is more obvious but overeating and choosing certain foods that do not nourish are also abusive.

     1. We can also have an un-loving diet of empty food that can keep us thin. But, our eyes are the windows to the world, that others can also look in and see the emptiness.

     2. Great point Carmel, why do we often only choose to see more obvious abusive choices but ignore the subtler ones? It is because we think we can get away with it or is it because we as a society have accepted abuse as normal?

258. When there is no joy in what we eat, we are disconnected from our bodies, I know this one, it makes absolute sense; if eating is in any way a chore, what are we doing and how are we in that moment? Increasing our awareness of this is supportive in looking at how and what we eat and takes us away from a regimented approach to food.

     1. I found that my eating is usually a consequence of how I live during the day and not so much the other way round.

259. “It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” A beautiful recipe for life.

     1. Very cute Mary…and love is the key ingredient!

     2. It certainly is Mary and it looks like many of us have forgotten some of the most important ingredients for life, hence why we have a high rate of illness and disease in our world.

260. True pearls of wisdom from Miranda Benhayon. Thank you for sharing them Gyl. Not only a gorgeous reminder to appreciate my own sweetness but there is permission there to really enjoy the food I eat and not hold back in the expression of this area of life. I realise that I have had a cautious approach because I have had a perception of food as the enemy as something I need to nail that I continually fail to do! Great to have exposed that one!

     1. Michelle there would be so many women who consider food to be ‘the enemy’, which makes me wonder how the body feels when it eats what is perceived as ‘the enemy’.

        1. It’s really interesting how subtle this perception can be – great food for thought! You have reminded me once again how important it is to treat the whole package of food with integrity – from how we plan our menus, to how we shop, how we cook and how we eat.

        2. For me my meal times have become a time to deeply honour my body and the process begins when I am in the shop choosing what to buy, how I select the food that I do, how I store it, how I cook it, the tray that I lay out to carry my food to the other end of the flat, The fact that I avoid chipped crockery, the cushion that i sit on to eat, the way that I eat and the way that I clear up. I truly feel that I am worth it, whereas before food was something that I ‘got inside me’ with no regard as to how it did.

        3. Again a gorgeous reminder that in every moment we are worth taking care of ourselves and that we can enjoy and celebrate the detail.

261. It will be great when we have zero pictures of what health ‘should’ be like but instead come from how we feel within, as you say we can ‘look’ a picture of health but how we actually feel about ourselves and what goes on behind closed doors can be far from it.

     1. There is makeup that is meant to cover up the dark lines under our eyes. Are we using our face as a canvas to the outside world of the picture we have created within our head?

262. This is really interesting; ‘I eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness).’ It feels supportive to know this and to work on allowing ourselves to feel what is going on and to work on not trying to dull our sensitivity.

263. Most of us seem to have lost our natural ability to discern what food to eat, the quantity and quality. I feel this is due to the fact that we have lost our natural way with ourselves, our loving way.

264. I love your honesty Gyl and you made me understand that eating disorders are not just anorexia and bulimia but pretty much everything we eat that in truth our bodies aren’t asking for. I would never have even considered before reading this that I have an eating disorder, but I feel the time has come to re-asses my relationship with food once again.

     1. Our relationship with food is like every relationship we have with our body – ongoing and refining. This exposes to question if I am deepening my relationship with myself in every area of my life or only in those areas that suits?!

265. It is also so easy to hide our personal confrontation with food. Could it be our little secret that keeps it a need?

266. ‘I could listen to, nourish, and honour my body; or I could keep on abusing myself.’ – when we commit to really understanding and listening to our own bodies, and treat them more lovingly, so we start to feel and see more of the many ways that we dismiss or deny the truth of what they’re reflecting back to us. The fact that we are constantly making choices becomes more apparent, and that what we’ve always lived and done, doesn’t have to set the tone for our future choices. We are constantly re-setting the quality of our next movement and moment, through our moment to moment choices.

