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"By losing energy, flexibility, and mobility, I now have gratitude for health." Hello, my name is Maureen Becker and I am a sugar addict. As a result of my little experiment with SAM over the last 2 years (to eat whatever I crave and want, whenever I want), I have gained one hundred pounds over the last two years. What kind of spirit guide would let their host gain one hundred pounds, only to be considered 'morbidly obese' by any doctor? A smart guide. A brilliant one, actually. I have struggled with my addiction to sugar and carbs all of my life (I'm 43). I snuck oreo cookies even when it was discovered that I was allergic to chocolate as as child. This didn't stop me - those oreos would be in my mouth, and the proof would be imminent - a rash around my mouth after the fact. But to me, even getting caught with my hand in the proverbial cookie jar was worth it. I'm not sure where my addiction to sugar started from, but I sure know what it feels like to be under its control. There have been times in my life where my whole world and focus was on what my diet was - was I cheating and eating sugar/carbs, or was I staying clean and avoiding all the foods that I know bother me? There's a long list: sugar, wheat/gluten, corn, dairy...those are the main ones. I tried natural diets avoiding those foods - the longest I lasted was two years. I dropped weight like crazy once I avoided all my trigger foods (allergy and intolerance for digestion) however it made my life miserable in going to restaurants, over to other people's house for dinner, etc. I was 'the one that couldn't eat anything'. As a result of this 'clean' diet, I was the lowest weight I've ever been as an adult - 145 pounds. This is me, more than a decade ago, at 145 pounds Finally, after losing some relationships, gaining pressure on my marriage because my husband (now my ex) was frustrated with my rigid diet (I became almost a hypochondriac regarding what a 'bad' food would do to me if I ate it), I started to cheat. I no longer tried to be so clean, ate some of my trigger foods, and as a result, started gaining weight. At this point, I kept it from getting out of control by doing exercise six days a week. I kept up this regime for many years. Eating somewhat 'clean' with lots of exercise I felt that I had slayed the dragon. I could eat restaurant food, go to people's houses for dinner, be able to go through a drive-thru, and yet still eat healthy most of the time. AHA! I have overridden the sugar beast! I have won the war! Or so I thought. Until a few years ago, I got into a car accident serious enough to give me whiplash in both my neck and lower back, which forced my six-days-a-week exercise to go down to non-existent exercise. I was still eating the same foods as I did when I did exercise, and in fact was craving more sugar-laden foods because I was no longer getting my 'endorphin high' from my daily exercise. The weight started to add on. the beginning of 'eat whatever you want' It was then that I realized that I hadn't resolved my addiction to sugar at all. I was keeping it at bay with exercise, but I hadn't slain any beast. It was still there, lurking. Waiting for its chance to strike. SAM offered me a different perspective at that point, a fork in the road as it were. They explained that my Soul had a few lessons to learn about addiction, trying to keep my appearance 'socially acceptable', caring about what others think, finding my own inner beauty when my outer beauty was questionable in my/society's eyes, to name a few. They suggested that I didn't panic about my weight gain, but 'give in to it'. They asked me to consider finally slaying the Sugar Beast, but through a completely unorthodox process. "Let yourself eat", they said. "Let yourself gain. Fully give in to your cravings. For the first time in your life, allow yourself to eat all of the chocolate and sugar and junk food you want. You need to find internal reasons to be healthy, not external reasons (such as what is considered beautiful or others' expectations of how you should look.). You need to find your own reasons for eating healthier. And ironically the only way you are going to learn this, is by becoming unhealthy until you CHOOSE HEALTH." Gain weight by choice? Were they f*cking kidding? Why the hell would I do that? However the more I was in angst over the fact that I couldn't exercise and my sugar cravings were increasing, the more I realized I was fighting a fight that felt fairly impossible to override at that time. I wanted to be free of my addiction to sugar. They ensured me that if I let myself get fat, found my 'inner beauty' and lost my power battle with food, sooner or later, I would find a new Essence-led weight that was best for my body type, and for my Soul's learning. Unfortunately, it seems I am quite a stubborn Soul. I had to gain one hundred pounds, overeating for a few years, needing to really experience what it is like to live with that extra weight as a lifestyle, to understand the true lesson SAM was trying to get me to understand. current weight 285 pounds!!!!!!! All of a sudden, I was eating chocolate every day. Going through McDonald's drive-thru (I used to curse McDonald's drive thru years ago when I was clean. I had so much food dogma, everything was either 'bad or good'. There was no in between). Now I was one of the drive-thru mamas, grabbing a meal on the go while driving my children to their dance and gymnastic classes, rather than taking the time out to plan meals and use my crockpot. Crockpot? Damn the crockpot! I didn't NEED to do that anymore. I was free. I could eat whatever I wanted!!! I began to realize how much power I had given to food, all of my life. I could not look at food as just fuel. It was way more powerful than that. It controlled me. It controlled my thoughts. I was obsessed, and an emotional overeater. However all of a sudden, this Spring, I noticed a change