Enjoying Food, Unapologetically

“It doesn’t matter what you eat if you don’t include who is eating –  body, mind and soul. Your whole self matters.” Tery Mosey, The Hidden Messages in Food

If you operate on autopilot in many of your social interactions, you’re definitely from this planet.

You must therefore have a shiny collection of time-tested, safe, reliable, brainless phrases that work their magic, especially when you are exhausted, bored or you want to fill the void.

Let’s say it’s lunch break and you’re impatiently tossing your hearty fettuccine noodles and crispy chicken with a creamy Alfredo sauce, a sound which seems to reverberate in the embarrassingly quiet office. When the penny drops and you say, “It’s my guilty pleasure” with a confidential smile and a tiny eye roll, you are bound to break the ice: your colleagues will smile back, encouraged to divulge their own culinary soft spots with unabashed enthusiasm while you are relishing your meal.

Despite the light, playful tone, such stories often have much deeper meanings.  

Imagine somebody whose gaze lands on something as tiny as a chocolate truffle that would go perfectly with their steaming cup of coffee.

Lo and behold, the rich, velvety, creamy piece of chocolate which does nothing, poor thing, than being itself, sends this person on a downward spiral: “I shouldn’t eat it. It’s going to make me fat,” “This is a bad choice. I’ve already hit my calorie limit,” “I must control my urges” “If I eat this, I will not eat anything sweet for the rest of the year,” “Self-indulgence is wrong,” “I should be able not to be tempted by a piece of chocolate,” “What if he/she won’t love me if I get fatter?”

Notice how somebody’s sense of guilt and its best friends (anxiety, shame and fear) are taking the stage, all set to have an epic party!

Don’t worry. Nobody is immune to this type of interanal scenario, whether it is about food, drinking, rest, fun, money, sex or any other personal desire.  

Whether you choose to eat the chocolate or not doesn’t matter for now. What matters is that the sweet temptation is there to bring your attention to the bigger picture of your life.

Let’s peel back a few layers.

If you revisit your past, you may realize that you grew up believing that life was nothing but a series of upsetting events, that being constantly on your guard ensured your safety, that being strict, rigid and calculated was going to keep you away from trouble. If this is the case, you may unconsciously have learned that happiness, if such a state of being actually existed, was reserved for a selective club of people from which you were simply exempt.

Not surprisingly, the short-lived happiness of self-indulgence is a source of internal conflict as it threatens your long-established pattern of thinking and limiting beliefs.

If food was meager in your childhood and adolescence (most Romanian people will never forget the food shortages during Ceausescu’s regime), there’s a good chance that eating has acquired moral connotations for you. By default, eating little is good and/or enough, eating more is suspicious or wrong, wanting more feels selfish or undeserved.

How can you treat yourself with a piece of chocolate if you have always associated restriction with virtue?   

Another source of pressure is created by society’s standards of physical appearance. We are taught from an early age that we should be thin, curvaceous, muscular, fit, beautifully shaped in order to be socially approved, to have more opportunities for success and to gain a sense of prestige or power.

So, how can you eat more than a salad a day if you want to post bikini pictures on social media?

Lastly, consider the circumstances of your current life. Are you in a healthy, happy relationship with your partner, children, parents, siblings? Do you have a secure, fulfilling job? Are you satisfied with our overall health? Do you have hobbies you actually pursue? Are you following your dreams?

If the answer is “no” to any of these questions, you may run the risk of attempting to regain control of your life through severe dieting or clean eating.  

But here’s the twist: food is food.

Your body doesn’t care about your beliefs, moral principles, unhappiness.

It needs constant, balanced, healthy nourishment.

Equally important, science confirms that our body needs pleasure – it relaxes our nervous system, reduces physiological stress responses and dampens anxiety.

In a nutshell, if you want to build a healthy, genuine relationship with food, you need to build an authentic relationship with yourself.

When you do this, I promise you, you’ll come to eat a decadent mound of chocolate ice cream smothered in silky whipped-cream and slender chocolate strands for the simple joy it offers.

Dig in!