I finished reading Women Food and God. The first two thirds of the book were hard to read, and I resisted reading it for what felt like months. (I just checked and it was months). Well, what’s important is that I did finish it, and I found the last third of the book the most practical; the earlier bits were just too abstract for me (though I can see how they might be important for others). The book had some good take-home messages for me:

Develop a healthy relationship with food from a place of love rather than of hatred (of yourself or your body).
To do this I will have to silence The Voice, that part of me that spouts negative things like You will always be single as long as you remain fat, and makes a correlation between my physical appearance and my value as a human being. If someone came up to me and said that because they are 100lbs overweight they think they’re less worthy than a slimmer person of having what they desire in life, I’d stare at them, aghast. I’m the weirdest person: I love myself, honest, but I do fall for the false truth of The Voice’s messages, especially when I look around and it seem like now that most of my friends are coupled up, it’s the larger ones who are still single.

I went for coffee with a friend almost two weeks ago and as we sat under a tree in the parking lot, she shared that as silly as it may seem, writing positive messages for myself and tucking them in places only I would see might be a good way to pump myself up. Even if I read “You’re a beautiful woman, worthy of finding love and living the future you want” and I snicker, with time I will believe it. I haven’t done it yet but I imagine shutting up The Voice, and replacing its messages around me with positive ones will go a long way to a more positive Jummy (well, a more body-positive Jummy, because I think I’m a fairly positive person).

Awareness and compulsion cannot coexist, since the latter depends on obliteration of the former.
That is a direct quote from the book (page 156) and it’s true. When I eat sweets (my vice), it is a compulsion. When I recognize that I am eating compulsively, I can’t go back and pretend that I’m not aware of that. It doesn’t mean that I stop every time I realize that I’m just eating skittles without thinking, but even the decision to keep eating is a more conscious one. And that’s important.

I am a Permitter.
The book uses the terminology of Restrictors and Permitters, and you can probably guess from the names what each does with regard to food. As a Permitter, I don’t believe in putting limitations on what I can consume. I’m aware of the hazards of eating too much sugar or fat, but I dislike the idea of limiting myself calorically or in any other way (I don’t like restrictions generally speaking). Apparently Permitters use food to leave their bodies and not be present, so as a result they are not good at talking in terms of fullness or hunger. So when I feel myself slipping into compulsive eating, I’m supposed to ask myself if I’m actually hungry. I think the questioning brings you back into the moment and makes it harder to be mindless and unaware of your body’s feelings of hunger or not as the case may be.

Learning about hunger.
If you have a healthy relationship with food, you generally don’t eat when you’re not hungry, and you certainly stop eating when you’re full. This doesn’t mean that you don’t ever overeat, especially when you’re eating something you love, but most of the time, you follow those simple rules. I’m not like that: I am learning to ask myself if I’m satisfied while eating, and most of the time I’ve discovered that it takes less for me to feel satisfied in my stomach than I thought it would. For example, I’ve always bought two slices of thin crust pizza for lunch because two slices cost $5.80 versus one slice at $3.15. After eating one slice, I’m always anticipating the second so I eat it. However sometimes, as I discovered when I tried it last week, one slice is enough. In fact, unless I haven’t had breakfast, one slice of pizza leaves me feeling satisfied, but even getting used to feeling satisfied versus “stuffed” is a work in progress. When your stomach is distended, you probably overdid it, and I realize now that I overdo it regularly.

When I feel a craving (versus hunger) for food, I feel it in the base of my throat. It’s a feeling I’ve come to recognize these past couple of weeks and maybe you’ve felt it too. It’s a desire for something, but if it’s not in my stomach, it’s not true hunger. This feeling in my throat can feel far more severe than a growling stomach, so I really have to work on finding out why I’m feeling that craving and seeing if there’s something besides food that will ease the feeling in my throat.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I was really getting this info down so that I’d have it to look back on in the future. I think anyone can benefit from the seven eating guidelines so if nothing else, I’d encourage you to check them out.

Filed under: Introspective, flab gab by jummy