Thanks Twitter!

Tweet What You Eat!
As if we’re all not obsessed and messed up enough about what we’re eating, now the latest technology can catalog our obsession for us and make us feel guilty. Thanks twitter! Just what I want-- to be twittering everything I eat. This application is so useless because you have to put in the calorie count --it doesn’t do it for you. You can put in a calorie limit for the day and once you reach it twitter will alarm you. So now my guilty conscience and my phone will both badger me for eating too much. What a joy. And just for additional fun, the food intake that you post is public information. Anyone can click on your username and ready your entire food log. HUMILIATING if you ask me. Then there’s the “do not eat list.” that way you can “keep track of the foods you don’t want to eat.” Meaning you can see all in one place how many times you broke your diet. Information that I never want to have!!! And you can look back at your old food diaries or search on a specific food and you will see what date you ate it. Because you should be reminded to feel guilty about what you eat as many times a day as possible.

Cravings

In the Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body workshop one of the homework assignments is to come up with a list of at least 10 treats that you can give yourself--a treat being anything that when you think of it makes you smile (thanks to the great Martha Beck for the terminology and definition). The rest of the assignment is to do one of the things off your list each day. The thought behind this is that if you’re overeating or bingeing consistently it’s because you’re using food as your primary source of pleasure. Many of us have gotten so used to dieting and depriving ourselves that we have equated eating certain foods to experiencing the ultimate pleasure when in fact eating that food ends up being just another binge because we felt so guilty about what we were eating that we didn’t enjoy it. So part of the point of the workshop is to get in touch with other things that bring us pleasure and to put more of that into our lives. The other concept that I’ve been toying with lately is the concept of cravings. As an eater, I always associate the word cravings with food but I’ve started to broaden that concept for myself. I’ve begun to ask myself what are some of the things that I crave emotionally, because I know that 90% of the time, those are the things that are driving the craving for the ice cream or pizza or whatever it may be at the moment.

Some of the things that I came up with are:
emotional connection- a lot of the time I’m craving being seen, heard and understood by others. Making a deep connection with someone else is its own kind of nourishment that goes a long way. It’s the feeling you get when you have someone in your life that really “gets” you.

a connection to myself- for me this means being connected to my creativity whether it’s through writing, creating a workshop, or performance piece. When I’m being creative I feel connected to the deepest part of myself. Unfortunately it’s not that easy to access that place in my psyche and it’s so much easier to think that I want a kit kat.

Trust in the natural order--for me this means trusting that everything is in perfect order in my life--there’s nothing that has to be changed or fixed or improved upon. It is all working and it’s all good. Faith that everything that is is just as it should be. Just thinking about this makes me let go of stress.

My own approval - I would say that in terms of what’s listed here, this one is the biggie. To let go of trying and striving and just feel that I’ve already arrived at that ideal place that I see myself “someday.” Because we all know that the “someday” place keeps changing so we end up being like the motorized rabbit in Bugs Bunny that has the carrot hovering over him--he keeps chasing it but it’s always just out of reach. It feels like such a luxury to allow myself the feelings of relief that come with finally arriving. I used to have a painting on my fridge that was done in kind of expressionist lettering that said: I Already Am All The Things I Want To Be. What if all those things I feel I’m lacking in myself and in my life had come to me in one fall swoop: In this moment, I am perfect just as I am and I have everything that I need to be happy. Wow, what liberation.

So my wish for myself and for you, dear readers is to answer your true cravings as best you can whenever you can...because no amount of oreos or ice cream sundaes can feed those deep cravings. Only you can do that.

Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body

I’ve not been writing since I was getting ready for the Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body Workshop. The workshop was amazing and it was a truly great group of women. It’s always so healing for me to have a bunch of women together in a room talking about their relationship with food. For anyone who has a dysfunctional relationship with food, just hearing that someone else has the same issues and does the same things you do is very,very helpful. It’s funny how we all think we’re the only ones and that we’re totally alone in our crazy behavior. Everyone thinks their situation is so unique yet I hear the same things over and over again in every workshop. Certainly there’s no one who has done anything in regards to bingeing that I haven’t already done myself.

I think the tide is finally beginning to turn because more and more women are realizing that if their eating behaviors are out of balance, then there is a deeper issue. It always surprises me when women say things like, “I just need to get to the gym more or I just need to get my food under control.” You can’t compartmentalize your eating behavior. Everything in life is connected.

I always ask the women in my workshops if they hate their jobs. Often the answer is yes, and yet they don’t see the connection between hating what they do all day and then coming home at night and devouring a pint of ice cream or an entire box of cookies. It pains me that they always assume that the behavior is caused by their own weakness or lack of willpower. Of course this is what the diet industry would like us to believe. But I have news for everyone, if you are overeating consistently and feel like you can’t trust yourself around food, there are real reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing. Instead of asking ourselves what’s really going on, we try to get a grip on our food intake which is just addressing the symptom but not the disease. It’s like having a brain tumor and taking pain killers to get rid of your headache--that’s what dieting is for someone who is an emotional eater. It’s not doing anything to address the cause of the issue. I’m hoping that if nothing else all of the lovely ladies who attended the workshop are seeing their issues just a little bit differently and are able to feed their souls. When you feed your soul, you will inherently know how to feed your body.