267. Allowing my body to guide me as to what to eat, when and how has brought significant shifts in my health, making me realise that much of what I used to consider was food is in fact extremely toxic for me.

268. Thank you Gyl for expanding the currently held view on eating disorders, it is a big topic for many.

269. So refreshing to read that there is another way to share and talk about eating dis-orders. It is pretty common to think of all the ways we eat in order to avoid nourishing and evolution in the body.

270. It really does feel totally different when we prepare and cook our food lovingly and take the time to connect before we eat.

271. Gyl, this is really beautiful, thank you for sharing it; ‘She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.’

272. I have noticed a tendency to want to eat when I am with my immediate family and although the food that I eat is no different to what I would eat if I was by myself, I am aware that I feel that eating when I’m with them is, in some way a kind of a crutch that doesn’t allow me to stand fully stripped bare when I’m with them. There’s definitely something going on for me to look at there.

273. If you pardon the pun there is such food for thought in this blog, particularly the relating sweet cravings to a lack of appreciation of our own sweetness. I am learning to not beat myself up over my food choices and instead to read the situation, as in what am I avoiding feeling, what truth am I avoiding reading. I have a few major challenges in my life at present and sometimes the overwhelm gets medicated with food.

     1. Oh! I can so relate to what you have shared Carmel. And the not beating yourself up for the food choices you have made is so important otherwise the beating up becomes the ‘next’ reason for eating more and so the cycle continues. Being able to ‘stop’ ourselves first, before reaching for the comfort food and simply asking ourselves what’s going on, why are you wanting that, what don’t you want to feel or what’s hurting. If we can get to that why that’s a huge step forward to stopping ourselves from medicating. And if you still eat the comfort food, well so be it next time however you may be able to stop and then not have it. It’s important to allow ourselves space for making more loving choices.

274. I think you’d be hard pushed to find many people who have a true relationship with food. Most of us are embroiled in some kind of needy relationship with food. A pushing and a pulling and a rather jumbled relationship that lacks clear boundaries and understanding.

     1. Absolutely Alexis. If we were all honest we would share that most days we over eat or eat things that dull or numb our bodies, knowing that when we do this it isn’t healthy and then either go into denial about it or feel guilty for doing so.. perhaps prompting us to eat more to deal with the tension!

     2. I have to agree with you there Alexis. Even if we have a ‘heathy’ diet. We have lots of ideals and beliefs around food, then there is the need to use food to numb and dull what we feel, whether it be with what we eat or how we eat, such as overeating. It even gives us a sense of relief from the tension of everyday life. Our relationship with food however is a simple reflection of how we are with ourselves.

275. I love this line Gyl – ‘It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.’ This makes so much sense.

276. Like with anything else it is only the extreme cases that are seen as an issue; if we are functional in society then it doesn’t get addressed.

     1. Functional is a very apt way to describe how most of us walk through life, usually without even realising it. Being functional allows us to operate under the radar and continue living in a convenient comfort that doesn’t rock the boat. It’s not until the storm hits and threatens to capsize the boat that we are faced with a choice: either cower below in the cabin and blame the storm or rise up and take responsibility for the fact that operating under the radar is what put us out to sea in the first place.

277. Food and what we ‘should’ eat is absolutely riddled with pictures, theories and philosophies and despite knowing this cognitively, I still fell into eating in a way that was governed by a belief. The belief was that I thought that the less a person ate, the more evolved they were and conversely, the more that a person ate, the more energetically dense they were. This belief was firmly fixed in my body and infiltrated my thoughts and my behaviour around food, making it nigh on impossible to feel the truth of what and when to eat. Even though I have a lot of awareness around this belief, I am also aware that is still influencing my choices to a certain degree.

