Day One Hundred and Twenty Nine!!!

Core beliefs.


We run our lives based upon the core beliefs that we have adopted, and depending upon what we are doing and what circumstances we are in, when we try to apply just one core belief to the entirety of our lives which sometimes can get us into trouble. For example, I was talking to an athlete the other day and I asked him about his core belief or philosophy of life. He thought about it and then stated that he has the core belief of, ‘if you lose weight you win’. 


In the athletic world of which he is involved, that core belief or philosophy works really well. For example, in the sport of wrestling apparently the goal is to get down to the lower weight class, and once you weigh-in, then you can eat. 


If you take that philosophy and place it into family life then what might happen, especially with the influence on children, is the implication that food intake needs to be controlled to extreme measures. This food philosophy, might lead to food fixation which can start an eating disorder. 


Changing the core belief that you hold for yourself based upon the different roles that you have is based upon your circumstances. It is extremely important to identify what core beliefs you actually hold. For example, the Health At Every Size movement is actually a core belief or philosophy of weight maintenance, so that depending upon your size, as long as you are healthy, you are okay. The idea behind this philosophy, is to show compassion for how difficult it is to live in a culturally stigmatized body. To adopt the HAES movement for across the weight spectrum leads to acceptance. So instead of jumping on the anti-obesity band wagon, this movement is about improving health behaviours and letting the weight settle where it may, in the hopes to avoid bias against fat people and embracing healthy habits for all sizes. 


So, changing up the core belief from ‘if you lose weight you win’ to ‘if you’re healthy you win’ means that you would have to identify the word healthy with a specific definition. So, what is healthy? Healthy is to be safe, aligned, and engaged. Safe, in regards to maintaining your certain weight, aligned with your food management strategy, and maintain engagement on a consistent basis with your core belief. 


For me the difficulty with the HEAS movement is; how do you identify healthy, when the person you are looking at appears to be unhealthy, either too thin or too large, this sends warning bells off in our minds. So it is very hard to follow a regime that says ‘become an unrestrained eater’. How do you listen to your bodies’ signals of hunger and fullness when your body set point has become confused. Weight regulation can be quite complicated.
 
When we can’t identify what our core belief is, what happens is, we are like a candle in the wind, blowing based upon external cues, listening to what other people tell us to believe, which in turn dictates how we eat. 


Being able to identify our core belief about food means that we are listening to our internal cues and we base our eating on what we are thinking. So, if I see something that does not fit with my core belief and what I have defined as healthy, then just because I am smelling the Cinnabon or seeing people eating them, I do not feel deprived, I compare it to my internal core belief, which then dictates that the Cinnabon is not an option. If however, I choose it to be an option no matter what I am in control of the food and the food is not in control of me.