within my psyche. By eating the 'naughty' foods that I would never have allowed myself to eat before without guilt, they simply became food. They lost their power over me. The naughty foods were simply food that tasted really good, but were unhealthy as a daily choice. I was learning firsthand the results of 'eating whatever I wanted'. Moving around in a body one hundred pounds heavier was not comfortable, IS not comfortable (I'm still 100 pounds heavier as I write this today). Bending down before was one graceful movement. Now, I hesitate to bend down, for fear I won't have the flexibility to actually reach the floor with my big gut in the way. (Note to self - achieving a healthy weight is not to please others or be 'sexy', it is so you can bend down and pick up things without being out of breath. Who knew?) All of a sudden, going to the movies (one of my favorite things to do) was a self-esteem test, as I had to wiggle my ass out of the movie seat creatively rather than stand up without my butt and hips scratching against the side arms as I rose. Yep, that's my big fat ass. If I had to climb out of a window right now in an emergency situation, this would be my predicament. Sigh. Too many chocolate bars... I have gained a lot of weight to gain the Truth - I never appreciated my health when I had it. Not one bit. I took for granted that I could move around with ease, have flexibility, have strength, breathe well, do exercise without trouble, etc. Never for one minute did I consider any of those situations to be a gift, a choice, or something that could be taken away. It just was. Now that I am out of breath easily, now that my hips squeeze tightly into chairs, now that going for a 5-10 km walk (which was my norm) seems impossible, NOW I appreciate the concept of health. I always told myself that if I could eat anything I wanted, I would be happy. I needed to realize that this was a lie my Inner Sugar Addict was telling myself. Oh I was happy as I ate the chocolate bar. However I was not happy as I waddled, doing my errands feeling my inner thighs rub together. Yet I still ate. And ate. And justified every bite to myself - "I can eat whatever I want!!" I have needed to eat those 'offending foods', the foods that I labelled as 'bad, untouchable' for two years in order to feel like I got my fill. I had given food so much power, that it took me that long to rebel before now a chocolate bar is just that - a choice. A choice that tastes good but makes me feel so fat and tired that it robs me of health and energy. I told myself I was free by being able to eat what I wanted. However that was another lie my Inner Sugar Addict wanted me to believe. I am now entrenched in fat, having to lose a lot of weight to get back to a healthy weight. That is quite a task, one that I am just beginning the journey of. However, I will lose weight now with a completely different consciousness. This isn't about going on a diet. This isn't about aiming for a certain weight either. This is about choosing health. I now see what SAM meant. I was never choosing health before when I exercised. I exercised so that when I was single I would be attractive to men. I ate healthy food as a woman following society's rules. I wasn't eating healthily and exercising to achieve health and well-being. I was doing so to be socially acceptable, to please others, to stay 'sexy' - all of the reasons why many of us stay at a certain weight and drive to the gym first thing in the morning. It is expected of us, if we wish to stand in the grocery store line without feeling shame as we see the myriad of magazines with slogans of "Lose 10 pounds in 5 days!" and "Get great abs to spice up your sex life!!" NOW, I want to discover a weight where I can be healthy and happy. To eat food with a neutral consciousness, to be healthy enough to move and exercise my body, and to have energy to enjoy life. No bad or good foods. Just food, that I choose, on a daily basis, based on my intuition of what my body needs. No rebellion. No starving myself or overeating. Just eating the right fuel for my body. Every pound gained has been worth it. I look different, that is to be sure, but I also have a different perspective now. I have my internal reasons for wanting to be healthy for the first time in my life. By losing energy, flexibility and mobility, I now have gratitude for health. You may think this was foolish, or unnecessary. However for me, now I can finally anchor into the feeling of what it means to 'treat my body as a vessel'. I could intellectually grasp that phrase before, but I could never live it. I now understand that if I don't take care of my vessel, it won't take care of me. And if I can eat whatever I want but I am so unhealthy that I can't live life to the fullest, how is that freedom? I choose health now, because living without it, is not an enjoyable life. Eating chocolate with freedom does not trump being healthy in my vessel. I choose health because that is my right as a human being playing this game. And to live my life by choice without it? Well, that finally feels like a ridiculous concept. Sugar Addict be gone. You've got nothing on me now that I know and feel the Truth. The jig is up. Time to pull out and be grateful for my crock-pot, and to start moving my body with joy, because I can. Time to be grateful for all of the health I have at this moment, and have gratitude for all of the health I can achieve by choosing it, every day. Seems easy enough to me. And so the journey of self-love begins. Maureen copyright Source Within 2015. All rights reserved. Pass it on!! Did this inspire you, make you chuckle, or challenge you thinking? Want to influence someone else's day? Forward this to a friend so that they too can follow this blog. It's as simple as joining our free membership to join the Source Within community (interaction with the Guides, forum, free monthly podcast, and Maureen & Guides' blog!). Click here for your free membership!

