If you starve yourself, you are going to lose weight.

If you starve yourself, you will definitely lose weight.

If you choose starvation over nourishment, you will inevitably change the shape of your body.

But let’s be very clear.

You will not love yourself more.

You will not love yourself more “when you are skinny”.

You will not love yourself more when you have your shit together.

You will not love yourself more for fitting into that dress/suit/career/fantasy-future-self.

Yesterday I wrote this on my Facebook feed.

I want to go into this deeper because the spot I am speaking to is much much deeper than food or self-love, or trauma, or approval.

There is a reason I posted an image of a baby breastfeeding along with this text.

Nourishment.

 

We don’t know what it means to be nourished.

However.

We know inherently what it is to be nourished not with rules, restrictions, research, but through the cells of our animal being.

Our body, our flesh and our blood knows nourishment.

And we are lucky as hell we are adaptable creatures because our cultural norm is starvation.

Depletion.

 

This.

This is the thing that underlies everything.

 

It goes beyond our traumas.

It goes beyond our perception of what “health” is.

It lies underneath the compartmentalization to understand and make sense of things and control.

 

Tell me, when was the last time you felt deeply nourished?

Nourished at the cellular level?

Nourished like this baby in the midst of breastfeed?

Safe.

Well fed.

Held.

 

Nourished.

 

I’ve been writing recently about my “future fantasy self”.

There I talk about my own dance with starvation vs. satisfaction.

I’m talking about money, but it’s all the same: money, safety, food, love, time, resources.

It’s all the same.

 

The interesting thing is that it’s so simple and yet, we’ve created a complex web of outright lies that literally hold together the delicate fabric of our society and sense of “rightness” and being allowed to exist.

We shame others into continuing to weave the web of starvation, no matter what harm is done – individually and as a collective.

 

Let’s touch on something I hear over and over again.

Health.

 

One of the biggest lies and also one of the biggest taboos and points of shame.

Such a massive point of shame that as a society, we group shame as a collective for the “individuals own good”.

We do not trust our own nature, so why should we trust yours?

If I don’t know how to respect my own animal intelligence, how could I ever know how to trust  and respect yours?

We talk about sovereignty and self acceptance as concepts and theories but we do not know how to embody the frequency of the thing.

We talk the talk (even preach the talk, sell the talk, and project … and project) without ever really landing on the being of the frequency we so-called stand for.

 

I can tell you that in my over 20 years of research, studying, professional and personal experience, the “for your health” thing is total and complete bullshit – and it’s incomplete.

Binge is the other extreme to starvation as “abundance” is to scarcity.

 

Binge/starve, abundance/scarcity.

They are two sides of the same coin.

 

Neither is nourishment.

Nourishment is not about preference.

It’s about satiation.

There is no judgement.

No shame.

No story.

No trauma.

It underlies it all.

It is the cellular level knowing of safety – in body, in whole system.

It is integration.

It is the honouring of our kinky pleasures in awareness.

Nourishment holds us in our desperation.

Holds us in loss and in grief.

Holds us in pleasure and suffering.

Nourishment holds us in the experience of living.

It is knowing the point of deep saturation.

It holds our deepest yearning.

 

There is so much more that lies beneath. We are only scratching the surface.

But I think I will end with this.

 

Your Wild Creature.

Your Depth.

Your Wilderness.

Body Intelligence.

DNA.

Potency.

Your Animal does not need to be controlled, manipulated, or starved.

Feed Her.

Give Her depth until she can take no more.

Nourish Her fully.

And then keep Her fed.

Stoke Her satisfaction

as if your life depends on it.

Because it does.