What are you feeding yourself?

Food is one of my favourite topics. Ask anyone close to me, I can talk about it all day everyday. From healthy to hearty, sweet to savoury. You name it - I can talk about it. My relationship with food has been a journey itself over the last few years, learning what works for my body to fuel it best for performance and general energy (self care), and what doesn’t necessarily fuel it well but I’ll still have from time to time because #treatyoself (self indulgence).

I listened to this amazing podcast of Jay Shetty’s where he talks about the difference between self care and self indulgence in our lives. I think we often get the two confused but an example of self care is like saying no to plans when you need down time and staying in with a good book and face mask. Self indulgence however might be ignoring your problems because you had a,“poor me” day and drinking a bottle of vodka and block of chocolate to block out any sort of feels.

I did a quick analysis of my life (quick because nobody has time for a full analysis on my life trust me), and I found a couple of places I was masking emotion with pure self indulgence - particularly chocolate (have you tried white chocolate twix???) and alcohol. I decided to do a bit of a challenge for myself to stop picking up the twix and glass "just because" and simply face what emotions I’m hiding from with those “fixes”. I'm two weeks in and feel great physically but that’s not what this is about.. The point of this exercise was to get me to stop and think before I put something in my body and be more conscious. But it begs the question... what about our minds? Society puts so much emphasis on what we feed our bodies and what we look like, but what about what we are feeding our souls? Have we stopped to do an emotional stock take of the people and things we surround ourselves with to see if they are actually helping us grow, or if we need to build an intolerance to them like every basic white girl has with gluten and shed the excess weight?

This is something I know I’m going to be shifting my focus to and I encourage you to do the same. Take a look at your friendship fridge (just go with me here) and see who and what is serving us and who isn’t. Remember you might be serving them, topping them up and feeding their soul (or perhaps ego) but it doesn’t mean it works both ways... If someone isn’t making us feel good and full of energy rather than drained of it, maybe it’s time to cull or at least move it to the side and make space for nutritious, delicious soul food. I’m not saying it’s easy, we all love our indulgences and I agree sometimes they feel like they fall into the self care category because in the moment they make us feel so good. They give us that high, but is it worth that crash after? If yes.. then you do you.. but if not.. you know what to do. 

And finally.. in the same way look at those people and activities that make you feel absolutely amazing - put them where they belong, on the top shelf.  Place them where you can see them and focus on those relationships or activities that give you a bit more of a healthy high. Mainly that relationship with yourself, because trust me - you’re top shelf quality.