Eating well is a form of self-respect

Tell me what you eat, and I tell you how much respect you have for yourself and for this planet (which is actually the same thing).

So many people know (in theory) that sugar, artificial sweeteners and processed foods in general are not good for them. Yet they still keep on consuming those. My role as a Mind-Body-Nutrition Coach is not merely to give them more arguments why those edible food products are bad, or to ask them to use their will power to not eat them. Rather, it’s to look at the very source of WHY they cannot seem to stop putting something known
to be harmful into their body.

One of the key reasons is a lack of self-valuation, self-esteem and/or self-respect – or a weak 3rd chakra if you will.

I turn to one of THE experts on the topic, Nathaniel Branden, to provide you with a definition of self-esteem:

“Self-esteem is the disposition to experience oneself as being competent to cope with the basic challenges of life and of being worthy of happiness. It is confidence in the efficacy of our mind, in our ability to think. By extension, it is confidence in our ability to learn, make appropriate choices and decisions, and respond effectively to change. It is also the experience that success, achievement, fulfillment – happiness – are right and natural for us. The survival-value of such confidence is obvious; so is the danger when it is missing.”

So oftentimes, in order to help my client eat better, the work becomes building self-esteem and self-respect. 

One of the key books I recommend for that matter is Nathaniel Branden’s “The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem”. In this book, he outlines six practices that build your self-esteem – and that undermine it, if you don’t practice them. If you are familiar with chakra work, you will notice how these practices are related to not only the 3rd chakra directly, but involve all the others as well. They are: the practice of living consciously, of self-acceptance, of self-responsibility, of self-assertiveness, of purposefulness, and of integrity.
In this article Nathaniel gives you some more information on each of them, plus defines what differentiates real from pseudo self esteem.

Once self esteem is in place, making good food choices becomes natural and easy. You don’t have to use willpower to say no to cheap sugary temptations – you simply don’t WANT to put them in your body anymore. You have come to really incorporate the knowing that “your body is the temple of your soul” and that you honor your soul by taking good care of its home, only offering it the best possible food (incl. high quality sweet treats), because that is what it – and thus you – deserve(s).