278. Serge Benhayon’s presentations opened my eyes to being more aware of the body and the wisdom of communications it constantly offers to us. Having been a ‘serial dieter’ for the majority of my life before meeting Serge, it was a revelation to discover that by stopping dieting and simply bringing more awareness to the finer details of self love,-care and nurturing of myself – very strong sugar cravings completely disappeared – there was no giving up of sugar required, the need for sugar just disappeared.

279. ‘I ate a so-called good diet, but the truth is, you can still abuse yourself and have an eating dis-order with healthy food.’ Now that’s a real myth buster! Over eating the healthy stuff is still overeating. It can cause bloating, lethargy and sleepiness… this is still abusive to the body.

     1. I don’t think many people are aware that overeating is a form of self-abuse but when we understand what love is, we will also understand what is abuse.

280. When we can feel the adverse effect on our body, that certain items present to us as a side effect, that we put in our body, we have a choice: is a moment of the savouring the silky smooth sensation of say chocolate, worth the headache from the sugar overload. Our body is fantastic at telling us what it needs and what is not needed if we are willing to listen!

281. “For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve” – this changes everything. The way we use food these days is nothing but this. Food has turned into this all-round substitute for all things we are not giving ourselves otherwise, from a simple source of building and maintaining a healthy physical body.

282. Gyl thank you. Your blog really resonated with me. I too had an eating disorder earlier in life, fuelled by my self loathing and lack of self worth. I became obsessive about foods and controlled what I ate to the nth degree. It was also my way of showing that when I was upset or hurt, I turned it on myself, by getting thinner was my of letting the world know I was hurting. Although I had already stopped the denial of food when I started listening to the presentations of Serge Benhayon, the cause of disordered eating lingered in my body which subtly influenced my relationship with food. Understanding, like you, from Serge’s presentations that it is how I shop, what I choose to buy, how I prepare and eat my food.. in a loving nurturing way was a revelatory turning point for me and from which my self abused body, which was reacting to most foods, has responded beautifully and as I heal my hurts and accept myself, so too is my body rebalancing and accepting and being nourished by the food I eat.

283. This is so very beautiful to read. You make loving oneself as simple as breathing.

284. I can honestly say that I love pretty much everything that I put in my mouth because I eat what my body asks to eat. Sure there are times when I am depleted and calling out for a sugar hit, but most of the time I eat what my body asks for, knowing that what it is asking for will support it in some way.

285. Gyl, I only can agree to what you have shared in you honest blog: “to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.” It is worth to give it a try instead of using other not so healthy and useful diet tips.

286. I agree we cannot will ourselves to change our diet and expect that our addiction to certain foods will go away. Our poor dietary choices are the symptom and not the cause and often it all comes down to the fact that we deliberately eat to not be aware rather than eat in a way that supports and enhances our awareness.
     Why would we not want to be more aware? Because the moment we register a certain degree of awareness, we immediately register the degree to which we are responsible for doing something with it and this often then exposes the exact degree of comfort we choose to live in. Unless we are willing to truly renounce this lower energetic vibration and dive deeper into the higher vibration we are all constantly being pulled towards, we will keep reaching for foods that make us feel dense, racy, dull and damp so we can continue with our surface existence and do not feel the undeniable strength of the flame of love that lives deep in our inner hearts and so commit to living it. It is never about food, it is always about vibration.

     1. Put simply – we seek density to avoid light.

        1. Absolutely, Liane, “It is never about food, it is always about vibration.” Choosing to eat in such a way that vibration is all but wiped out and completely obliterated, putting us into a straight jacket of denial that demands the belief we live in a solid world of five senses and proving it so by eating ourselves into denseness and contraction.

     2. Brilliantly said Liane, and spot on.

287. “For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.”

     By this definition, the majority of the world’s population, particularly in the West, has an ‘eating disorder’ we do not want to admit to, further more explore what it is we are actually fighting when we treat ourselves this way.

     1. Wow, that is very interesting Doug. What a blessing that you have found the cause and committed to deeply loving yourself and stopped eating the very food that was causing the irritable bowel syndrome for 30 years.

