loving relationship with food

For the first day in weeks I woke up without the need of a alarm clock before 10am. Granted I was cat attacked by Izzy which comes in the form of lots of kisses and walking on me, but usually I can roll right back to sleep. It often worries me that I don’t have a regular sleep schedule and it is in the not too far distance that I used to suffer from excruciating insomnia. Its only been when I’ve visited Tulum Mexico over the past three years that I go to sleep by 11 and rise with the sun to walk the beach. Today I realized that I woke up because of my diet, the foods that I have chosen to eat the past 5 days, that has started to restore some homeostasis to my system. So simple, yet so wild to me that its that easy. But for me its not easy, its a daily challenge.

Since I can recall I have always struggled to have what I would consider a loving relationship with food. The memories are all wrapped in some sense of pain, guilt, shame, self loathing, anger. No matter what I intellectually understand I have always felt helpless to eat what makes me feel well versus “good”. The “good” feeling is always fleeting and then washed away with horrible feelings. Feeling well is different. When I feel well it allows me to escape from the prison of food. When I eat for life I feel in rhythm with the universe and ready to interact. When I eat what I think makes me feel “good” I can’t stop and my body feels bad. I am not the norm. I have diseased thinking when it comes to food and that is ok. It simply means that I need to treat the disease in order to get better and I feel blessed to have a spiritual solution and path that I am beginning to embark upon again. I feel a sense of hope and for just today I feel well in my body. And because of that I was able to wake up this morning not feeling achy, bloated or sad. AMAZING. This is just for today.

Other then the 12 step material of Overeaters Anonymous, I highly recommend this book The Slow Down Diet by David Marc. While I am not a fan of the word diet in the way that we understand it or the words weight loss in the title, I find that it is a true book about loving relationships and food, and not about the weight loss. Its quite beautiful.