May: Make Eating Sacred

At the beginning of this 2014 year, I basically hit RESET on my holistic relationship with food, health, and body image.  I started over with hopes of leaving the dysfunction of my past behind and wiping the slate clean as I enter this new season of raising a sweet baby girl in a world where she will be recieving incessant messages about what to eat and how to look.

My intention is to reprogram my mind to make healthy choices as I care for my body and redefine "health" for myself and my family. 

And this month I am excited to write about one of the hottest topics within this world of health: FOOD. 

I remember paralleling my recovery from an eating disorder with that of an alcoholic in the context that, while someone who has misused alcohol was training themselves to walk away once and for all from the substance that brought much pain into their lives, my situation was different. Not easier or harder or better or worse, just very different.

My issue was food.  And I could never "walk away" from food. 

I have to eat every single day for the rest of my life.

Removing myself from environments and situations in which I would be exposed to food sounded temping, not to lose weight, but to wipe my hands clean of this struggle and move on with my life.  It was almost like I needed to take a break from food to reset my mind.  However, as my physical body could not have sustained such a break, I have had to relearn how to interact with food.

And I am still learning.

While this has been a struggle, it is also one particaular topic I am excited to reprogram.  In the past 4 months I have already learned a great deal about healthy habits with food while studying other aspects of health, and I have a lot of thoughts to write about throughout the month.  But before I jump right in, I will set the basic foundation for my goal as I pursue the incredible fruit of having a healthy understanding of the food I put into my mouth each meal.

Goal: This month I want to make eating food the sacred experience God designed it to be.  The fact that my body was created in a way to eat, process, digest, and use the nutrients in food is actually an incredibly miraculous reality; one that I have missed as I have misused this gift time and time again. 

Challenge: While this is somewhat of an ambigious goal, I will attempt to break it down into day to day life in these ways:

1. Stop multi-tasking during meals.  Between teaching and life with a new baby, it is rare that I eat without doing 5 other things at the same time.  In order to enjoy the experience of eating and be present in the mirculous nourishment of my body, I will take on the challenge of slowing down my life enough to sit down to eat and do NOTHING ELSE.  I predict this will drastically change what I put into my mouth and how much - as focusing on the meal at hand will train my mind to listen to my body for the effects of specific ingredients along with signs of hunger and fullness.

2. Eat living food.  Because I will be taking time to eat and slowing down to enjoy food, I also hope to make eating the sacred experience that God designed it to be by choosing foods that God made for my body, rather than man-made with added chemicals.  I assume these specific challenges will go hand in hand.  If I am really listening to my body, it is craving living foods which will bring life to my being!