New Year’s Resolutions: To Give up Biscuits
One New Year’s Eve I made a resolution – to give up eating the biscuits in my workplace staff room. These biscuits appear consistently on our kitchen table and magically reappear, just when you think the tray is almost empty!
With certainty, throughout my decade of practising as a nurse they have always been there and for me they seemed impossible to ignore, but I was determined to sever my relationship with them.
ENOUGH of the biscuits already! I knew I never felt great after eating them. I would feel physically bloated and sluggish as I returned to work, or my body would be buzzing from the sugar while I blamed myself for displaying a lack of self-control.
So how hard could it really be to give up eating biscuits, once and for all?
I was armed with determination and a co-worker’s moral support; I held a belief in my head of what it meant to be ‘healthy’ and biscuits never made the cut. I thought if I was committed to making this my reality, this could be the first resolution (in my history) to actually be successful.
And it worked! For one month I gave up eating biscuits…
Come February, not only was I hard on myself for giving into the sweet temptation, I had now confirmed that I knew resolutions don’t work. But most importantly, I knew I hadn’t dealt with why I wanted the biscuits in the first place and without this critical key, how could I choose whether I really felt to eat them or not?
To unearth the reasoning behind my choices with food (which included eating biscuits) I didn’t require will-power or a plan of attack (or even a cold turkey!). Contrary to my old behaviours of self-bashing, abuse and loveless discipline, I discovered that:
- Self-Responsibility
- Self-Honesty and
- Self-Love were the keys that would support a new foundation for my relationship with me and my relationship with food.
It made no difference whether I sought biscuits and sweets, heavy carbs or salty snacks and even handfuls of nuts, vegetables or fruit. For many years I chose and ate foods that created a sense of comfort and a layer of protection in my body through their creamy textures and highly distracting side effects.
But what was there to seek comfort for and protect myself from?
I have held an array of ideals and beliefs as to who and how I am supposed to be in this world, keeping me either searching outside of myself for recognition from others or feeding the need to fit in and be liked; cementing further the belief that who I am is not enough.
A New Way of Living Without Biscuits
But what I now deeply know to be true is that I am amazing and I am enough, by simply being myself. I know this always, but sometimes the old beliefs and patterns of behaviour come along and I hold myself back from simply being me in the world. When this happens – it hurts me deeply – and I seek comfort and protection to not feel the sadness in my body.
I was able to understand the real reasons behind my biscuit eating through regular sessions with my Universal Medicine practitioners, but before this I used to think I was seeking certain foods for their comforting qualities and that this was the normal way to live.
I now know our greatest form of protection is to be ourselves in full – to live tenderly with ourselves and others and to not hold our true selves back from the world. When I allow this knowing to be my way of living there isn’t a biscuit in the universe that could contend with the amazing feeling of being me.
Inspired by Serge Benhayon and the work of Universal Medicine.
By Cherise Holt, Nurse, Brisbane
Related reading:
My Body’s Reactions to Gluten, Dairy and Sugar
519 Comments
‘…there isn’t a biscuit in the universe that could contend with the amazing feeling of being me.’ I completely agree with you Cherise. When I have a craving for some foods, by honestly listening to my body, I find there is a try to fill a gap of myself with that food. Because when I’m being myself I don’t need anything else but continuing being myself. Nothing can surpase that.
Our greatest form of protection is to be ourselves in full…. this statement, just this awareness alone, if lived, would heal so much of humanity’s ills.
Its ironic that by eating comfort foods we are keeping ourselves away from what could deliver us true comfort if we were to delve a little deeper and see what the real cause of our discomfort was in the first place.
I fully agree that it is crucial to really understand and heal the reasons for ‘eating biscuits’ and other sugary treats – in order to truly let them go. What is also interesting is that it is only when we have given them up that we can feel the impact the sugar was having in our bodies. I am increasing becoming aware that the body has a natural and ‘delicious’ harmony that no biscuit can ever compete with. But if we do choose to eat them, then this sense of innate harmony is disturbed – and that is a high price to pay.
