Big appetite? Do you want to eat more…seconds?

I love the topic of wanting MORE!

I hear it a lot from the women I work with. They want MORE energy, MORE ease and joy in their body, MORE from life – and often…MORE food…sometimes more than they think they should have. So, when MORE Magazine invited women to share their stories of being a woman with MORE Ambition and Passion, I jumped at the chance.

This is what I shared:

There’s a French saying: “Je me sens bien dans ma peau.” It means “I feel good in my own skin!” This is exactly what I want for all women!

I believe ALL women can:

~ live in a joyful body

~ feel great in their own skin

~ love the food that loves them back

With over 25 years of helping thousands of women reclaim their bodies, as a Psychology of Eating and Health Coach, I can truly say that I am impacting the world in a positive way. I’ve paired my strong ambition with a passion for helping women feel authentically good in their own body – to create The Nourished Woman Nation – a movement and community.

I’ve created programs such as The Nourished Woman Intensive, The Radiant & Luminous Experience, Flourish After 55 and more. I lead online webinars, in-person retreats, and have developed unique and practical strategies that support women in creating peace with their food and body, including the “Hello Technique,” that I outline in this video. I also speak with women one-on-one about the most powerful relationship they will ever have…their relationship with themselves.

The solo-preneur path is never without obstacles, but my personal history of being at war with my body – and my professional experience of witnessing the suffering of women being in destructive and painful relationships with their body – fuels my ambition like nothing else.

On this journey of passion, health and nourishment, I’ve been blown away time and time again by how absolutely amazing women are, how wise we are, and how beautiful we are inside and out. But, we need REAL community and support to see these attributes in ourselves. My clear vision of what’s possible, my tenacious ambition to serve women, and my soulful whole-hearted approach position me to be the voice for women to feel deeply nourished in their body, empowered in their life, so that they can each be ambitious in their own unique way.

Writing my Ambition Statement to submit to MORE magazine’s “Women With More” Contest got me stewing about how women often fight their own desire for MORE!

We feel like our appetite for food, our hunger is too much. We often use words like “taming our hunger” or “curbing our appetite.”

I want to invite you into a more powerful (and helpful!) way of working with your desire for MORE.

When we can really tune into and decipher that desire for more, we can strategically impact how much we eat, how much energy we have, and how nourished we feel.

Here’s how…

First let’s unpack and decipher the feeling of MORE!

When we want MORE we are stepping into the realm of

• DESIRE

• LONGING

• HUNGER

• APPETITE

• WANTING

• YEARNING

Naming these powerful feelings is vital to befriending our MORE impulse. (You’ll notice I didn’t say tame or control our MORE impulse, but rather befriend!)

These are strong feelings and often in our culture we put a lid on strong feelings. We try to not appear “lusty” (an excessive desire for sex), “greedy” (too great a desire for money), or “piggy” (a glutinous desire for more food). Nope, we’re supposed to just want ENOUGH – not too much or too little.

I want to challenge that idea of taming our appetite, our desire, and our hunger.

The more we acknowledge our deep desire and let ourselves feel it to our core – let ourselves feel our hunger, our cravings, our lust, our wanting – we access a powerful door to experiencing pleasure and energy in our life.

Our HUNGER can give us access to a deep inner well of pleasure and energy!

Our APPETITE is saying I want to feel good!!!

And that’s OK! Our desire to want to feel good is a natural urge. As humans, we want to move away from pain and towards pleasure.

The trick here – is to allow our longing for pleasure – and to meet it in healthy ways.

When we really feel in our body what it feels like to WANT,  when we allow our heart to open up in a vulnerable way to our deep desire to feel good in whatever way our desire is showing up – whether it’s chocolate or being with someone we love – when we can really feel it in our being, down to our toes, then we can connect to our powerful life force – where we are truly complete. We can actually access all the MORE we want within.

Now I know this may sound woo-woo to some of you, but please bear with me.

You may not feel it in this precise moment, but I’m hoping that at some moment in your life you’ve had access to a powerful place of connection within yourself. That might have been a connection with nature, with your version of spirit, a moment of creativity, a moment of deep love. Somewhere in your life, you’ve had a access to the pleasure and energy that lies within you.

So how does this translate to wanting more food?

My invitation to you is this…

Next time you want more – seconds, maybe even thirds – I invite you to sink into that feeling of WANTING MORE. Allow yourself to notice what desire and longing feel like in your body and see if you can just “BE” with it. Explore your hunger, don’t try to tame your longing or control it. Be with your wanting and allow it to open up the doorway to the pleasure and energy you want – and actually have – deep in your body.

If this resonates with you – I’m so glad! You might love to surround yourself with other women who are stepping away from deprivation and into deep nourishment.

If you never learned how to listen and respect your body growing up, it’s something that can still be learned. You might love my free video series for women who have tried many things to feel their best, but are still having a hard time feeling good in their body.

 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Nina Manolson, MA, CHC, certified Health Coach and Psychology of Eating Coach believes that every women deserves to feel good in their own body. She helps women create a healthy and positive relationship with their food and body so they can love their body and life!  She’s the founder of NinaManolson.com and NourishedWomanNation.com .

She helps busy women look and feel their best. She specializes in working with women over 40 who have tried other diets and approaches but are still struggling with their body and food. She helps women step into a new wellness paradigm that makes it real and do-able and makes self-care a sustainable healthy habit.

She’s the author of “Feed Your Kids Well In A World That Doesn’t: an everyday guide to make healthy food happen in your home and beyond”. She’s also the recipient of the prestigious Health Leadership Award from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

To get your F.R.E.E. Video Series “What to do now, when everything you’ve done hasn’t worked” by mail and receive her healthy recipes and wellness tips click here.