The following is the fourth part of a 12 week series based on the book 12 Tiny Things: Simple Ways to Live a More Intentional Life. For the next 12 (or so…) weeks we’ll be focusing on the 12 themes outlined in the book: Space, Work, Spirituality, Food, Style, Home, Sensuality, Nature, Creativity, Communication, Learning, and Community. Each offering will include a new reflection or deleted scenes book excerpt along with a worksheet and [sometimes] an audio exercise to help you delve more fully into the theme in your own life.
This week’s theme is FOOD. It’s our universal connector, right? We all have to eat to live, and everyone has a different relationship with food due to stories that are connected to it—from the family stories we’re born into to the stories told by the media and marketing professionals to the stories we tell/create ourselves.
From the Food chapter in 12 Tiny Things:
For a myriad of reasons, many people struggle to put the time, energy, money, and planning into cooking and eating well. Not everyone enjoys (or has the resources for) dreaming up recipes and preparing food with love. Yet food is universal, necessary, and extraordinary in its ordinariness. Food is required for life and growth, so how can folks who struggle with food build a healthy relationship with it? It takes significant effort to build a working relationship with how to eat after years of challenge. Even if it doesn’t come easily, anyone can build the capacity to understand food’s profundity, its ability to bind and nurture, its essentialness. We can approach food with humility and surround ourselves with people who are already at peace with food. We can befriend a bread baker. Making peace with food is possible.
Through my work as a wellness coach, I’ve come into contact with many people who have a complicated relationship with nourishing themselves. Some athletes are required to eat more and gain weight. Other athletes are required to eat less and lose weight. Some folks overeat when they are bored, others when they are sad, still others when they are stressed or happy. Food is a reward and is often used to celebrate. Fast food is cheap and organic food is expensive. Food deserts are real, and many people are hungry.
Whether we are lovers of or intimidated by food, the invitation to alchemy is realistic. It is accessible and within each individual’s control. Mindfully eating can be a first step toward healing. When we taste our food intentionally, we learn to savor, and to associate the food more with how it makes us feel than how it tastes. When we chew slowly, our bodies are smart enough to want the good stuff in the amounts that serve best. We can look beyond the calories to the laughter at the table. We can develop new preferences, even after years of the same patterns. We can stop labeling food as “good” or “bad” and simply see it as food. Food can function beyond necessity.
Author Anne Lamott, whose work I appreciate, posted a story on her instagram account awhile back about a recent experience with body image, diet culture, the impact of stress and isolation, and falling back into old patterns. It’s a story well known (though not loved) by many, so I wanted to share the last bit of it with you today. At the core, it was a story about hunger. At the close of the story, Anne asks a friend (who’s also trying to lose weight) what she’s had to eat so far today. The friend responds with “a green smoothie”. Anne says, “Are you hungry?” and her friend replies with “starving.” Anne goes on to say, “What were we starving for? Food we love, and each other, but mostly, self respect, radical self love and care, no matter what our tummies or pants tell us. And it’s an inside job.”
Making peace with food is possible.
Over the years I’ve heard countless individuals answer YES to this question: “Have you ever fed an emotion?”
There are entire books written on eating as a stress response, emotional eating, and the pervasiveness of food as a coping mechanism, so we’ll keep it simple today. If you also answered YES, consider this as a follow up:
What need is that food trying to fill? How do you want it to help?
When you can voice what's going on under the need to feed those emotions, you are one step closer to giving yourself what you TRULY need. Sometimes you need to eat something. Sometimes you don’t. The key is learning to discern what choice is going to serve you best.
What are you hungry for?
Make a list, and if it’s JUST food items….maybe you’re just physically hungry.
But if other things make it onto that list…
Companionship. Comfort. Safety. Ease. Delight. Energy. Feeling filled up. Control. Satisfaction. Having something to look forward to. Distraction. Entertainment. Happiness.
Well, then this is a good opportunity to dig into what, besides certain food items, is going to lead to feeling how you want to feel and truly satisfy that hunger.
This can feel radical, and it can take work, and you won’t always have it in you to follow the path toward true satisfaction. Sometimes you’ll grab the ice cream, or the chips, or the ice cream AND the chips, and that will be that. That’s okay. What counts is continuing to look for that path, and taking a few more steps down it each time. Moving down that path, one small step at a time, is how transformation happens.
Radical self care, in whatever form is right for you, isn’t easy. But it is something you can practice, and it’s something you can pick up again if you lose sight of it for a while. It’s an inside job, yes, but it’s also a path best traversed in community. Respecting yourself, and befriending your body, and healing your relationship with food is a big part of the way forward.
So, today, I’d invite you to share a story about food: maybe it’ll be a joyful memory, a story of redemption, or a new chapter altogether that you’ve just started writing. What food story do you need to share today to move in the direction that’ll serve you best? Tell us a story that will help you claim your power and write the ending that’s yours.
Mary Karr wrote, “You are loved, someone said. Take that and eat it.” Ingest love, whether it’s coming from within or from somewhere so far off you aren’t even sure where it originates, and let it work its magic.
Below is a worksheet to deepen your own practice of being mindful when it comes to food:
**If you or someone you love struggles with disordered eating, please reach out: there is help available. https://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/get-help/