Hi, and welcome to Day Five of the Mindful Eating course. Today, we'll be exploring how our thoughts can affect the way we relate to our bodies and the way we eat and how we can befriend our bodies and live more healthy and happy lives. So we only have one body that we get to travel through this life in. It allows us to sense the world around us and interact with it and enjoy all the pleasures of life. And so it's truly precious.

But for many of us, our relationship with our body can be complex. Often we have a strong inner critic that puts us down, tells us the body doesn't look or perform well enough, constantly pushes us to fix change or improve something about ourselves. As a result, we can feel unworthy, self-conscious, anxious, stressed, or overly driven. At first impulse, we might think the answer is to push these unhelpful thoughts away or try to escape them or fight them off. But that's not effective.

And in fact, struggling with our thoughts in any way only tends to intensify them and make them stay around longer. Instead, mindfulness teaches us a new way of relating to our thoughts. We learn through mindfulness to take a step back from thoughts and allow them to arise and pass through without getting caught up in them or believing in them. We begin to see that a thought is simply that, a thought. It's a mental event, a bit of language that passes through the mind, not something we have to buy into, obey or play out.

And when we see this, it opens up a space where we can let go of self critical thoughts and learn to befriend our body again. Then we naturally start to treat ourselves and our bodies with more compassion, care, and self-acceptance. Now self-acceptance doesn't mean that we won't ever have any goals or improve things. It involves simply letting go of all the old mental stories that tell us we're not good enough and need to be fixed and changed constantly. It allows us to be okay with ourselves, to accept ourselves just as we are.

And from that space, if we still want to make changes to our health, fitness, or well-being, we do so from a place of love and wholeness, rather than lack and inadequacy. So let's try a practice now to help us befriend the body. So begin by settling into as comfortable a position as possible for today's short meditation. Allowing the eyes to gently close, if that feels okay for you. And taking three deep, slow, full breaths.

So breathing in, gently filling the lungs with air. And breathing out. And two more breaths in the same way. In. And out.

And then at the end of the next exhale, letting go of any control of the breathing. And as the breath settles back into its own natural rhythm, just staying in touch with the feeling of the breath moving in your body. And as you feel the breath moving, just remembering that the body has been breathing for you like this since the day you were born. Keeping you alive with its gentle rhythmic flow. In a similar way, the heart has been beating for you throughout your life, pumping oxygen-rich blood through the whole body, cleansing and nourishing the cells of the body.

Right now, the body's continuing to digest food for you, converting it into energy. It's getting rid of toxins and white blood cells are fighting off infections and diseases, and a thousand other functions are happening to support you. And perhaps taking a moment to contemplate that whenever you want to go somewhere, your body walks you there or drives. It allows you to hear your favorite music and the sound of birds. To taste your food and feel the hug of loved ones.

So just taking some time here to contemplate these and other ways in which you can appreciate your body, even if it has aches and pains, and it's not the shape you want or cannot do all the things you want. It does so much to support and nourish you. And as we continue the practice, you may have some habitual thoughts coming up. You might take a moment here to consider how you normally talk to the body or relate to the body and see if there's thoughts like that coming up. And if so, that's not a problem.

Whenever those thoughts arise, just notice them and mentally say to yourself, just thinking, and then return your focus back to the practice of contemplating what you're grateful for, just for a few more moments. And then as this practice draws towards a close, just notice how does it feel to appreciate your body in this way? How does it feel compared to how you usually relate to your body? Maybe this practice feels really soothing and uplifting. Maybe it feels really awkward. Many of us are not used to being kind to ourselves or appreciating ourselves. It's become a habit to be harsh and unkind in the way we speak to ourselves.

But whether we enjoy this practice or not, it's really important to train ourselves to be kinder to our bodies and appreciate them if we want to maintain habits that nourish and strengthen the body and keep us happy and healthy. So instead of depriving ourselves, we can be kind to ourselves. Instead of punishing ourselves, we can nourish ourselves. Whatever we practice becomes our habit and our way of being. So if we practice unkindness towards the body, it becomes a habit.

But if we practice gratitude and compassion regularly, it eventually becomes second nature. So as you go about your day today and ongoing, see, if you can notice when any self-critical thoughts arise and just note to yourself mentally, just thinking, and then switch the focus back to mentally naming one, or maybe two things that you appreciate about your body. Giving yourself some acceptance, compassion, and appreciation. So if you haven't already, you might like to gently open the eyes. And congratulations for completing Day Five of the Mindful Eating course.

Wishing you a great day. And I look forward to being back here with you again tomorrow for Day Six, where we'll be exploring the theme of finding the satisfaction point.