One of my favorite quotes from the movie The Matrix:
Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead… only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Spoon boy: There is no spoon.
Neo: There is no spoon?
Spoon boy: Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.
If you’re familiar with The Matrix, you will understand that Neo’s realization of the spoon’s non-existence is crucial to his understanding that he cannot maneuver The Matrix by concentrating on an object and trying to change it. How can he change what doesn’t actually exist? The spoon can’t bend because there is no spoon. Instead, it’s Neo’s mind that bends, altering his perception and allowing a deeper self-awareness to emerge.
For the serial dieter, disordered eater, or any person who has been in any sort of a struggle with their weight, size, shape, etc… (hand raised here, brothers and sisters) their body has become the spoon they are trying often to no avail, to bend.
If body satisfaction, weight loss and physical fitness were actually a simple matter of macros and carefully calibrated exercise induced calorie expenditure as we’ve been conditioned to believe, there wouldn’t be the magnitude of individuals struggling with body dissatisfaction, disorders and discomfort issues— symptoms of a much broader unrest lurking within, stoked consistently by an optics-driven external world.
Fortunately, just as Neo learned:
you change your reality by changing your perception.
On that vein the focus becomes:
Acknowledgement and appreciation for the physical body we’ve been entrusted with for our journey here. AS IS.
Acceptance not based the size, look, shape of whatever body “ideal” happens to be trending through the lens of an oft fickle and judgemental world.
Not about what your body could be if you finally did all the “right things”, but unconditional acceptance and admiration about what your body already is and celebrating that body by moving it daily and when possible, allowing it ample time in the outdoors where being at one with the earth strengthens and revives it.
As you begin to show your body respect, you can more readily hear it speak. You’re less inclined to fill it with junk that depletes it and more inclined to prioritize premium fuel.
Your workouts become more consistent as time goes on because as you gain strength you also gain increased belief in what your body is capable of and enjoy challenging it to do more.
Not because you have to, but because you realize your body hungers for it and your mind aligns with this hunger.
Eventually, a process not measured in days, weeks or months, but rather a new way of living the rest of your life, so there is no “how long it’s going to take”, the body strengthens and changes, almost appearing effortless.
Not because it actually was, but because forcefully changing your body was never what you were doing.
You were bending your mind.
And everything else yielded.
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