We have learned to become masters of control and contortion around food and pleasure. Women tend to fall into one of two camps:: The first camp of which are "doing it right": working out, counting calories, obsessing over how their body looks, the size of their pants and the number on the scale and most importantly, maintaining the image of a HOT woman. In the second camp, they are discouraged, hiding, and outwardly giving the diet and health culture the finger while secretly chastising themselves for not being able to control and contort better and be part of the first camp. And if you’re like me, you’ve swung between the two camps for much of your life, learning to be masterful at control and contortion but secretly suffocating and silently screaming.
However, there is a third camp. One that you don’t so much fall into as you arrive at, embrace, embody and radiates through you. It is a small camp, but the word is getting around. We’ve seen a glimpse of it in Dove ads, or with Ashley Graham & Robyn Lawley in the latest swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated. This camp sees the rules, understands what’s being suggested to them, knows the conditioning full well and decides otherwise. It’s not an easy camp to belong to. It requires a true depth of center, a certainty and resolve that is different than the resolve required otherwise. In women who belong to this camp, what you’ll find is an ease in their body, a fluidity, joy, pleasure and play. They genuinely like themselves, who they are, and more than that, they love their body. No matter how it looks, what size pants they wear or if they worked out that day. They know they are good just as they are.
They aren’t fighting food, reality or themselves. They don’t see men as a commodity to be earned or acquired. They don’t hide their appetite, their pleasure or their joy. They are those women that walk in the room, and regardless of how they look, there is a natural magnetism that pours off of them. They are captivating. Effortless. In love with life. In love with themselves.
Their secret? They walk around in the world as love. Say what? Yes, they aren’t searching outside of themselves for something, anything to fill them up. They have filled up on their own and as such they radiate love. They are love. They love themselves and as a result have a full cup from which they have found what it means to live from pleasure, embodiment and joy.
When we are using food (or controlling food as the case may be) to fill or not feel our loneliness, or escape our present circumstance or to numb something we don’t want to feel or face, we aren’t tapped into the well inside of us that is love. The same could be said if your go to is shopping, attention from men, alcohol, drugs, you name it.
Our relationship to food, much like our relationship to nature, has become wildly contorted. And how we relate to food is how we relate to anything.
We don’t see food as the innately pleasurable, nourishing experience it should be, but we’ve come to regard food as something to monitor and control OR as an indulgence we feel guilty about. It’s neither of those.
Food is our first source of nourishment and is deeply entwined with feelings of connection, attachment and love from the earliest age. Its understandable why we turn to it as a source of comfort when we are lonely, hungry for things other than food or when we simply feel disconnected from ourselves. Food can often feel very intimate. And it is. It can be so nourishing and satisfying when we let go of all the rules, the shoulds, the abuse and the judgment we have of ourselves, our appetites and that which we truly hunger for.
You can begin to change your relationship to food quite simply.
Step 1: Start slowing down. No matter if you are eating vegetables, a cupcake, low fat yogurt or deep fried twinkies, SLOW DOWN. Taste it slowly, savor each bite, notice how your body feels as this food makes its way into your being.
Step 2: Eat what you love. At this point, I’m not suggesting you eat only what is “good” for your body (good is debatable and changes all the time). I simply want you to eat from your pleasure. Check with your body and ask questions that tune you into your body wisdom. Some suggestions might be: “what would feel good right now?’ “how do I want my body to feel after I eat?” “What would bring me pleasure and nourishment right now?”
Step 3: Give yourself love. Each day, write down 5 things that you did well, feel good about from the day or want to celebrate and shout from the rooftops about. Acknowledging and embracing all your goodness is the key to stop fighting food, because when you fight your most basic nourishment, you’re in essence fighting yourself, your life force and your ability to flourish in the greatness that you are.
Come join us in Camp 3. Stop fighting food. Start embracing nourishing pleasure.