This really says a lot when we expose how trying to fix something is only short term. And what counts is our willingness to look behind the end result. It is so supportive for us to be honest about this, and it helps to deepen the relationship we have with ourselves.
It is interesting that we call them re-solutions as the original solution hasn’t worked so we think if we ditch that behaviour the problem will be solved but unless we look at the underlying behaviour that caused us to e.g. eat biscuits, despite clear evidence that they don’t do us any favours, the problem is likely to re-surface but maybe in a different guise.
Not many diet regimes start with the foundation of how amazing and glorious you truly are and that you are this with or without the food you eat. Perhaps that is why they are bound to fail..?
“But what I now deeply know to be true is that I am amazing and I am enough, by simply being myself.’
and herein lies the answer to any weight or diet issue – we are enough – know this and addictions fade away.
It is interesting that we can also use thoughts in the same way to justify protection. We can go into a hurt and then the thoughts we have can justify any action- we go to right and wrong and can use this to justify anything that is not love.
So true… no food is ever as tasty as living the true you.
The appetite for the truth has not lure to take the edge off.
There are biscuits and cakes regularly left in the dining room at work, and I will look at them for a moment but I know that the taste in my mouth for a few moments is never worth what it will feel like in my body later.
What works well for me is to continue eating biscuits but with more and more awareness. Often I find that, once I know the cause of the desire to eat them and how it feels afterwards to eat them, once I know these items very well, the desire to eat biscuits disappear. What I don’t know is how long the process will take.
I heard it put recently as re-solutions instead of resolutions and have been pondering on what the true mean of resolution really is. We often just use the term resolution causally without really discerning whether we have in fact come to a true resolution. I have noticed that in myself at times. Sometimes repeating things over and over with a fresh approach or renewed attitude but the underlying approach has not truly changed. I could say my New Years resolution is to do this or that but does that mean I have addressed the real underlying energy causing the problem in the first place? If not I wonder whether it is a true resolution.
Ah yes resolutions – when we know something isn’t right or we are doing something that doesn’t help we want to change it, but we often go into trying to fix it rather than dealing with why we are choosing that behaviour
Absolutely Cherise when we are connected the feeling is amazing and exquisite, nothing compares to it. Feel so blessed to have found a way to connect so easily with this essence through the Esoteric Healing modalities.
We make choices in so many things, and the choice we make has an effect upon us….. It always has and always will. And these choices happen all the time, during the day from the big ones to the little ones
Yes, and it seems our choices derive from the way we move.
We make choices in so many things, and the choice we make has an effect upon us… It always has and always will.
Using food to numb ourselves in a way to not feel something deeper going on actually makes a lot of sense…on one level. But when I have found myself going back to the same food or drink immediately after something happened in my day that I let myself get overly emotional or reactive about, I eventually began to wonder what the heck was really going on here underneath the surface, as the desire for these foods/drinks had a direct correlation to the emotional events, and it was like a reflex action to eat them. This is where the amazing approach of Universal Medicine comes in to show how we can only change a behaviour that is self-harming by getting to the underlying unresolved hurt that brought us to that self-negating choice.
Giving up something through willpower and control is a recipe for failure and has be known in many, many instances to not work long term. The only way to let go of our addictions to any substance or activity, is to uncover its root cause as to why we indulge in it and this will then pave the way for true healing to occur.
This is gorgeous Cherise. I love how you have severed your relationship with biscuits by deepening the relationship with yourself.
‘When I allow this knowing to be my way of living there isn’t a biscuit in the universe that could contend with the amazing feeling of being me.’
I had many foods that I called ‘my favourite’ in one breath but in the very next felt the regret of eating them with how unwell they made me feel for hours, and at times days, afterward. I soon realised that this was not a good trade off, a few moments tantalising, pleasing a rewarding taste sensation for hours of not feeling myself and instead feeling dulled. In developing a more intimate and loving relationship with my essence, who I am within, I now am guided more and more to eat and live in honour of this quality which supports me to make choices that honour the real me. I am totally with you in what you are saying here – ‘When I allow this knowing to be my way of living there isn’t a biscuit in the universe that could contend with the amazing feeling of being me.’ – beautifully said.
