Food for Thought
Hello again! I’ve sat down to write my weekly newsletter about 5 times the last 3 days and always got distracted with something else. Notice how that happens sometimes? Sometimes it’s the internet itself that takes me into a whole new mind frame, or it’s dust on the floor, or a friend calls on the phone. Whatever the distraction is, it seems to catch me. Then I come back to the page. What do I even have to say? Threads of self doubt cloud my mind mixed with weak impulses to clean the kitchen before I can do anything else! Welcome to my mind. The silver lining to that is that I’m definitely never bored.
Moving into Feb I’m happy to say that I’ve almost completed the 30 day yoga journey for January. hah - giving myself the grace to know that I missed a few days here or there but that tomorrow is Day 30 on February 9th. Then what? I hope I keep going. It fell off pretty quickly last year, but this year, I feel a shift, and I hope it’s real. As much as I groan and kick and scream when the alarm goes off 15-20 minutes earlier and I cling to the last few minutes of dreamy sleep the snooze button grants me, I feel a whole lot better in my body for the rest of the day if I can manage just a few minutes on the mat working on breathing and stretching. Can I keep this promise to myself? Can I look back and realize it is helping, little by little? That my old self thought she had to torture herself in order to feel better and that ended up not really working out?
‘Working out’ - anyway - how did we get in this loop. What is really healthy? As I’ve done some deep diving into the topic over the last couple of years, I come to a conclusion that isn’t always popular in the fanatical diet/exercise culture that floods our feeds and makes us wonder how we will ever ‘lose that weight’ and when we do, will we be happy? If we eliminate all of the things like sugar, dairy, gluten, and on and on, will our bodies start to feel better or will we have even more disordered eating?
Of course, everyone is on their own journey. And all I know is that mine is complex. I still have an inner shame voice if I eat what I deem in the moment as ‘too much’ or if the waist band on my pants feels a little too tight on any given day, or if I see a photo of myself and immediately think I look fat. This voice amplifies itself multiple times a day and is reinforced by not so subtle advertising everywhere.
As I sit here, eating leftover pizza for breakfast, the knowing that ‘all food is good food’ comes into my being. Our bodies. They need fuel to keep running. Sometimes we have the luxury to choose to eat a certain way, and how lucky some are to have the privilege to always live like that. I admire those who can adhere to special diets for whatever reason they choose. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I tearfully asked my oncologist, ‘Is it because I ate too much cheese?’ and I was not joking. I can laugh about that now, because it pinpoints the self-blame that I was inflicting on myself for GETTING CANCER!
But that is the culture I absorbed growing up, where everyone’s mom was on weight watchers or jenny craig or whatever shame program that you’d have to WEIGH YOURSELF in the back of a church and shame list how many calories you had in a day and by the way Moms, your kids were learning those behaviors by default. I remember looking down at my legs as a kid and thinking they were so fat (they were not.)
I recently read I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. In the book, as an adolescent, her mother actually teaches her and oversees her eating disorder, which starts as anorexia and moves into bulimia, which she takes to a dangerous level and holds onto even after her Mom dies. The book is a little triggering if you’ve ever had any disordered eating patterns, but I also found the way she told her story extremely courageous, and I get the feeling that some of those internal struggles never go away.
I love the account the “The Nutrition Tea” on Insta and Twitter because Shana Spence uses humor and evidence to inspire change in our thought patterns. Hoping to reorganize my feed for more nuggets like this. (Yes, I said nuggets)
But that is the culture I absorbed growing up, where everyone’s mom was on weight watchers or jenny craig or whatever shame program that you’d have to WEIGH YOURSELF in the back of a church and shame list how many calories you had in a day and by the way Moms, your kids were learning those behaviors by default. I remember looking down at my legs as a kid and thinking they were so fat (they were not.)
Thanks for going down the rabbit hole with me today. Interested to hear about what you are thinking along these lines. Do you have those shamey voices, and how do you cope with them? How do you reward or forgive yourself when it comes to food? There is a lot more on this topic I have thought about, but for now I’ll leave you with this: