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.

Feeding Your Soul

As the creator of the Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body workshop, I have done a lot of work on finding ways to feed the soul that don’t involve food. I think it’s really important to know what to do for yourself to feed your soul but there’s also a way to allow food to feed the soul without eating for emotional reasons. For years, I saw food or the enjoyment of food as the enemy. I thought that if I allowed myself to eat something that I enjoyed, I would never stop eating it. I didn’t understand that the enjoyment doesn’t always come from eating fun, fattening foods. It comes from the circumstances around the food that you’re eating. It’s what the Buddhists call “mindful eating”. I had a wonderfully spontaneous example of this when I was in Mexico in March and I know just like everything else it works if you work it.

I’ve had a a lot of resistance to bringing more attention to my eating because for years I was hyper obsessed with it. But I was putting the wrong kind of attention on it. I was mainly focused on eating what I thought were the right foods whether I liked them or not. My focus was on eating the lowest calorie foods that I could find and not deviating from my food program--needless to say I didn’t experience a lot of pleasure during meal time. Mindful eating is not about eating fattening foods and getting the pleasure from them, it’s about eating healthy foods and taking the time to sit down, use a plate and proper cutlery and experience the food that you are eating without distracting yourself by reading or watching TV while you are eating. I have to say that this is very hard for me to do most of the time and I’m really not sure why. I think some of it has to do with always being in a hurry and if I’m being totally honest there is still a part of me (and I know there are millions of you out there) who feels guilty about eating in general. Wow, that’s a big realization. I actually had no idea that I still felt that way but it totally makes sense. If it were published I could refer you to my play: Thin Body, Fat Mind: One Woman’s Lifelong Struggle with Dieting, Bingeing, and the Pursuit of the Perfect Fit and you could find out exactly why that is, but I have told that story so many times that I just can’t revisit it now. Maybe in 10 years I’ll do a revival.

In the meantime I’m working on mindful eating. Savoring my food, taking in my surroundings while I eat and just crafting a whole new experience out of the whole thing. You’re not going to find me using my car keys to cut into a frozen Sara Lee cheesecake and wolfing it down while I’m driving home from the supermarket because I don’t want to wait until I get home to eat it. Nope, not me sister.

Being at Peace With Food Is the New Weight Loss

As I move toward wanting to feel healthy and clear and away from needing to be a certain weight or look a certain way, I notice that my body is changing; I have a lot more energy to work out and I’m not looking to food to fill in the missing pieces of my day. I eat what is going to make my body, not my mouth feel good. I am really thankful that I pulled it together and did the five day Blueprint cleanse. I really needed it. I went way off the reservation this winter and was in food hell. Going on the cleanse was my last ditch effort to bring back some balance into my diet.

For those of you who don’t understand this syndrome here it is in a nutshell: You get a little lazy, you eat a little more and because you can’t dedicate your entire day to physical activity you start gaining weight. You get a little nervous and think, I should really start pulling back with the eating but you just can’t seem to get it together so you keep eating and then you start noticing that your clothes are tight. Very tight. Now you’re getting scared and you think, I’ve really got to get a grip. But you’ve got dinner plans with friends at a great restaurant and you decide to enjoy yourself and eat and drink whatever you want and boy, do you. You feel so bad about your discretion that the next day you just say “what the hell” and eat whatever you want because you feel like a pig. One day turns into the next, and the next and before you know it, a couple of weeks have gone by. A few more pairs of pants go into the “no longer fit” pile. You are headed for a brick wall. You now know that you’ve got to seriously clean up your diet because you don’t want to get to the point of no return. Only you’re almost there but you can’t see it. It’s getting harder and harder for you to work out because you feel so fat and disgusting that there is nothing to motivate you to go to the gym. The terror that you experience at the thought of not being able to lose the weight that you have gained has paralyzed you. You think more about the clean up and you decide that you have not had enough chances over the years to indulge in pancakes because of fear of getting fat so you will take the opportunity now before you clean up to go to brunch and eat 3 pancakes the are the size of dinner plates. So there you are in the thick of food hell, eating something because you think you should, and because you are trying to somehow make up for past deprivation. You know that what you are doing is neither giving you much pleasure or solving the issues of the past. You realize that you are in Food Hell and you are the only one who can dig yourself out.

10 Reasons to embark on a juice fast

1. If you make it through, you’ll feel so good about yourself for having the discipline you’ll forget why you went on it to begin with (lack of discipline and polluting your insides)
2. It wakes up your tastebuds. Flavors are really intense. Everything tastes really good.
3. You need much less food to feel satisfied.
4 You have tons of energy once it’s over.
5. It wipes out your cravings for sugar.
6. All your friends will marvel at your discipline.
7. You will be astounded by your discipline.
8. Bloated stomach--gone.
9. You think twice about what you put into your body
10. It can release you from Food Hell

Finally Over!!!

Yesterday was the last day of the Blueprint Cleanse. I really didn't think I was going to make it. Still not sure why it was so excrutiating but I'm glad it's over. Now of course, I have to go back to eating very slowly. So far today I had an apple and a salad of cucumber and avocado with lemon and olive oil. That was at least two hours ago and I'm still full. Anyway, I'm really trying to embrace my state of inner cleanliness and think carefully about my food choices from now on.

The fact of the matter is that I had so many years where I couldn't stand the feeling of heavy food in my stomach. It was easy to eat well because I was kind of addicted to feeling light inside. These days I could pretty much eat a plate of rice pasta whenever. So I'm hoping that the cleanse kind of re-set everything and that I will naturally gravitate towards lighter stuff and quit the carbo loading.

For now I feel very good. We'll see how long it lasts.

Blueprint Cleanse - Day 3

Where is Blueprint Cleanse Day 2 you ask? Let's just say you don't want to know. At one point, I was ready to eat my own fist. It was so not like this last time. I really had a few moments yesterday of just saying the hell with it and eating something. Only one thing stopped me--this cleanse was a lot of money and I couldn't bear to just flush money down the toilet. Maybe that's why it's so expensive so that people will stick it out.

Today was definitely a better day. I hardly thought about food except for 3 or 4 times which I think is pretty good. My energy was good and I had good concentration. I actually accomplished a lot today. I'm looking forward to tomorrow as being even better, and by day 5 I should be experiencing some kind of euphoria. I hope.