Making peace with food

I’ve been amusing myself lately by saying, “I’m on week 3 without a diet, I hope I can hang in there!” and then chuckling when people look confused. Ah, the amusing life of the Intuitive Eater.

It occurs to me that I can’t say “things have been going well” on that subject, primarily because in the past “well” meant my scale was moving down, and I’ve banished my scale into the closet with the Christmas decorations until the first of April. I don’t think I’ve willingly not stepped on my scale in years, unless I was actively afraid of what I’d see, and even then I tended to be the sort who’d rather face up to things that be ignorant. But as part of my contract with myself on learning to put food and even weight loss in perspective, I vowed not to weigh myself more than once a month, and despite nigglings of anxiety about some of my food choices, and a fear of gaining weight, I’ve stuck it out.

You should see my freezer. This weekend I just stood there in awe, taking in the frozen pizzas, the ice cream, the containers of frozen chicken and salmon and berries all snuggled up against the prepackaged gyoza (for wonton soup) and tater tots. Tater tots, people! I haven’t had a tater tot since grade school.

This is all very interesting to Lia, who is studying to be a Jungian analyst.

“Why do you think all of your food selections remind you of ‘kid food’?” she asked me yesterday, when I made a joke about fish sticks. (The irritation that occasionally comes from living with someone who understands everything you do on a very analytic level and addresses it whether you want to or not is balanced out by the fact that it’s free therapy. She catches on to everything long before I do. Bless her.)

So now I’m thinking about it. It makes sense, of course, that during this first phase of Intuitive Eating (called “Making Peace With Food”) I’d be focusing on assuring myself that I can have anything I want, and that the part of me who needs to be assured most is the child part of me.

I grew up with a very health conscious mother who packed sandwiches on pita bread with spinach and alfalfa sprouts long before it was fashionable, and though my mother was never harsh or unsupportive about my weight she nevertheless placed food in a very rigid hierarchy. We had one plate of food at dinner, only fruit for a snack, and never had sugared anything in the house. I remember my father complaining about this only once, when Mom made chocolate chip cookies from whole grain flour and carob chips. Mom’s idea of a truly sweet dessert was acorn squash with a smattering of brown sugar.

Naturally, this meant that I simply devoured sugar or other forbidden foods when away from home. I stayed friends with one girl despite actively disliking her for a few years because her mother always served us brownies and soda after school. When I was about 7 I got in trouble for eating the powdered cake mixes that came with my sister’s Easy Bake Oven.

It’s taken me a lot of years to even admit that some of the things my mother did were wrong for me. I know she was only trying to keep us well, and that she thought she was doing what was best, but I also know that I have a long history of food issues behind me, and a lot of those are based in things she (knowingly or unknowingly) taught us. This is all stuff that I would never talk to her about, as she was very young when I was young, and also because it would break her heart to think anything she’d done had set me up for issues later in life, and I wouldn't do that to her.

Still, I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s been good for me to admit her part in it and my part in buying into it. Hence the Tater Tots. The first part of “making peace with food” includes buying anything that you’ve wanted and that looks good to you and then letting yourself eat it any time you’re hungry. ANY time. The key is that the minute you’re out of something you love you go and restock the kitchen to prove to yourself that the food is not going anywhere.

It all sounds hokey to me when I write it out, believe me, and I know maybe it’s even obvious and silly, but it’s also (strangely enough) WORKING. For three days in a row for lunch I had a sandwich and tater tots, and you today they don’t sound even remotely appealing. For lunch I brought an apple and peanut butter and a cup of soup because I kind of feel like ‘light’ food today, and for dinner I want a salad with oil and vinegar dressing and maybe a roll. Maybe tomorrow I’ll want ice cream for breakfast and fried chicken for lunch – there’s no telling – but for the first time in a long time I understand that I *can* have those things tomorrow. I don’t have to eat them all right now because I “should be good tomorrow.” I am being good. I’m being good by respecting my hunger and, just maybe, myself.

Along with making peace with food is "honoring your hunger" which has been a real journey as well. I had forgotten what real hunger felt like, and how uncomfortable it is. I'd also become so accustomed to eating at prescribed times that I was in a constant state of satiety, and had learned to think that "stuffed" meant "satisfied."

These past few weeks have been an interesting time, and I'm starting to realize how much of my thoughts were occupied by the 'diet mentality'. Even yesterday, after my dinner of mashed potatoes and veggies and fish sticks I caught myself thinking that I'd "need to cut down a bit tomorrow to make up for this." :sigh: Well, I'm not going to do that, and I'm not going to think that. Instead, today I'll eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm satisfied, and I'll log yet another day into my Non Diet, Week 3. :)