288. Nothing more illusionary than control. Same quality; better presentation.

289. The expression that when you are offered a sweet treat and you decline and say ‘no thanks I am sweet enough’ comes to mind after reading this. It confirms what you share and the deep down we know that is the answer…cultivate our own sweetness so we no longer need it from the outside world.

     1. Thank you Sarah Flenley – how much truth there is in that short phrase that is often sneered at as being cliche. Really connecting to the sweetness and preciousness inside is so much easier when we have experienced this delicacy in our own bodies through something like Esoteric Connective Tissue Therapy or even just being with someone who expresses the exquisiteness of grace in their movements and we are open to receiving the inspiration that they bring.

290. “It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” …… so true Gyl ‘love’ is the answer.

291. I have totally experienced the dropping away of wanting sweet things when I am more loving with myself and others and it is always a sign I am needing to deepen my appreciation when I start eating foods that are guaranteed to make me racy and less able to feel.

292. It’s true we have a habit of looking at the extremes in this world and using them to classify what’s ‘well’. Understood like this, the majority of us could be said to have eating disorders because essentially we are consuming food with unresolved emotions underneath.

293. We have a picture of what an eating disorder is. Someone too fat or thin – but this sharing really exposes how a dis-order is anything unloving and anti evolutionary. I too am a sucker for the sweet. But I love what is shared here about appreciating our own sweetness first.

294. ‘…I was still eating from what and how much I thought I ‘should’ eat based on outside beliefs and comparing myself to other people, so even though, yes, I was eating a healthier diet, and making self-loving steps here, it came from knowledge, a disconnection to my body, not listening to and honouring my body.’ Breaking through the consciousness of knowledge into simply being impulsed from the wisdom in your body is a very hard one to crack. When we have a problem the first go to is outside of ourselves – seeking the answer through what is known rather than surrendering more deeply to the body and finding the answer there. To be honest the consciousness of knowledge is in everything I do and I am only really beginning to acknowledge that it is time to pay more attention to it and to investigate what surrendering to my body and listening to it really means.

295. The more we appreciate our inner qualities the more we will eat accordingly.

296. Sweetness certainly isn’t something that was nurtured in me as a child nor lived as a reflection by anyone around me. However, reading your article, Gyl, has brought back a feeling in me from when I was a toddler – a baby even – of such gorgeous sweetness and beauty and I can suddenly feel deep within that this sweetness and beauty is still there laying dormant. This is quite an unveiling for me as I realise I have kept my sweetness and beauty hidden and buried under many, many layers and for so long that I almost had myself fooled into believing it was gone for good. The amount of sugar I have consumed over the years has been an empty attempt to stifle the craving of a sweetness and beauty that cannot be sugar-coated or consumed as it is a livingness from within. Your blog has touched me and my sweetness and beauty deeply and for this I thank you.

297. I saw a presentation recently by Tanya Curtis where she was talking about disordered eating rather than an eating disorder. This depersonalises our behaviour and our relationship with food. We don’t have issues with food, but the way we eat shows us what we are not wanting to address in life

298. Bingo, Richard! ‘When we experience joy, we are really on to something.’ I have experienced moments of joy that so confirm this. These moments of joy also confirm for me two more things:

     1) that joy in all aspects of life is sorely lacking and
     2) that every step I take towards re-establishing this joy in my body is worth more to me than all the tea in China

299. ‘For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.’ I ate for comfort, ate more and more and put on loads of weight. As I started refining my diet, stopping alcohol, gluten and dairy, the weight dropped off, but recently it has gone up again. I’ve had a challenging year and returned to comfort eating instead of being more self loving. I like the idea of honouring sweetness within as a way to let go of the cravings for sugary foods.

300. Thank you for exploring how our relationship with food is a reflection of our relationship with ourselves and the more loving the latter is will then be evident in how we are with food.

