This was a tasty, mindful experience. My room service avocado toasts with a side of Strip View in Las Vegas where we celebrated Mark’s birthday last summer.

Pondering on Hunger, Food and Self-Esteem

I’m always waiting to eat. Eating is my clock, my love, my accomplishment, my purpose. Tick, tick, tick. It’s been five minutes since breakfast. Tock, tock, tock, how many more minutes before I can safely say the growling in my stomach is real and not hope. Hope? Hope to be hungry? Isn’t hunger the enemy? Nope.

Hunger is the signal for the big game.

Hunger means I can eye my plate for those few seconds of passionate anticipation before my fork gets busy.

Then come all of the joys of taste, texture, and the warm filling of my body. The inner hug which is food for me.

Yep, food and I go way back. It’s a complicated relationship…on my end.

Food mostly sits there.

Food cannot physically call my name, nor hug, nor accompany me – at least not until it’s been added to the storage silos on my hips, thighs, tummy, or chin.

Food gains its wonder and personality from my end. Talk about projection! It goes from lover to monster depending on my mood.

Love and Dread

When I cook and prepare food I know I will love to eat, it is almost as good as eating.

My mind gets busy with imagination. Smells fill the kitchen, along with the sound of fresh snapping produce, the whoosh of my knife, the tinkling joy of whisks tickling mixing bowls like a bell choir.

Spice, herbs, dice. All of these my playground and my palette.

I love to cook. I dread eating.

Or I used to dread eating.

Eating for me was guilty behavior. Even so called “healthy” foods, might call me too much. Fats bad. Carbs bad. Animal products bad. Sweets bad. And who knew what the next study or fad might be that would hold up the accusing mirror of my food weakness?

It was obvious from the extra fat on my body that I did not deserve to eat. I did not deserve to relax around food. I deserved to have a tight rein on my behavior.

I needed the safety of my calorie chains. Weigh, measure, document. I needed to exercise more than enough to be able to eat. But even then, food was not a joy.

Joyous food was forbidden. Like coveting your neighbor’s spouse, to love food was to sin in your mind. Fat people need to keep their mouths shut.

I think I also took that literally. To not only keep my mouth shut against pleasures of the flesh, eating-wise, but to keep my fat-crazed opinions to myself.

Weird thing is my “fat” mind persisted through weight loss, muscle building, and endurance exercise feats. No matter my actual size or fitness level, secretly, my inner DNA believed me to be a fat person and I was deeply ashamed to be fat.

Talking Helps

Through my podcast, Compulsive Overeating Diary, I have uncovered many of these issues by talking about my truth – no matter how unworthy or uncomfortable I felt. Tell your truth enough and you will start to understand yourself – even maybe to accept yourself.

One of the most surprising things I discovered was that I needed to give up dieting to relearn how my body operated. So I began to practice intuitive eating and I am very grateful for it. I finally did discover what my physical hunger signals were as well as that mysterious unicorn, satiety. I legalized foods until I didn’t hear my self-made siren calls to them as often.

My weight stabilized without dieting for the first time in – well, ever.

Emotionally, I began to feel those scary, horrible feelings that chips and ice-cream safely hid. I went to therapy, journaled, talked about those feelings on the podcast, let them out in weeping and screams. Cried me a river of regret and loss and loneliness. Screamed into my pillow the pain of being me, the hidden me, the young, frail, small girl who couldn’t understand why she was no longer loved just because she weighed more than before. The teenager who would do anything to fit in. The bad choices she made, the opportunities lost, the fear and self-hate.

All of these tumbled out over and over. My god, I’m almost 60! How much life is there left to change my ways? Have I wasted my entire life in fear and shame? Is that shame so ingrained that my progress with food might last, but my self-loathing remain?

Will I die unsatisfied that my life meant no more than longing after forbidden treats and approval?

Not what I want.

I want to feel inside the love I receive. I want to feel worthy for my attempts. I want to accept the many times I did my best. I want be proud of who I am. I want to decouple food from that shame.

Intuitive eating is a stepping stone.

And my next step, is to learn to feel worthy and loved. For that to happen, I need to truly and actively love myself. So to meet that goal, I created my new “dream diet”.

Another piece of our dreams. Mark and I visit a wonderful farm to table restaurant in Long Beach. Wonderful weather, wonderful ambience, wonderful fresh food that begs to be relished, not wolfed down.

My New Dream Diet

I know, we tend to think of dieting as a way of restriction – calories, food groups, types of foods.

But if you look up the meanings of the word diet, they also include:

Diet: something provided or experienced repeatedly

For example, I might say, a steady “diet” of Survivor reruns influenced my productivity.

So the backbone of my new “dream diet” is eating very, very well.

Eating well for me includes:

• Cooking dishes I love to eat.
• Enjoying foods on social occasions without fear.
• Cooking and eating the freshest ingredients I can
• Taking time to enjoy my food
• Taking time to enjoy company
• Taking time to appreciate the bounty of choice I have
• Taking time to listen to my body
• Taking time to deal with emotions regularly so food can freely be food vs. my picture of it.
• Tracking when I need information, without fear of relapse
• Adjusting for time and chance without panic
• Feeling good about my choices despite how others might choose to eat.
• Feeling confident that my food is based on love, not fear.

So my new diet definition example might well be:

A steady diet of self care and compassion influenced Laurie’s attitude and created more opportunities to be loving toward herself and others.

How would you describe your dream diet?

Bon Appétit!

xoxo