"If life is simply a matter of perspective, be sure your perspective is the best it can be." - Maureen & Guides If you choose to be a part of social media world at all, I'm sure you have been a part of the debate of the 'blue and black' or 'white and gold' dress in the last week. I too was floored when I saw the dress (I saw white and gold), and realized it was supposedly 'blue and black'. Ironically when I saw The Winnipeg Sun covering this story the next day, the picture of the dress was clearly blue and black to me. Yet on the internet, and then later on the TV show ETalk, I did again see the dress as gold and white. WTF? That led me to question - how I could I have seen it as both? People were seeing it as one or the other. Was I overriding my mind and telling my mind it was blue and black, therefore seeing blue and black? (i.e. creating an intention) And if that is why I then later saw it as blue and black, why did I see it the next day as white and gold? So I asked SAM. They had a simple answer. Perspective. Everyone is trying to explain this phenomenon with scientific explanations and no one is quite sure just how some people see this dress one way, others the other. But what is clear even from the science world is that it all depends on how your eyes perceive the light bouncing off the dress - thus it is a perspective issue. Ah, perspective - the Guides talk about the lens in which we see life all of the time. Do we see the glass as half full? Or empty? Do we have a lens where we see ourselves in a positive interplay with the world, or negative? The way we see the world and our relationship to it, heavily depends on our mindset, or our emotional/spiritual perspective. What is your lens that you use to view your relationship to the world? Are you happy with how you see your life and the people/situations in it? The now-infamous dress proves one thing - both perspectives are there, and both sides of the debate feel that they are seeing the Truth. How is that possible? Is there not only one Truth, which is that the dress is blue and black? And how do you convince a person that it is blue and black, when no matter how hard they try, all they can see is white and gold, even once they are told that it is blue and black? Is this any different than people with different religious/spiritual beliefs who are convinced that they are right, and would in fact fight to their own death to prove that the dress/their belief is in fact the color they see it as? What if everyone - the whole world - could see the dress as blue and black? Would that make the world more peaceful and would we all feel more 'as one'? SAM says that actually, there would be no game if we all saw 'the dress' or 'the world' in the same way. That the differences in perspective and in fact the conviction that what you see is Truth, is what makes this game interesting. Without differences in perspective, there is no motivation for you to seek the Truth. If everyone sees the Truth automatically, and there is no contrast or other perspective to consider, why play the game? What would we learn? So it's good that this dress is making its rounds around social media. Nothing like a simple dress worn at a wedding to get everyone to reassess their own lens and question if there are other things out there in the world that we are seeing as white and gold when really it is blue and black. Keeps us on our toes, doesn't it? In fact, it helps us be aware that we might be wrong even when we are convinced we are right. Which teaches us to be tolerant of other people's perspectives, and to give consideration to the lens our fellow man/woman is using to see the world. That is a great concept - for that makes us seek the Truth even more strongly. And isn't that why we are here - to play this game seeking Truth and to honor each other's Truth? I know that's what I'm here for. And though everyone can have their own personal Truth, it is kind of nice to know that as a society, we all still had the urge to discover that one Truth - is the dress really white and gold or blue and black? That makes us all seekers of the ultimate Truth, doesn't it? And whether we were right or wrong doesn't even matter. The point is we cared to give it a second look and attempt to alter our lens if necessary. Perhaps our planet isn't as f*cked up as we think. We may have wars, and radical religions and all sorts of concerning issues on this planet, but at least when it comes down to it, everyone wants to know whether it is a gold or black dress. Gives me hope. If we all have such an innate interest in seeking, perhaps we'll all find the answer that gives us peace one day. Cheers to finding the perspective that is Truth for you. p.s. oh yeah, and for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, here is a link to an article that explains the debate. http://3dprint.com/47956/blue-and-black-dress-white-gold/ Maureen & Guides copyright Source Within 2015. All Rights Reserved. Pass it on!! Did this inspire you, make you chuckle, or challenge you thinking? Want to influence someone else's day? Forward this to a friend so that they too can follow this blog. It's as simple as joining our free membership to join the Source Within community (interaction with the Guides, forum, free monthly podcast, and Maureen & Guides' blog!). Click here for your free membership!