when food is love

Health awareness

I have been analyzing my relationship with food in the last month. I’m always health conscious when I eat, but I realized that my need to be so healthy was actually causing problems in my body. I have now cleared up the dermatitis on my face and scalp by working on my issues related to my need to be so healthy. It was so much more that I came from fear rather than love. Fear of contamination. Really very subtle.

I think this was exacerbated when I found out my friend was dying of pancreatic cancer earlier in the year she gave me another twist in the queue to be healthy in fact the day she died is the day I started a juice detox 5 days. . Since that day I have gained back the weight I lost, and then some.

I was working out with a physical therapist and had to stop, my adrenal glands were filling up with cream, I just couldn’t lose weight. I did more research and thought it had to do with my cortisol levels.

Then I started having indigestion every day. And he felt bloated. I couldn’t figure out why because he was eating very healthy.

Geneen Roth

I decided to start reading the Geneen Roth books again and bought Women Food and God, because it was the book I could get the fastest. I’ve read all of Geneen’s books before, but this time I really got it.

I had never had a weight problem; I took pride in the fact that she could eat whatever she wanted without gaining weight. But then I gained a lot of weight after an abortion. I thought it was hormonal; perimenopausal I looked from so many angles that I just couldn’t find anything that would change the problem.

Restrictors and Permitters

Geneen talks about how there are restrictors and allowers in food. I am a restrictor. I can restrict my food intake and control it very well. I have iron willpower. I can control cravings. I’m not talking about anorexia, but more than that I can follow an eating plan. Restrictors believe that if they can control, then they feel safe. My parents are restrictive and so is my first husband. Then my second husband came and he is a permit holder. They are the ones who eat what they want when they want. They want to have a party with food. Eat everything you weren’t allowed to eat as a child. They think they can’t control, so they might as well merge with chaos.

So I hated my restrictions around food. He didn’t want to go home for a salad, he wanted a big meaty meal with meat. We always needed candy, chips, popcorn, and coke. After my childhood and my first husband it was like someone was giving me full permission to have fun while I ate, even if I felt guilty, it was easier to just buy the junk food and not get into a battle over how we should eat healthier. On some level, my inner child loved it because I was able to eat all the foods that I wasn’t allowed to eat off tap as a kid.

food as love

Geneen has always talked about food being love. I never really understood this at all, I knew she was an emotional eater, usually to calm anxiety, but it wasn’t until I read these two lines in her book that I really got it. –

“I’m beginning to understand that the whole fight with food is not about discipline, self-control, or negotiating with myself; it’s not even about food. It’s a story, a powerful story, about loving and wanting and having.”

“When I told myself that this time I could eat whatever I wanted with no strings attached, I went straight to the foods from my childhood that I was never allowed to eat. It was as if I was allowed to eat what I couldn’t eat as a child, I thought I could to get what I never got… I needed to prove to myself that what I wanted most was not forbidden, but what I didn’t understand was that I didn’t want the cookies, having them made me feel welcomed, served, adored.”

Deprivation

So I do spend time observing the feelings I have about food. I realized when I eat a salad or something healthy I’m restricting myself, even though consciously I know I’m eating well, subconsciously I’m saying, look, I’ve eaten all my vegetables, I’m a good girl. , which always meant in my childhood that I was later allowed a gift. So when that pleasure doesn’t come now, I feel empty, like something is missing. So emptiness equals hunger so I eat more.

Because my emotions around food have to do with deprivation, biologically my body stores fat because it thinks it’s in a famine. This year more than ever because my friend died and I really wanted to be in control of my health.

I thought about how my feelings for good food are no different than my feelings for other things. I realized that I like to buy good food and really what I tell myself is that I deserve something of value, I want to be valued. I want to be important, I want to matter. All the feelings of the inner child.

I’m not craving chocolate as much anymore (I had already worked on that), but I seem to have something for scones at the moment, date scones. Even though he had prevented me from having wheat, he was sneaking in. So I got into the energy of that and realized that it’s a way of having a gift and still acting like it’s not really making much of an impact, kind of an invisible gift. Like I’m kidding myself into thinking it’s not really a cake. Like the poor man’s surrogate, so it didn’t really count for being special.

feel loved

I allowed myself to really feel what it was that I associated cakes and carbs with Love and Wanting and realized that those foods always made me feel special as a kid as they were party foods. So eating those foods made me feel special, like I really mattered and was seen and valued and loved.

So the idea is to take out the projections of all the feelings you have about foods that are energetically charged for you, and feel them and explore where they really come from. They are inner child feelings, your inner child is still running the show.

By thinking that eating cake is the only way you are allowed to feel special or loved, then you are not going to give that up because of any diet or restriction. The idea is to connect with Love and allow yourself to have it, without having to eat the cake. Love that part of you that equates food with Love.

Eat what you want

Geneen talks about eating whatever you want. I didn’t think I would be able to do that (because I’m a restrictor) because I felt it would be a “self riot”, but by eating mindfully, and not from a place of rebellion, you come to see that all food is Love and Love is not limited only to food. Or whatever you project your deprivation issues onto, be it things, money, people, etc.

So you can still eat from a place where you love yourself and love food, but not from a place of deprivation or rebellion.

Do you have any food restrictions that throw you into the yo-yo-ing of deprivation? Or are you a permit holder? The party is at your house.