Eat it like you mean it!

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icecream-on-purpose-billie-gaura-100-year-body-zerotofortyI’ve talked about hitting an (over)weight wall and knowing I couldn’t go another day the same way I had for years and years, encased in 100+ extra pounds and an equal amount of self-loathing, the same way other women in my family had for years and years. I was READY to change the course of my life, and the lives of my ladybugs, and I was ready, finally, to do whatever it took. Seriously! #WhateverItTook

I stayed determined and shed 100 pounds in less than six months. Since then, I have stayed the course, becoming solid in my new normal with a new body (and even shedding more pounds, hitting my dreamiest health goal EVER), fiercely determined to live 100 healthy years! And now I have the pleasure of coaching others to reach their health goals and helping them create 100 year bodies, too.

So, I’ve dropped 114 pounds, GONE, and it’s no secret I’m a fan of super foods, KALE, and living a Nutritarian lifestyle . . . so, after breaking addictions to fat, salts, and sugars, would you ever believe I indulge in those very foods occasionally? When it comes to breaking addictions to street or prescription drugs and alcohol, it is recommended you stay away and stay “sober” for the REST of your life. As soon as one of those substances passes over your lips, you are walking in the very dangerous land of relapse. So, how does that work when it comes to food addictions? Can a former food addict navigate that space without throwing all of their progress away or “falling off the wagon,” or diving head first into a vat of potato chips or hot wings or pizza or ICE CREAM.

I keep what I call a “later list,” items that don’t rate very high on the nutrition side of things, but that I know at some point I will choose to indulge in. Someone recently asked me how food can be so good and so evil at the same time. Food isn’t evil; food isn’t the culprit for our unhealthy ways . . . it’s the way we choose to ingest it that can fuel us to be strong, healthy and unstoppable or wreak havoc on our bodies and our health.

Enter Ben & Jerry’s Cinnamon Buns ice cream, which had been on my “later list” for a couple of months before nibbling on some last week. As I had suspected, it was insanely splendid. I had scheduled it for Monday night. I cleared my space, sat with my spoon, and I enjoyed every single flavor, every single bite, one-by-one. I ate with full intention. Ice cream on purpose. Ice cream like I meant it. I’m pretty sure I even made some dirty sounds. Yummmmmm! 

The only way to navigate these moments successfully, and your “later list,” is to eat with full intention. When you are going to consume something that is not amazing for you—and only when you are at your goal weight, and only when it’s planned, and not in a moment of weakness—you should enjoy every living minute of it.

Of course this was absolutely not connected to any celebration, because I will never again intersect experiences and celebrations with food. Why did I eat the ice cream? Because I chose it, and it was strictly about the ice cream. It was not about telling myself that I deserved it, or that I had earned it. Nor did I have it because it was my birthday, nor anyone else’s (because celebrating another year of healthy life with unhealthy food is straight up stupid), or because I was hanging out with friends who were eating it, or because I was watching a movie, or because I was upset. All of those things are truly silly reasons to eat ice cream (or anything else laden with sugar, salt and fat). People do and pretend they’re doing those things when really there indulging in sugar salt and fat. When you decide to indulge in sugar, salt and fat, make it 100%, a direct hit between the eyes, intentional.

Ice cream on purpose. Full sugar, salt and fat. Zero guilt. It will be quite some time before I choose this item again, and in the mean time, I know that my happy little body will migrate right back to it’s healthy number of 124 because it knows what to do. It knows where it belongs and it knows how to get there. And as I head back to my high nutrient foods, I am completely looking forward to the clean, flavorful bites of that which serve me and keep me ALIVE in a life a love.

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