home in my body

at a family gathering, someone asked me,

so what do you eat? how do you stay in shape?

it kind of surprised me, because i have not really been paying attention to these things.

but i know that i’ve maintained a fairly healthy weight and muscle tone with very minimal effort.

like none, really.

my main food source has been instant noodles, eggs every once in a while, meat whenever i remember to thaw my collection in the freezer, rarely veggies and if so, rarely raw, leftovers from the weekend and random goings-outs…

i go to the gym about 3 times a week, my workouts are no more than 30 minutes.

i don’t take supplements except like magnesium and something else i don’t remember at the moment,

and that’s if i remember to take them lol.

i drink coffee almost every day,

eat desserts when they call to me, or is it the other way around lol (lately boba has been calling me and i’ve definitely been answering ha),

drink alcohol whenever i want to, but that’s been more and more rare as of late.

i eat dark chocolate usually every day as well, 1 – 5 pieces, whatever feels satiating to me that day.

when i was asked that question – what do i eat? how do i stay in shape? – i didn’t know how to respond.

at least not in that space and moment.

but i did have an answer:

i wholly participated in, advocated for, embraced, acknowledged, chose, and believed in my emotional and spiritual healing and wholeness.

lol.

probably not the answer one is looking for when asking about fitness and health.

but that’s it for me.

i struggled so much in the past with my weight and shape,

starving and binging,

binging and starving,

counting calories (this didn’t last long because it was too tedious lol),

weighing myself incessantly,

judging myself for finishing that forearm-sized burrito,

punishing myself by vowing to not eat more than a bowl of cereal the next day,

hating the way i looked in the mirror,

how my clothes fit or didn’t fit on me,

running ridiculous number of miles a day,

getting angry at myself if i missed a day or didn’t hit the goal.

life sucked.

but one thing i did do, without realizing the ultimate end result, was seek my truth,

to know it,

to live it,

to wander down the depths of my heart and soul,

to acquaint myself with the secrets of Spirit,

to come face to face with the rawness of me.

i watched my life, my Self, my body, my whole beingness unravel

again and again

and again

and again.

i watched my becoming materialize in the physical world,

creating more fulfilling relationships,

expressing more of me, more truthfully,

feeling my emotions all the way through,

riding the wave of who i am,

of All That Is.

slowly and surely, and i got lost in me, lost in the truth of me, in the truth of Source, God, universe, Everything,

my clutches on things i thought i could control loosened.

as wholeness and freedom flowed in my veins, became the air i breathed, i needed less and less to control things,

i needed less and less to understand things,

i need less and less for things to look or be a certain way.

i began to want more and more for things to unfold, come together, synergize in the way they wanted to,

naturally,

easily,

gracefully,

graciously.

i began to want to see things for what they actually were,

i wanted to see myself for what i actually was.

and it turns out, while i am not just a physical being, made of flesh and bones,

that it is a part of my existence,

and the way i presenced myself to myself, to what was within, directly affected the physical,

to how i looked,

to how i ate,

how i moved my body,

how i wanted to express myself to the world.

what a surprise.

and also, how not.

how obvious it is, now, that everything is connected.

and the work i do > within < is the work that reflects > without <.

i watched myself shed the bloat and weight i carried on my physical body,

release the shame i felt about my appearance, which, while it was not grotesque or morbid, was my personal monster.

i watched the volume of food i ate dwindle,

not because i tried or dieted,

but because the need to satisfy myself was no longer prevalent.

i watched the shape in the mirror slim down become what it naturally already was as i chose and integrated what i already naturally was spiritually, emotionally, mentally.

i stopped noticing the fluctuations,

the changes,

the outward expression of my health,

as i got lost in my evolution and journey.

there was not one moment that these things all came home,

but it was a continuous spiral and movement toward equilibrium.

anything that came up would, to me, be something that was ready to be released, healed, transmuted, rather than a ‘relapse’ or forgetting of self.

and it’s true, anything that came up, > did < get released and healed.

very easily.

physical health is so much less about the physical.

it’s why so many people approach the physical and find that they start healing and transcending other aspects of themselves, emotional pain, struggles, etc.

life really does get to be easy.

life really does flow in my favor.

life really does like me.

life really is worth living in all its fullness and flavors.

while the conversation about health didn’t go very far at the family gathering lol, it was interesting to have the conversation with myself,

to rehash what’s been happening these past years, decade + with myself and my body.

so much.

so good.

so yay.