301. Thanks for sharing this ‘it is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away. She also helped me to realise that if I have no joy in what I eat’ I don’t think I have ever felt or have joy in what I eat but to be honest this brings it to joy in my whole life and do I truly allow and embrace this! My understanding is that if I deny myself of a food the actual denial is far worse than having the food. All in all as with everything it comes down to how much do I truly love me.

302. “It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” Perhaps the greatest recipe to resolve eating disorders and perhaps even more?

     1. Love is the best ingredient in everything we do and are and being reminded of this today is so supportive for me. Thank you Gyl.

        1. Love transforms anything and everything it touches.

        2. Love is the Master Healer.

303. Eating for function and eating to nurture and nourish oneself are worlds apart requiring one to ask different questions of what, how and why one chooses the foods one has, which then impacts upon one’s whole lifestyle and that is very healing.

     1. ‘Eating for function and eating to nurture and nourish oneself….’ I, for one, was completely unaware that one does not equate the other until Serge Benhayon came along. The understanding I now have of the difference between the two is indeed ‘worlds apart’ and what is considered by most of society as the norm in the abusive way we consume food and drink is a dis-order being reflected back to us in the overall lack of true health and well-being lived by humanity the world over.

        1. Once one starts to eat to nurture and nourish rather than for function it is quite astonishing as one comes to realise how much of the food and diets that are presented as being healthy are actually detrimental to one’s wellbeing and therefore abusive to the body.

304. To most people I have what would be considered as a healthy diet. But I know that how, when and where I eat sometimes isn’t healthy and certainly not joyful. Reading this was a great reminder that it’s ok to be sensitive and feel whats going on. And more than ok to be responsible.

305. Our intentions in our food choices determine what and how we eat and the effects that it will have on us. Great to read this blog which shares so simply the way in which we are influenced by beliefs and pictures from outside of us of how and what we should eat and how the answers which truly serve us are available from inside when we listen to our own body. Thanks, Gyl.

306. “It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” Now that is simple. Love it!

307. “For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity” This is a new way to look at an eating dis-order. Many of us would then fit into that category…. I love Miranda Benhayon’s suggestion to find the sweetness within to curb your sweet tooth – something I am going to apply to myself as mine is back with a vengeance!

308. When I began to listen to my body, finally after many years of continuously feeling un-well, there were certain foods that I realised it couldn’t tolerate. My body had patiently been showing me this through a raft of symptoms, most of which I either could not decipher or I ignored. Even though the changes in my health and well-being were amazing once I removed these foods, I could feel there were several pieces of my eating puzzle still missing. These pieces I have finally discovered, and they are; what I eat, why I eat, how I prepare my food and how I eat. To me it’s the science of eating, a science that should be part of every child’s education.

     1. Loving this, Ingrid, “To me it’s the science of eating, a science that should be part of every child’s education.” Right up there with learning the abc’s.

309. Appreciation is the total opposite to bludgeoning ourselves hard with our thoughts and making ourselves miserable. It truly works wonders for how we feel about ourselves and others.

310. We don’t realise how much we can use food to be abusive to ourselves, but as Miranda Benhayon has shown if there is no love in our body, if we are not loving with ourselves, then it makes sense that we will seek it else where, and food offers us that comfort and distraction from what we are really avoiding. I used to love sweet things and still do, but I know when I am seeking them I am using them to dull down my awareness of how amazing I feel.

311. As with many things in life we have learned to determine what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for us from information we gather from outside of us. Yet we have the absolute best advisor right here with us at all times, our own body.

312. There is much for each of us to discover in our relationship with food, a journey I am still on everyday. The only true advise comes from our own body and it communicates so clearly about everything I eat. When I get it ‘right’ as in eat in a way that my body needs me to eat it answers by giving me this really warm yummy feeling.

313. Serge presents what foods are stimulating – racy, dulling, damping etc. The difference to what else is presented via knowledge and what Serge presents is that he is presenting what he has lived from his body. Connect to your body and you will feel what it needs and does not. “I ate for pure function, not to nourish, love, deeply care for and nurture myself.”

