Giving up sugar (and junk food)

Hi Shine - yes it's a tricky one - so many foods in the industrial food chain are purposefully designed to addict!
I'm right there with you - I appreciate it's not an easy one 

I'd say the key is awareness. First not to judge that you alternate between the healthy foods and other. But explore deeply why you do it?

1. Awareness
Recently I've moved to eating just one meal a day, and mostly of fruit, but with avocados, nuts and seeds - with some raw chocolate too! It's been reasonably hard to give up some of the foods I really loved - but my soul was clearly guiding me to do it, because it has resulted in another expansion of consciousness - which I greatly value. It means the higher guidance can speak in a more sophisticated way when I make minor choices in the matrix. In other words, I pick up guidance even when it gets very dense - I find that extremely worthwhile.

When you bring awareness to the situation, then you start to see the downside of the addiction to heavy, processed foods. So you realise there's a cost to it.

2. Comfort eating
Also it's essential to bring awareness into the moments where you would waiver from the aligned foods - to get deep into those moments. I actually found, like most people, that a reasonable amount of food was consumed merely because of comfort eating.

When I brought attention into the emotional body, through the sacral chakra, then I realised I was being emotionally impacted by the matrix and people in it - food would soften the discomfort. But crucially, it doesn't solve the problem!

What was necessary, was a greater sensitivity in the emotional boundary - when you're surrounded by stressful situations and people, to consciously withdraw the boundary - to firm it up, and find a deeper sense of peace. This meant not needing so much food to dampen the emotional reactions.

3. Sensory pleasure
Another aspect to bring awareness into is pleasure. Many of these foods are designed to give some degree of pleasure, which is also why we want to eat. But when you deeply explore into the experiences, the pleasure only lasts as long as you're eating it, which accounts for probably a small amount of time per day (not to mention the after effect of the downside). So I find it helps to pay attention to other things that might give sensory pleasure - going out into the garden and smelling the aroma of flowers, meditating to the song of the birds, burning good incense, listening to music, taking a bath with essential oils, drinking a good herbal tea. 

I also found it helps to smell food when you're hungry - yes indeed! Why? There's a zen approach when you actually smell the food and bring the sense of it into your body. It's as if you're actually consuming it, but without doing so. 

4. Exploring the "hungry" feeling
It also pays to bring awareness into the "hungry" feeling. We're often not hungry at all, just reacting to cravings and an empty feeling inside. But by bringing awareness deeply into those feelings and unpacking them, means you'll get to see several things: (1) you're often not hungry at all, just craving (2) if you go deep into the "empty" feeling, but unwind the minds negative judgment of it, then you will likely find the empty feeling has an expansiveness and lightness to it. In this period, the body is resting and rejuvenating. Plus because the internal metabolism is slowed down, then consciousness can more readily expand into other dimensions - which has a huge benefit.

5. The hugely beneficial effect of pranic breathing
When you get that sense of feeling hungry (but you really know you're not), it helps to breathe pranically. So to use something like the Openhand Breakthrough Breathing, so to bring energy into the body - to notice you're actually being rejuvenated and sustained by it. I find it has greatly eased the cravings.

6. The essential importance of non-judgment
If you do slip into negative eating patterns, it's essential to accept oneself in them and not to judge - because when we do that, we likely go unconscious in the eating, and just repetitively do it. If you accept that these foods in society are often designed to addict, and to play on certain emotional feelings, then it becomes easier to let go of self judgement. But then with that, keep exploring deeply into the feelings as you eat. 

As I said, awareness is the key. Because awareness helps you understand why you are consuming certain foods, and how you might break the habitual cravings by unpacking the feelings and exploring other possibilities. There is always a down side to junk food, and always an upside to giving them up!

Open