” to live tenderly with ourselves and others and to not hold our true selves back from the world. When I allow this knowing to be my way of living there isn’t a biscuit in the universe that could contend with the amazing feeling of being me. ” This statement truly takes the biscuit away.
Amazing read Cherise. I get caught out eating nuts sometimes even when I feel great – it dulls me down. There is a hurt and sadness I am suppressing. It just goes to show if I am not celebrating me when I’m with myself I’ll be caught in the old ways of numbing my joyful and loving feelings I’ve held about life, others and myself.
Great point Rik. Most of us are so conditioned to celebrate with food or drinks that when we feel great we end up taking ourselves out with indulgence, complete dulling down our brilliance. There is far more fulfillment, as you have pointed out, in simply appreciating how beautiful our connection feels and relish in the celebration of that.
I have never allowed myself to experiment with food (and I guess in general) until recently and I love it but what I feel is that it has to come from a foundation of ‘I am enough’ or even more ‘I am amazing’ otherwise there is no experiment only trying to numb what I feel and that’s what I have done for a long time either by overeating or undereating.
This is something I am learning Cherise now, as I look at some ways I am with food, and how I work and discipline works for a time, but it doesn’t remain consistent, it’s only when I come to understand why and what my investment is that I can clearly make a choice to choose that food or behaviour or not.
Once upon a time, no one would overeat because you just didn’t do that, it will be the same as filling the car at the petrol station, and standing there with the pump on while it is just overflowing onto your feet… It didn’t make sense then, and it doesn’t make sense now
It is amazing how, when you are sensitive and observant, there can be so much to learn from every situation.
When it comes to food and choosing what we eat it’s actually a simple choice about the quality of life we want to lead and how great we want to feel in our body. I really enjoy how food is a non-stop experiment as to what works and what doesn’t work for me, and I love the taste of many foods that leave me feeling awful and unable to work at my maximum level, so for me it always comes down to a choice of: what quality do I want my life to be.
Willing ourselves to change our eating habit is just an imposition of an ideal no matter how ‘correct’ that ideal may appear to be, and that explains really well why giving up something never works. We are amazing and we are enough – this is not just a mental concept either. When we are connected to and know this as a truth in our body, there never needs to be an ounce of effort or trying to give up something as our choice is already determined by what we hold as true.
Cherise, this blog is very inspiring to read – bringing clarity to not focussing on giving up some foods, but to dig deeper and expose the reasons for wanting the foods. The comfort foods are only a smoke screen to numb us from truth.
Cherise, this blog is very inspiring, bringing clarity to not focussing on giving up some foods, but to dig deeper and expose the reasons for wanting the foods. The comfort foods are only a smoke screen to numb us from truth.
If we acknowledge that food actually changes the way we feel it begins to completely change our relationship with food. I love how you explain eating biscuits as adding a layer of comfort to your body, if every food effects our bodies differently and changes what we can feel, the extent we can feel and even what we see in the world then would we change the way we ate?
When we start feeling the effect any food has on our body, it is easy to drop those foods. When we allow our bodies to speak louder than we use its words to stop all the behaviors we don’t want.
If we are totally honest and really pay attention to the details it is amazing how different foods provide different comforts to our bodies so we will use particular foods to deflect particular feelings we do not want to feel such as your example Cherise that sugar makes you racy.
We can have difficulties to give up unhealthy habits just like eating biscuits at the workplace. Will power will bring us somewhere but never to the truth that we are, we can discipline ourselves but to make other choices without the numbing and protecting effect is something that comes from becoming more love and give harmony in the body the chance to lead the way.
This story ” takes the biscuit ” it’s so true . When I consider I have given up unhealthy food for well over 6 months and to later be back eating the same unhealthy food . I have heard of people giving up foods for years and to again be back eating the exact same food and the return to the food can nearly always be attributed to a situation that developed. So truly it’s not the food . It’s so true Cherise as you say ” when we don’t hold our true self back ” one will never take” the biscuit.”