A lot is simply "feelings" and skewed perspective. I weight 265 pounds, am healthy and relatively happy. That's not to say I don't want to lose weight and have my own bad feelings and skewed perspective :-) but just another end of the spectrum. I watch football games and when they give the tackles' weights, I always weigh more. We don't "control" our bodies or feelings, they're there to help us. Usually we're using our heads the wrong way, trying to "control" nature and it doesn't work like that.

I had a wonderful dream several years ago, I had two bags of groceries on the hood of a high, old, farm truck and I picked up one in one arm and went to pick up the other with the other arm and, of course, the first one tilted dangerously. But my body did a balance thing and righted itself so everything was fine, a little like with learning to ride a bicycle, if you remember that experience at all, but what was wonderful about the dream was I felt what happened in my body and recognized that my head had nothing to do with it whatsoever, my body knew what to do and could do it better than "I" could. It didn't need "my" meddling.

We're supposed to eat when we're hungry but we load eating up with all sorts of other gunk, wrong, disproportionate foods and fears and other emotions so the poor body has trouble dealing. Every now and then I talk to my body, ask it what "it" wants, try and get in contact with it like I do with the insides of my head (which is only easier because my head uses words which is what "I'm" accustomed to). I'm getting lots better recently with honoring my body and trying to work "with" it rather than on my own, disregarding it. I was ill this summer and again, like my last illness, humbled by how much my body does for me and how poorly I treat it. It's not an "enemy" it's part of me! I can't divorce myself from it and it doesn't even try to divorce itself from me, it loves me more than I do it. I'm trying to recognize that and become more of a friend and steward to it.