Gazing in the Mirror

February 6 - Choosing Self-Compassion As A Guide To Eating

True discipline is really just self-remembering;
no forcing or fighting is necessary.
~ Charles Eisenstein, The Yoga of Eating:
Transcending Diets and Dogma
to Nourish the Natural Self

A normally-minded person will eat normally.
It is a mistake to believe that either fasting
or feasting can have any salutary effect
in the development of the intellectual or
spiritual faculties.
~ Ernest Holmes

I started dieting about the age of 14 or 15 and have dieted in one form or another all of my life. I've thought a lot about my "issues" with food. I've not done well simply being mindless. There is programming that is hard to overcome. Mom coming home from the grocery store with a new batch of treats . . . my own sons still meet me with enthusiastic joy when I'm the mom doing that. They have naturally thin genes, at least so far at their tender age. As boys they don't seem to have what I think of as female issues but they do put their female "issues" on me by letting me know that in their eyes – I'm fat. What can I say ? I often think I'm fat as well. Though my older son currently has a whole series of giant robots with "Fat" as their first name – "Fat Flash Drill", etc And it seems that "fat" really only means "big" to him.

Along with my fear of being fat and constant efforts to diet, I deeply care about nutrition. I care about making the food that is available in my home a celebration of fun, companionship and quality. I find "diets" with the intention of weight loss abusive, they always cause suffering. When one denies oneself food one to saying to the body "I won't care for you". Is it more important for me to meet some societal expectation of beauty than to treat myself well ? So it seems to me now . . .What does a "starvation diet" truly sound like ? Do we deserve to have our appetites fulfilled ? Do we punish the body because we can't live up to impossible expectations that we have accepted ?

I want to learn to eat "normally" and no longer need to periodically diet simply to get my weight back down – but I'm not there yet. I do keep trying to reach that state. I would love to have the natural, common sense of a wild creature of the forest and never eat what wasn't good for me. I want to eat a variety of foods in modest proportions. A long time ago I did learn that even if a bite or two tastes really good – that's it – that's as good as it gets actually and more never adds to that initial impression of good. I have gotten better at getting a sense of what is about right and what is too much and how some foods affect me in less than optimal ways. Food is an important part of a balanced diet. I want to enjoy food and not fear it. I don't want to eat as though I'm afraid I might not be able to eat tomorrow. I don't want to eat compulsively for reasons I can't even define. It is a fine balancing act and the reality of an aging body is that biologically it is slowing down and needs constant adjustments and a fine tuning of its fuels.

I get quite a bit of exercise. I hike every day or go to a strenuous yoga class. I tend to be restless and so I am up and down from my seat frequently all the time that I am somewhat engaged with the computer. This is how extreme I can get – I used to walk 10 miles every day divided into two 5 mile hikes just to try and get my weight down. Once my sons came along and our business grew and my in-laws needed a lot of care and assistance on their way to dying, I had to get more realistic about how much time I could devote to exercise. At that point 30 mins to an hour is about all that I could manage to fit in to a day. It is wrong to over-indulge in anything – even something as pure as water can be fatal if one drinks too much.

A lot of it is societal. It would be nice if, regardless of whatever form our body was expressing itself as in solid form, we could treat that as a cause for celebration. Our society deems some types of body negatively and worships others. If we're blessed with a body that others envy or worship, we may not be reassured but instead fear that our body will change to one of those negative types. And it DOES happen that bodies change over time and with age. If our body is constantly viewed by society negatively we may feel as though we are at fault and as though we could have chosen different genes. We may try really hard to turn what is natural for our body type and genes into something that it is not. Self-loathing can be amplified by such perspectives.

I want to treat my own self and this body as gently and with such kindness as I might express for a newborn baby. I want to soothe and comfort myself when it is needed. I want to own my feelings in a healthy, balanced manner and not stuff them nor obsess about them. Caring for my self is an action worth more than words. It tells my body that I appreciate it. If I am in pain I should not simply endure that but identify its cause and seek to relieve that. I need to recognize the harmful effects of feeling threatened – effects that can raise my blood pressure and dump hormones into my system that are not actually needed to fight a physical threat. The threat could be emotional or mental. So I am going to treat myself to heaping servings of compassion and loving-kindness – every day and in every way that I can think of – including how I feed this body.

~ perspective

I am my own best friend and
I can give myself the best care,
loving-kindness and compassion possible.
I want to truly know myself as
the most beautiful person in my own
world and I suspect that when I know
myself that way there is no doubt of
believing in my own worth.
There is one person I cannot get away
from – my self – so it is a good idea
to find all the best things about caring
for this self equal to the way I would
care for any being I love deeply.
I deserve to be wildly successful at
perfectly feeding and caring for 
this body which my soul inhabits.
I wake in the morning with my divine
self, eat my meals with my divine self,
exercise the body housing my divine
self, and dream each night and restore
the body that my divine self lives in.

#acceptance #balance #dieting #exercise #expectations #fear #kindness #perception #starvation #suffering