Loving Food and Your Body: It For lots of Moms food and eating are a source of pain


and suffering. Instead of being a source of nourishment, food has become a source of conflict and confusion. We have endless weight-loss dramas, body image issues, disordered eating, food addiction and a never ending search for the “best” nutritional system.


Even if these problems are not yours, you are probably overwhelmed by the number of books, articles and experts touting the next best way to eat. Read a scientific book, and nutrition is a biological chemical process of nutrient intake, digestion and assimilation. Read a diet book, it is a war - you against the food.


Are their common dietary principles that all eaters share regardless of their orientation? More to the point, can we make sense of the conflicting impulses that exist side by side in our mind – the desire to eat “healthy” foods and the desire to eat “forbidden” foods? Unlike animals who feed, humans eat. Eating is cultural and psychological not instinctual. What is interesting is human beings learn to eat but all other animals know what they need to eat based on an innate response to body cues. If you go to a buffet with a group of women and listen to the unconscious mumblings, there is a constant stream of “Oh, that looks good but I can’t have it!” “I’d love to have that but I shouldn’t!” Food is a form of torture. Especially if you struggle with any kind of emotional or disordered eating – such as bulimia, anorexia, orthoarexia, overeating, undereating, excessive dieting and yo-yo dieting. We are ashamed of our appetites. Having an appetite is a good thing. You can have an appetite for life, adventure, love and even an appetite for wholesome nourishing foods that feed not only your body but your soul.


The implications of seeing food as moral compasses stifles the biological message the body would be sending us about the food we are eating. For example, let’s say I told you that a women who walked into the room was a bad person and to stay away from her. You probably would avoid her based on that judgment. Not knowing that she was potentially your next best friend, a saint or really a loving person. The same thing happens with food. If you conclude in


68 North Texas Kids • July 2011 • www.NorthTexasKids.com


your mind that chocolate is bad food. Your body has not experienced this. There is no ability for the body to return true sensations and experiences when a judgment clouds the discussion. Food has no morality.


The simple fact is food is more than just the chemical make up of its parts. Food, for humans is about taking care of ourselves. However, when we use food as a way to break ourselves down, pull ourselves apart, we must look deeper. It is time to look at some things and see that the seemingly unrelated are truly related and they make sense.


For many of us, especially women, food is an


obsession. We labor over what we should eat, how and when we should eat it and then deprive ourselves of what we want to eat. We spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about what to eat and not eat – a vast majority of our intellect is wasted on this.


All we want is our perfect diet that we can follow that will give us what we think we want – a skinnier body. But what we do not realize is that there is a part of us that desires the rat race of dieting and strict eating and self- abusive process. We are going to address that part of our being.


So, how do we overcome this?


First we must identify the thoughts, feelings and memories that attach us to our emotions and our desire to see foods as moral. Food in all forms is nourishment. It is not out to get you or cause you harm. When we can change our view of how we perceive our food, we can transform our relationship to it.


Second, food in all forms is a gift to our bodies. It is a gift we can choose to enjoy and consume with gratitude. When we change how we view food from foe to friend enjoying the entire process, we can change our relationship with it to come from a place of love and not restriction.


So how do you start to change how you perceive


food? I always have my clients start with the following homework to start putting food in rightful place – as nourishment:


Catch yourself when you are passing judgments about food – example: “that will make me fat” or “I can’t have that”. • Reframe or re-word that statement with something


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