314. We are bombarded with information and with salesmanship of what is good for us. One but needs to read the contents of any packaged food, I have found that if I need Google to define some of the ingredients, it’s not worth putting it in my body! And, if it looks like a short story it is not even read. Have you noticed that it is a requirement to list what is in a product in most countries, but is there no requirement for the print size?

315. Your article makes me wonder whether an eating dis-order might be a sign of how we handle being in this world, another way we try to shut out, keep at bay, sweeten or dull what is in fact unpalatable and does not feel right.

316. I relate to much of what you share Gyl – and thank you for that sharing and your exceptional honesty. I too am at the phase you describe – having come a long way with my relationship with my body and food, I can still feel the regimentation that creeps in, and experience blow-outs. It’s wonderful to know these are merely signs to go deeper with my relationship with my body, and my being.

317. I love feeling joy in what I eat, it is not from shoulds or should nots, but purely from a connection with what the body needs.
     Sometimes I run into a situation with busy lifestyle, that I cannot always eat what I want. Even if I prepared my favorite foods and take it with me, there may not be a microwave around to heat it up or a chair and table to sit down, so I learn to surrender. It is absolutely imperfect but I would love to explore more and more the relationship I have with my body. Sometimes there is no relationship, and I want to control based on beliefs as a reaction towards not feeling my absolute worth, but it doesn’t go on for long, because being in contact with my being deeply is really too lovely to ignore.

318. That makes complete sense to me. Connections and conversations like you had with Miranda is all the sweetness we need.

319. Knowing that what you’re feeling is not wrong, and that it’s okay to feel everything with the rawness and awareness that you do.. an awesome confirmation of how much we do know, about everything – and the depth that we can then bring to all our relationships and connections, simply by being who we are and expressing what we can feel and observe.

320. Our attitude and relationship with food has equally an impact on the body as the foods themselves.

321. Developing a relationship with myself let alone food wasn’t anything I had ever considered nor ever wanted to approach. However, since meeting Serge Benhayon and attending Universal Medicine events I too have opened up and now enjoy a healthy relationship with my self and with food. And it’s something that is deepen every day as the deeper we connect with ourselves, the more loving we become with our choices of what and when and how to eat.

322. “I was never truly educated, told the truth, or asked to listen to my body and feel what I needed to eat.” A truth that resides the world over but one that can now be transmuted through the loving work of Universal Medicine, Serge and Miranda Benhayon. The tender, wise wisdom that this couple live and share with all who grace their business is deeply changing the way we love and care for our selves, as you have shared here Gyl, of many who continue to resurrect simplicity and truth to our way of living.

323. ‘to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.’ I know this to be true for myself and it is so simple but it doesn’t happen just like that – well it hasn’t for me. From childhood I would dismiss myself as being sweet as often it was said with no integrity and it could come as a put down often hiding jealousy. I also associated it with certain grown ups and children who used a false sweetness to manipulate others and there was also an inference among some that sweetness equals weakness.. Allowing myself to accept the possibility that when someone said I was sweet, it was not only a compliment but true in the nicest sense of the word started the change. Also having treatments in Esoteric breast Massage and Esoteric Connective Tissue brought me in touch with my own sweetness and delicacy. I feel I have more to explore with the quality of sweetness in and around me and in recognising it in others – so thank you for this nudge into a deeper and more expansive sweetness.

     1. elainearthey reading your comment has helped me to remember how I perceived sweetness too. ‘You’re so sweet’ was sometimes used as a way to say ‘you’re such a goodie’ or ‘you’re weak or less’. How bastardised we have used sweetness to mean less than what it truly is. Just this week someone said to me ‘you’re so sweet’ and to start with I had a little shudder from past experiences of using this word but then I felt me and what I had done and I accepted that yes I am sweet.

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