Emotional Attachments to Food

I've heard it said from various raw foodists that "you can eat what you want, as much as you want, on a raw food diet." Well, I'm still not so sure about that - I'm just not there yet. Maybe it's because I haven't yet been raw for an entire year (April 29th)... and I guess I haven't yet completely worked through all the emotional attachment issues I have towards eating and food... I *know* I still have a ways to go down that road... I'm just finding it a real challenge (still) to be mindful of the food that I'm putting in my body.

I grew up in a family where meals typically lasted less than 5 minutes. Yes, you heard me correctly. Our family ate quickly... VERY quickly. And by quickly, I mean, quite literally, dinner would be put on the table at PRECISELY 5:00 p.m., and by 5:04 dishes were being cleared. I'm not kidding. There was no conversation, nothing more than "how was your day?" followed by muffled grunts as we tried to INHALE our meal. (Of course, I thought this was normal!)

Part of it was that I, for one, was always STARVING by mealtime. It was a commonly held (mis)perception in our house that I was overweight as a child... or could become so if my food intake wasn't carefully restricted or at least monitored. I grew up feeling out of control in my relationship towards food. If someone wasn't around, I'd sneak my hand into that lemon-shaped ceramic cookie jar on the counter (I learned how to do it VERY quietly, lol) and grab a couple cookies that, again, I'd inhale before the opportunity came to get caught. I would think obsessively about the baked treats that were in the house... the ones I wasn't allowed to have.

Naturally, not dealing openly with this as I grew up, I moved out and continued this behaviour. Even living alone, when there was no one to be "hiding" my food intake from, I still felt guilt and shame about the obsessive behaviours - sneaking foods, having far more than just one serving of ice cream, or goodies, at once - suddenly, there was no one else to restrict or monitor my eating habits (at what point was I supposed to learn to do this for myself, I ask you!). At least when living with a roommate or loved one I had someone to hide the food from. Alone, it started to occur to me that the way I felt towards food was a little unhealthy. But it took me years to be able to consider dealing with it.

Fast forward and here we are, a year into this raw vegan lifestyle, nearly three years since I went vegan overnight... and like an onion, I'm starting to unpeel the layers. I'm working my way slowly through the Raw Emotions book by Angela Stokes - it is a wonderful book, and it's really helping me begin to make changes. I'm really learning to be more mindful of each bite - the texture, the taste, the smell. And this is a new skill I'm trying on here, because my family-of-origin STILL eats quickly, with no respect given to mindful attention while eating. Not only am I trying to learn mindful-eating myself, I'm being challenged to bring it to my children as well, and into our own family, learning to just enjoy the company, the energy, around the meal, as well as the meal itself.

My ds asked me the other day why people eat together at all. Why don't they just eat when they're hungry, and carry on with their day, he asked. What he was getting at were the emotional attachments people have to food, to eating. Peoples' beliefs about, for example, having to finish everything on their plates, or having to have a bite of each thing on their plate. Things like that. Where do those beliefs come from, he wanted to know? During the conversation, I told him that research has shown, and I've even read a book about it, that families that eat together are more connected with one another - sharing meals creates healthier individuals, healthier families, and ultimately, healthier communities. Families that share regular sit-down meals together have more resilient individuals - they're more relaxed, loving, stress-free. We talked about how the nomadic cave people of pre-historic times would eat together because after hunting a woolly mammoth there would be more food than one person on their own could eat, and besides, the hunting party was not an individual task, by any means, so the fruits of the labour would be shared by all.

But I digress a little... the point is, I'm still trying to learn about healthy eating behaviours and habits, and to foster a new, healthier balanced relationship towards food, trying to uncover the emotional beliefs I have towards food and trying to remain mindful when in the presence of food. I do think I'm on the right track. I just HATE those slip-ups, but I have to embrace them and love them as part of the journey in order to move forward. The lesson I need to learn is not to eat raw 98% of the time, and then binge/overeat the other 1 or 2% of the time. That's just not how I want to treat myself as I move forward in life. LOL Maybe I need to celebrate the 98%, which is a wonderful accomplishment, and NOT focus on the 2%?! (lightbulb appears over my head) :D

I guess I'm a work in progress. We all are, aren't we?! Today I'll work on being more mindful towards my food, consciously saying to myself, "Now I'm eating a pumpkin seed. Now I'm chewing the pumpkin seed, savouring the taste of it..." Seriously, I really need to be that aware of the food I eat. It's just TIME that I learned to deal with this. And I *know* I'm not the only one out there struggling. I also know that others have successfully rebuilt their emotional relationships towards food. I know I can be one of those people, too. :)

Learning self-restraint, self-respect, and self-love,
~n~