Healthy relationship with food: We find ways to make sure that we are eating to live, not living to eat.
Vision: Would you be willing to envision this with me–what I imagine and hope our community will be like in the future
I love how we are so conscious about food in our beautiful community. We are constantly mindful when we eat. Although our conversations during meals are lively and often full of laughter, we still stay conscious and attentive to chewing our food, tasting it, and celebrating the delicious fare that we are eating.
Prayer before eating is s sacred pause in our day, and our hearts well up in gratitude for the hands that prepared the food, and all who helped grow and bring the food to us, as well as the food itself. We are conscious that not everyone has access to the vibrant, live food that we have, and we pray for them as well.
Because we are dealing with our emotional issues in so many ways, and because we are so content with the harmonious, productive, almost effortless life that we are living together, emotional eating is rare. Yet when there is the urge to eat instead of process, we have developed habits that keep us from doing what used to be default.
We love our food so much, and have such a healthy relationship to what we are eating. By eating raw, vegan food, we don’t have guilt about taking someone’s life. Eating raw helps us to develop a better relationship with food just by eating food that are satisfying and create a positive kind of upward spiral of having positive energy, which yields positive emotions, which then keeps us from wanting to eat to stuff our emotions.
We all encourage each other to be conscious of our eating habits, and even those who come here with serious eating disorders find themselves healing.
Resources:
What we think about our food is important:
One of the most fundamental building blocks of nutritional metabolism is neither vitamin, mineral, nor molecule. It’s our relationship with food. It’s the sum total of our innermost thoughts and feelings about what we eat. This relationship with food is as deep and revealing as any we might ever have. The great Sufi poet Rumi once remarked: “The satiated man and the hungry man do not see the same thing when they look upon a loaf of bread.” …. Indeed, how each of us thinks about eating is so profoundly relative that if a group of us were looking at the same plate of food, no two people would see the same thing, or metabolize it the same way. Read more at the Psychology of Eating website here.
Eater’s Agreement: I thought this agreement was very thorough when it comes to having a healthy relationship with food. Here is an excerpt: “I recognize that as the biological need to eat is fulfilled with greater awareness and efficiency, the benefits of my well-being will increase. I further acknowledge that ignorance of the eating process may cause undesirable consequences.” See the whole agreement at the Psychology of Eating website here.
Free Ebook about your relationship with food: I thought this Psychology of eating website had a lot of cutting edge ideas which I want to study. I’ll be looking over the ebook. There are an abundance of resources on this website. Psychology of Eating. Find the ebook here.
Overview of healthy eating: This article has so many links to great articles, and covered the topic of healthy relating to food in a very comprehensive way. This article is also promoting beach body course which I don’t know about and thus recommend. Read more here.
My Story
I feel grateful because my parents did not have an abundance of junk food and sugar easily available. We were encouraged to eat an apple or some carrot sticks for a snack, I am pretty sure. I was very slender for most of my life, and when I got up to 140 lbs at 5’4″ when I was traveling at age 19, that was huge for me!
At age 18, when I realized it was wrong to eat animals, it was easy for me to transition from a meat based diet to a vegetarian diet. Although giving up fish and seafood were the hardest things, when I realized that they probably had feelings, too, I was able to easily release them. So I think I was not addicted to taste and textures.
However, 6 years ago when I found out that eating dairy and eggs caused animals more harm than meat did, it took me about a year to give up those products. Since cheese has been proven to be addictive, I think I was addicted. It took a little time, but 5 years ago in 2014 (2019 now) I was able to go vegan once I watched a 4 minute film that was very graphic.
Although I have long known that chewing food is a good thing, I have not been a patient chewer. I could have done better. And now that I have no teeth, and wear dentures, I can’t chew crunchy things like apples and carrots. however, I still enjoy feeling textures and tastes in eating.
When I am living alone, I have tended to eat a lot more. I know that is emotional eating. I think I ate more to stuff my feelings this past 3 months when I was in Berkeley when I had a very stressful time. A few times I would walk to Whole Foods about 1/2 hour a way, and buy a quart of vegan ice cream, eating the whole thing and being very clear I was doing this to stuff my feelings.
In the past if I buy a chocolate bar, it has been hard to stretch it out. I usually eat the whole thing in a day. Or all at once.
Right now I am fasting on the Master Cleanse lemonade diet. I am enjoying the freedom of not using food to stuff my emotions, and having more time to write.
What I love the most about food is when I can pick a tomato from a vine or an apricot, or peach–from a tree. Figs are the best! I loved living in Berkeley during plum season because there were often plums on the ground. I had no qualms eating them straight off the side walk with dirt and all. I have never gotten sick from eating dirty food!
I can be greedy about food. If someone tells me that I can eat anything in the frig and they don’t set boundaries, I want to eat perhaps more than I am welcome too!
I am easily tempted by food–not animal products–but if food is available, I want to eat even if I am not hungry. It is easy for me to fast right now–I have zero food tempting me!
Wait a minute–when I was gardening for a friend, I ate some tomatoes from the vine of a volunteer plant. that is the only time I ate in the past 20 days.
I so wanted to fast on the bus ride from Berkeley–which ended up being a 53 hours trip. I had my lemonade ingredients all ready to go, and smoothies and juice in the beginning. But I succumbed to eating my biggest temptation–potato wedges. I bought a burrito as well.
I really am glad to start reading more about how our mind affects our digestion and metabolism, so when do fall short and eat something that I think is not the best for me, I will do so mindfully and not condemn myself. I want to find ways of resisting temptation, too. I have a lot of self control about food, and yet definitely not as much as I would like.
One of my biggest incentives to fast is that my stomach has gotten bigger than it ever has, besides when I was pregnant. I just can’t stand feeling the flabby fat that just kind of hangs there. It doesn’t fit with the rest of my body which is fairly firm and lean. Partly it is vanity, partly it is jut not liking the feeling. I also know that a big belly is an indicator of not optimum health. I am so enjoying feeling my stomach shrinking on the fast. Yes, I would love to have 6 pack abs!
I love making food for people and having them enjoy it. Eating with others symbolizes camaraderie and community. Except for when I traveled alone at age 19 for 13 months, I lived with people and shared meals with people until about 4 years ago, in 2015. For the first time, I was completely on my own with eating, and I felt devastated because eating alone reminded me that I was alone and not living with my former husband and daughter.
I’m glad that I could provide healthy meals for my children, now grown. When I was pregnant with each of them, I ate even more consciously, knowing that my food choices affected them.
I look forward to living in a community where we eat consciously and where I feel so satiated with the satisfaction of doing meaningful work and being around loving people that food is a means to fuel my body, not stuff feelings. I have felt this feeling before–of being so joyful, usually being with people–that food is actually less important than the wonderful connections we are having.
Thanks for reading my post. Would you like to share any thoughts that might be helpful to my readers and I?
