Living With the Lights On

The New Normal How do we decide what normal eating is? Who decides?  Is it us or is it culture? Is it my thoughts, or society's thoughts? What is the association we are creating with our thoughts about food being part of our life events? Do we really need pizza and beer to make watching football more enjoyable?  Do we need to have sugary treats to celebrate the Holidays? I personally, had to spend time questioning my involvement in spreading this confusion during family gatherings. One of the qualities I wanted to be known for was to be a good cook.  I had to decide what I thought a "good cook" meant to me.  Was it to bake foods that were loaded with mind altering substances? Or, could I decide that preparing food that was actually higher on the nutritional scale is of more value? Hmm, what an interesting question.  What is my new normal? Another question I asked myself is, "How am I going to feel after I eat those mind-altering foods?  W...

Responsibility = Response Ability Have you ever thought,"I wish I would respond  to challenges rather than react ?" Me too.  When I react I often end up with regret. This happens in conversations with loved ones, with food choices, with procrastination and buffering.   I want to get good at responding and not reacting . Just like with every other thing I want to get better at, practice is the key. When I practice taking responsibility for choosing my thoughts,  I am able to create emotions that give me the ability to take the action of responding .  It all begins with my thoughts! If I decide to think there will be no healthy options to eat at Thanksgiving, it will lead me to the feeling of frustration.  From frustration I will react by giving up on my food choices and my results will be regret.   When I take responsibility for choosing a different way of looking at Thanksgiving food choices, I have the ...

Leave Two Bites Challenge Are you in? Beginning with your next meal, I am challenging you to leave two bites on your plate, each meal for seven days. What!? Isn't that wasteful?    Wouldn't it be better to just not put as much on your plate? I would like for you to consider the message you send to your beautiful body with the three thoughts above.  The first thought, leaving two bites, sends the message :  I can stop eating whenever I decide I want to.  I can do something to serve my goals even when I don't really want to.  I can slow down enough to listen to my body's leptin, full signal.   The second thought, Isn't that wasteful, sends the message:  food is more important that my body.  Hmm, do I really think that? The third thought,  just put less on your plate, is a option, but it doesn't create the practice opportunity to show yourself that you can choose on your behalf. Intentionally stop eating ...

Fresh Perspective We can decide how we want to think about circumstances.   Wait! What!? One of the most significant learning opportunities I have had is when I saw the training of the Life Coach School and my studies of the Word of God lining up together.   I began seeing that my circumstances really are not what make me feel stressed or unhappy.  It is my thoughts that create my feelings.   But what about the hurt and pain?  What about the negatives in our world?   Am I supposed to just make up thoughts that create positive emotion all the time?  If we only experience positive emotion all of the time, would we even know it was positive?   Or, is the human experience here on earth supposed to be a balance of negative and positive emotions? Is there a purpose in the negative that we will miss if we are always wanting to be happy all the time? If we are willing to allow ourselves to feel negat...

Write It Down  Instead of Eating It In all my years of yo-yo dieting, I remember feeling like I was eating out of control.  It was as if I couldn’t stop.   This hit me on day when I was at the funeral of one of our son’s friend. Needless to say, the feeling of sadness was consuming.  Or I thought it was.   Did I want to feel sad? Of course! What I found myself doing was trying to cover or buffer that feeling. After the service, I had one cookie, then another, another…..I can’t even tell you how many I had!  I know it was more than five. Food was an easy choice for me to cope with the uncomfortable emotions. Eating the cookies dulled the pain, but only temporarily.   This experience really caught my attention.  What is going on!? I was out of control! The more I learned about buffering I also learned that my brain was actually operating exactly as it was designed to.   When we consume food, our brain receives a rewa...

A Letter to My Younger Self I was talking with a friend of mine and trying to express the changes I have seen in myself and what exactly happened to enable those changes to happen.   We discovered that it was when I began to love myself, I began to understand how much I am loved and that I have a very valuable purpose in this life.   I told him that my wish is that I could write and teach in such a way that I might help others discover their own value and that it not take them 40 years like it did me. He suggested that I write a letter.   Here is the letter I would write to my younger self, if I could: Dear Peggy,             This letter is the best gift I can give you.   I will try my best to write in words that you will understand.   I will tell you what the truth is. The truth about you, the truth about God, the truth about your enemy,the truth about your thoughts and the truth about your li...

Food for Our Thoughts In this blog, Living with the Lights On, we have talked about the importance of being a watcher of our thoughts.   We have seen that what we think about, our brain will find evidence to support.   We have also recognized that what we think about will determine how we feel How we feel will cause our actions. Our actions always give us our results.   The great news is - any and all thoughts are optional! We have a brain that can make decisions to direct out thoughts.  Thank God! What difference would it make if we knew the Fruit of the Spirit was not only food for thought, but food for OUR THOUGHTS?  How would we feel if we knew that each Fruit of the Spirit was a gift we already have?  We only need to access it.   How do we access it?  By directing our thoughts toward it.   The interesting thing is - is often it takes "uncomfortable" circumstances...