What Are You Truly Hungry For?

I have been on an intense journey these last few months around food. Included on the menu is grappling with self-loathing. Yah. I said it. There is a paradoxical love-hate relationship between hating my body and loving food.

I absolutely LOVE food! I love growing it, creating with it and especially eating it.  I revel in the tantalizing flavors that dance on my taste buds and waltz through my olfactory system, imprinting one word on my brain - YUM!!!  Mildly put, food brings me joy.

At the same time, I feel betrayed by it and my body.  In 8th grade, I weighed 120 pounds. My diet consisted of no breakfast, a fudge cycle for lunch and a home cooked dinner by my Mom. I was given the opportunity to become a lunch cashier. It included free lunch. I gained 20 pounds in no time flat. By my junior year, I added another 30, for a total of 50 pounds!  The heaviest I got was 203. Yawzah!!! I am currently 175#. 

Why am I sharing this with you? Because I know I’m not alone in this experience. I feel ashamed of gaining so much weight.  Over the course of the last 50 years, I’m 64 now, I’ve waged a battle between eating what I love and hating what I weigh.

It’s complicated, right? Intellectually I know that my worth does not go down as the number on the scale goes up, and yet, that is how I feel. The two have NOTHING to do with each other.  That is not what the outside world says. We have been brainwashed to believe you are imperfect, worse, worthless if you are overweight.

What is the solution? That is where self-love comes in. It’s been extremely difficult to learn what that even looks like.  Where does one start?  I started with listening to my body.  It was giving me all kinds of signs trying to get my attention - extreme pain in my heels and calves that I finally acknowledged after a year of enduring. I had to stop running, which brought on a lot of self criticism, and you guessed it, more weight!  I did 8 weeks of redlight laser treatment and chiropractic sessions.  I started acupuncture to help with circulation. I took some herbs for 7 days that brought on severe itching and hives for THREE MONTHS. I was told to keep taking pills “as much as you need, for as long as you have symptoms” by my doctor.  Really? 

This was an opportunity to go within. I did not want to mask symptoms, I wanted a cure. So I asked my body what it needed.  The answer was a 3 week liver detox.  I am in my third week of it and boy have I learned a lot about myself, food, and acceptance of self-love.

Things I’ve learned at a deeper level: 

• I have a sense that when I’m done with this detox, I can love my body by finding a balance of what to eat and how much to eat - I call it mindful Manje.
• I don’t need a lot of food to sustain life.
• There is a difference between an empty stomach and being hungry.
• I can still enjoy all the delicious food I want, just in smaller quantities
• I haven’t missed sugar at all, which has been a nice surprise.
• There are more things than just food to be hungry for - 
• Spiritual sustenance
• Emotional nourishment
• Self-care

I look forward to a new mindful way of eating and being. I know it is a way for me to love myself.
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