How do you think food, love and gut feelings are connected?  Well, the reality is that how you eat is how you live your life. The way you eat affects everything in your life: relationships, love, self-talk, beliefs and your energy level.

For example, chaotic erratic eating, like in case of eating disorders always bring a chaotic and erratic life. Avoiding certain foods means avoiding something else in your life which is bigger than food: feelings, emotions, responsibilities, certain people or certain situations.

Let’s see how food and love are connected? Simply you can put it like this: abusing food is denying self-love and promoting self-hatred.  People with anorexia deny the self (their life and love); they have extreme fears and self -hatred.

People with bulimia and binge eating also hate themselves. They have too much pain and feelings of guilt and shame (which is all opposite to love).

People who are on constant diets also deny some or many aspects of their love which make them feel very sensitive, unstable, moody and unsafe.

People who constantly overeat (binge eaters and compulsive overeaters) – associate their love with food and eating. For most of them love is food and other forms of love for them become non-existent.

Unless people become aware of what and how they eat, they will remain victims of their obsessions and will never know what love is.

Now let’s look at the relationship between eating and gut feelings.  The gut has its own mind with up to 500 million nerve cells and 100 million neurons in the gut. The gut remembers everything, what you ate, when you ate and in connection to what feelings and emotions you ate and how.

An eating disorder can start from you being upset once and wanting to calm yourself down so you ate. The eating gave a temporary emotional relieve. Your gut remembers this episode and since that time you continued to use food to “make yourself feel good”.  Every time you binge, you lose control and just let go.  These feelings are addictive and very soon you find yourself consumed by a food addiction.

Your gut feelings are supposed to protect you by sending you messages (intuitive voices) but your body stop listening or maybe your gut just shut itself down when you started abusing food. Intuitive feelings stop working also.  That’s why people with eating disorders often find themselves in situations which are uncomfortable and chaotic.

Obsessive eaters, anorexics and bulimics stop hearing the voice of their own selves and stop being connected with there own selves. The only voice they can hear is the voice of their food obsession which tells them only about bad things.

To start hearing their own voice again (the voice of their gut and intuition) people should become aware of how they eat and realize that the way they eat affects their intuition. Then they should try to discern the voices: their own intuitive voice from the rotten voice of their eating disorder. In order to return your intuitive voice you should listen and follow just your own intuitive voice and ignore the ED voice.

Here are the steps:

1. Accept that the way you eat affects your whole life.
2. Find out what it is that you are trying to avoid by abusing food (are these emotions, feelings, people or situations)?
3. Ask yourself: what is my true love? What do I really want in life?
4. Meditate and during meditation ask “Who am I? What do I want?”
5. Identify your own intuitive voice: it is a soft, kind, gentle and positive voice.  Listen to it.

 Freedom from food obsession comes when you realize who you are. When you realize that you are higher than food and that food is only the sustenance to support your body and your body is the temple for your beautiful soul – then you will see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Loving your soul, listening to your intuitive voice and connecting to your higher self, is the way to recovery and the way to live life. Read more go to http://www.womenhealthsite.com/

Most of media sources put on their covers images of skinny emancipated females. Doing this they influence the subconscious mind of the masses. And women continue to spend their money trying to achieve this unattainable look they constantly see in media advertising.To try and solve this problem let’s answer the next questions.

1. What is body image?
2. What kind of trends in the media industry are we noticing now?
3. How do the media influence our perception of body image?
4. What could be the reasons behind this?
5. What are the consequences of this kind of trend?
6. What are some real suggestions on how to improve your body image? Your body image is how you perceive, think and feel about your body.

This may have no bearing at all on your actual appearance. For instance, it is common in Western nations for women to believe they are larger and fatter than they really are.

Only one in five women is satisfied with their body weight. Nearly half of all normal weight women overestimate their size and shape. A distorted body image can lead to self-destructive behavior, like dieting or eating disorders.

Approximately nine out of 10 young Australian women have dieted at least once in their lives. So, the basic trend in the media industry at the moment is to promote slim, even skinny unnatural looking women’s bodies as being beautiful.Women of all ages but especially young women look at magazines, TV, movies and other media products full of images that show skinny women’s bodies. And these are perceived by the subconscious mind of young women as being a role model to follow and aspire to be like.

Achieving this skinny look does not come naturally; it inevitably leads to practicing some kind of dieting, excessive exercising or abnormal eating behaviors. Twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8 per cent less than the average woman—but today’s models weigh 23 per cent less. Advertisers believe that thin models sell products.

When the Australian magazine New Woman recently included a picture of a heavy-set model on its cover, it received a truckload of letters from grateful readers praising the move. But its advertisers complained and the magazine returned to featuring bone-thin models. What could be the reason behind all this? Why has this fashion trend occurred now?

Why are standards of beauty being imposed on women, the majority of whom are naturally larger than any of the models?

The reasons for this according to some analysts, is an economic one. By presenting an ideal look which is difficult to achieve and maintain the cosmetic and diet product industries are assured of growth and profits. It is estimated that the diet industry alone is worth $100 billion (U.S.) a year. This is a lot of money and certainly worth their while to continue to foster emancipated women as being the norm.And the consequences of this trend are huge. On the one hand, women who are insecure about their bodies are more likely to buy beauty products, new clothes, and diet pills or other diet supplies.

On the other hand, research indicates that exposure to images of thin, young, air-brushed female bodies is linked to depression, loss of self-esteem and the development of unhealthy eating habits in women and girls.

The level of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia are increasing rapidly every year. It is estimated that around 5 per cent of women and 1 percent of men have an eating disorders like anorexia or bulimia or binge eating some time in their life.And about 15 per cent of all young women have significantly distorted eating attitudes and behavior that can lead to developing anorexia or bulimia in the near future.

So, what would be some real suggestions on how to improve your body image without resorting to unhealthy eating habits?

The First one is to change your goal from weight loss to just improving your health.
Second, is to focus more the internal beauty like improving your self-esteem, self-confidence and internal strengths of your character.

Get informed by reading up on body image issues and self-improvement books. And give yourself a break from women’s magazines and the mass media advertising for a while if you feel you maybe prone to this kind of false perceptions.

To sum up, the media does impact on women’s body image significantly and it can affect women’s physical and mental health in a negative way. And the only way to stop these negative effects coming from the media is to teach women not to judge themselves by the beauty industry’s standards and learn not to compare themselves to the cover girls.

Also it is important to promote a healthy life style with emphasis on internal beauty like improving self-esteem and self-confidence. Not on being a stick like model.

Dr Irina Webster.

http://www.eatingdisorder-cure.com