Body Clutter Love Your Body, Love Yourself

Introduction What is Body Clutter, anyway? When you look at your house, sometimes you can see the clutter. Then there are times when you are immune to your clutter; it can be right in front of you and you don't see it. It starts gradually slipping in your door while the other stuff you already have is just waiting to be loved. Eventually clutter gains a foothold and you don't know where to start to get rid of it. It seems like such an overwhelming task; what is a person supposed to do with all this stuff? Over the years, the same thing has happened to our body. As children, our little child brain and body absorbed every word and morsel of food that came even close to us. We were starving for knowledge and attention, and our tiny body needed love, food, and movement to continue to grow. Some of the messages told us that we could have it "all," while others said, "If you don't do it right, don't do it at all." We were stuck wanting it "all" and afraid even to try because what if we failed? Then you toss in the time factor of perfectionism and you will find the ultimate killer of souls: procrastination. "I don't have time!" That is, we don't have time to do it right, so we do nothing at all. This thought process is part of our Body Clutter. It is one of our many attitudes that have helped us to collect the clutter that is on our thighs, tummy, and backside. Just like with our homes, our body did not become cluttered overnight. It took years of stinking thinking to collect our Body Clutter. It happened so gradually that the only time we really noticed was when we had to reach for a larger dress size. Do you remember the horror the first time you got a bigger size? Are you immune to it now? This book is not one of those magic pills you have been searching for. It has been a difficult journey for us, but we have celebrated every BabyStep we have taken. With each step we have released some of our negative thinking and with it the hold on our physical Body Clutter. Over the years we have collectively lost and gained millions of pounds; we are good at starving ourselves and losing the weight when we are forced into decluttering for a special occasion. Anytime you declutter for the wrong reasons, the clutter is going to come back and usually increase. We have all done the stash-and-dash around the house to get ready for a visit from our mother-in-law. That is what we do to our body, too. The age-old problem for anyone who has ever been on a "diet" is how to keep the pounds off once you are no longer depriving yourself. Leanne and I believe with all our hearts that the answer to this problem is not in the future but in the past. If we can figure out for ourselves how we acquired the Body Clutter in the first place and the attitude that put it there, then we are a step closer to eliminating it from our body. If we declutter the negative thinking first, it is going to help us stop gaining more Body Clutter. Then, by replacing our negative thought patterns with positive ones, we will gradually decrease the Body Clutter we already have. Here is what happens when we don't declutter our negative attitudes. We decide to lose weight for whatever reason, we lose a few pounds, then something upsets us and we fall back into our old childhood habits of reaching for a "comfort cookie." It happened to me just the other day. I got my feelings hurt and I cried. I was crushed, and the first thought I had was to look in the freezer for a chocolate ice pop. What made me do that? It was almost instinctive! Immediately I saw it for what it was: a Band-Aid to comfort my hurting soul. This is how I used to deal with my hurt feelings; I would head to the refrigerator to stuff my face so I would not have to deal with what was really wrong. Before, I would not have been able to stop myself because I didn't know that my eating in response to feeling hurt was just as abusiveCilley, Marla is the author of 'Body Clutter Love Your Body, Love Yourself', published 2007 under ISBN 9781416534624 and ISBN 1416534628.