Health awareness
I have been analyzing my relationship with food for the last month. I am always health conscious when I eat, but I had realized that my need to be so healthy was actually causing problems in my body. Now I have cleared up the dermatitis on my face and scalp by working on my problems related to my need to be so healthy. It was a lot that came from fear instead of love. Fear of contamination. Very subtle indeed.
This got worse, I think when I found out that my friend was dying of pancreatic cancer earlier in the year she gave me another tail spin to be healthy, in fact the day she died was the day I started a detox from 5-day juices. . Since that day I have regained the weight that I lost, and something else.
I was exercising with a physical therapist and had to stop, my adrenal glands were getting 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. He couldn’t understand why because he was eating so healthy.
Geneen Roth
I decided to go back to reading Geneen Roth’s books 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 had taken pride in being able to eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight. But then I got a lot fat after having an abortion. I thought it was hormonal; perimenopausal. I’ve looked at so many angles that I couldn’t find anything that would change the problem.
Restrictors and Authorizers
Geneen talks about how there are restrictions and allowances in feeding. 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 that I can stick to an eating plan. Restrictors believe that if they can control, they feel safe. My parents are restrictive and so is my first husband. Then my second husband came and he is a Permitter. They are the ones who eat what they want when they want. They want to have a party with food. Eat everything that you were not allowed to eat as children. They believe they cannot control, so they might as well merge with chaos.
That’s why I hated my restrictions on food. I didn’t want to come home to eat a salad, I wanted a hearty, meaty meal. We always had to eat candy, chips, popcorn, and coke. After my childhood and my first husband, it was like someone gave me full permission to have fun while eating, even if I felt guilty, it was easier to 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 he could eat all the foods that he wasn’t allowed to eat on tap as a kid.
Food as love
Geneen has always talked about how food is love. I never really understood this fully, I knew it was an emotional eater, to calm anxiety usually, but it wasn’t until I read these two lines in your book that I really understood. –
“I’m beginning to understand that the whole food struggle isn’t about discipline, self-control, or haggling with myself; it’s not even about food. It’s a story, a powerful story, about loving, wanting, and having.”
“When I told myself that this time I could eat whatever I wanted without conditions, 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 could not eat as a child, I thought that I could get what I never got … I needed to prove to myself that what I wanted most was not forbidden, but what I did not understand why I did not want cookies; I wanted the way he allowed me to have them made me feel; welcomed, deserving, adored. “
Deprivation
So if I take the time to observe the feelings I have about food. I realized that when I eat a salad or something healthy I am restricting myself, although I consciously know that I am eating well, unconsciously I say, look, I have eaten all my vegetables, I am a good girl, which always meant in my childhood that later I know he allowed me a treat. So when that gift doesn’t come now, I feel empty, like something is missing. So I compare emptiness to hunger, so I eat more.
Because my emotions around food have to do with deprivation, biologically my body is dedicated to storing fat because it believes that it is in a famine. More than ever this year because my friend is dying and he really wants to be in control of my health.
I thought about how my feelings for good food are no different than what I feel 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 that hungry for chocolate anymore (I’d already worked on that) but I seem to like scones right now, date scones. Even though he had prevented me from eating wheat, he was sneaking inside. So I went into the energy and realized that it’s a way to enjoy pleasure and keep acting like I’m not really making a big impact, a kind of invisible pleasure. Like he’s fooling me into thinking it’s not really a cake. As the poor man’s substitute, so it really didn’t count to be special.
Feel loved
I allowed myself to really feel what the cake was all about and the carbs that I associated with Love and Desire 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, valued, and loved.
So the idea is to take away the projections of all the feelings you have about food that have an energy charge for you, feel them and explore where they really come from. They are inner child feelings, your inner child is still running the show.
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 for 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 could do that (because I’m a restrictor) because I felt like it would be “I’ll go crazy”, but by eating mindfully, and not from a place of rebellion, you get to see that all food is Love and Love is not limited just to food. Or whatever it is that projects your deprivation problems into, be it things, money, people, etc.
So you can still eat from a place of loving yourself and loving food, but not from a place of deprivation or rebellion.
Do you have any food restrictions that lead to yo-yo from deprivation? Or are you a Permitter? The party is at your house.