Yesterday's coaching session had my crying, which was very unexpected. I was sharing with Teri (my wonderful coach and colleague) about what I've been gaining by listening to Amy Porterfield's new podcast, Talking Body. 

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but girl, if you haven't tuned in yet to her podcast, I suggest you do. It is amazing. I may be biased though since I am a student of hers and now belong to her membership, Momentum. But...I would like to say even if I didn't know the host, I would still be affected as I am by what she shares on her podcast

Anyways, Amy dives into her own relationship with her body and interviews women around the globe, experts and just normal people about how they view their body and the steps they've taken to accept what they look like, even when their bodies may not be what society deems as beautiful.

Her big question is very similar to mine...can I love my body and still want to change it? Are the two contradictory or is it indeed...

I am learning more and more about Intuitive Eating and I love it! There is just so much- I feel like this whole new world has been opened up to me.

Today,  I watched Beth Danowsky Basham who hosts a FB group that I belong to. She addressed some of the fears that I have about intuitive eating, including gaining a crazy amount of weight and not being able to trust my body.

When it comes down to it, I have a hard time buying into the whole concept because I haven't had success with knowing when I was full. I'm afraid that I won't be able to stop eating.

Beth talked about this and she made a valid point. Basically, we can only eat so much ice-cream. Eventually, we would get sick of it. 

And she talked about what I already know as far as our body would start craving food that would balance out the fat and sugar that the ice-cream provided. 

This is what I need to trust. I need to trust that my body will crave what it needs. That it will tell me what I need.

And the...

I had my second week of coaching this week and it only lasted half the time. I've been working my way through The Intuitive Eating Guide to Recovery and so I shared with Teri what I've been learning. 

This book makes sense, for real! It is exactly how I imagine that freedom from diets looks like, but more importantly what it will feel like. 

No calorie counting, no tracking, no pre-occupation with the nutritional level of foods. This is what I want. 

Every few months in my journal (not my food journal, but my "this is what's going on and what I need to work through" journal), I write out where I see my life going. I place myself ten years into the future and I write how old I'll be and how old my children will be. I then talk about how my life looks.

This is my vision, my dreams. My goals. This is where I see my future self. Someday I'll share it with you. But for now, I want you to know that it is freedom I desire. 

I sometimes feel that my desire to be thin or...

I want out! I want to escape the diet culture that I've been trapped in since as long as I can remember. It's suffocating and it definitely doesn't serve me. 

It's kept me hating my body and makes me cry when my clothes don't fit me or when I look in the mirror and see the flabs of skin flopping over my jeans. I see my thighs toughing or feel the skin of them go up and down when I'm jogging in the pool. I look in the sideview mirror and see the flab hanging from my upper arms. I really d hate my body even though I try to convince myself otherwise.

It's carried my six beautiful children and housed them until they entered the world. It supports me every day to do all the things I do. I've trained it and nourished it to get me through 3 1/2 half marathons, countless fun runs, and all the different sports I got into over the years.

In my rational mind, I know that it's a good body. But for some reason, I connect my worth to my appearance. I allow it to dictate how I feel each day...

A few years ago, I belonged to a weight loss group called TOPS (ever hear of it? there are chapters all over the world!) and I recall one of the members, an older lady perhaps in her 70s, share that she thought at her age, weight wouldn't be such an issue for her. In her younger years, she had tried many diets and had always figured there would be a day where she could just live her life, unconcerned about how calories would affect her and even if she still had extra weight on her, it wouldn't preoccupy her thoughts as it still did.

I have to say, I think the same thing. I'm 44 and I have always held this thought (ahem, fantasy!) that someday I could also be happy with my weight and not have to put so much effort into managing it. Of course in my fantasy, I am thin and fit, but I should hope that even if I'm not, I can grow to love my body just as it is. While still moving it and choosing healthier options to nourish it.

But right now, I'm not happy with it. See, in 2011, I started...