The Power of Your Food Story

When you embark on the path to heal your relationship with food, knowing, writing, telling and finding insights from your personal food story can be an extremely enlightening part of the process. Allowing yourself to learn, access and heal your relationship with food by exploring the points of origination throughout your life where your relationship with food went awry in the first place. When you witness your own story, you are able to learn, grow and begin to heal your relationship with food from the deepest roots.

We all have a food story. We all received messages from those around us, the media, and other influences about food and how it should or shouldn’t make us feel, look or be. We all have emotional triggers that run quite deep. Food may have been used as a punishment or reward as child in an attempt to control your behavior. You may have been told to clean your plate or that there were starving children who would be grateful to eat whatever was left on your plate—implying how ungrateful you are for your full belly or maybe the undesired vegetables.

These are examples, and while they may be fairly common, remember, when you set out to write your personal food story and learn from your history with food it can bring up ALL kinds of feelings, memories and sensations. You may struggle with feelings of guilt because you do not want to place blame on others. It may bring up uncomfortable feelings towards a family member because you feel a certain way about a particular message you received from a parent, sibling, friend or bully. The fact is, no matter if your family did the best they could with what they had (or not), that does not mean that what they did was what you needed or didn’t create some of the root struggles of your relationship with food.

Just because someone may not have meant to create or exacerbate a complicated relationship with food for you, that does not mean that what they did, said—or maybe didn’t do or didn’t say—didn’t cause conflicting messages for you. They may not have meant to have caused you to experience feelings that impacted how you felt about food, yourself and your body, which ultimately deeply impacted your self-image and self-esteem. Just because a parent or someone else may not have intended to create discomfort in your life does not mean that they were able to meet your needs. Acknowledging this is a part of the healing process. Acknowledging these harsh truths allow you to empower yourself as you move forward.

While you may not want to place “blame” on someone else for your struggles, the awareness that what did or didn’t happen in your past allows you to learn, grow and make changes in the here and the now. A major part of becoming a “grown-up” is learning to re-parent yourself where your needs were not met. Maybe you were not given the opportunity to learn self-regulation skills and you had whatever you wanted whenever you wanted it. Maybe the emphasis on food was that it is a treat or a reward. This may have caused you to have a difficult time with self-regulation around food including mindset, planning and follow through. Or maybe you grew up in a rigid environment where everything was OFF-LIMITS, causing an equally troublesome message about food. All of these experiences can impact how you interact with your life, including how you view, interact with and feel towards food to this day.

If you grew up without examples of self-regulation you may feel as though it is difficult to assess your hunger and full cues, to not feel deprived and resentful if you choose NOT to eat a desirable food—even if you are not hungry—or it may be overwhelming to plan your meals—or even a grocery list—and stick to it. If you grew up in a rigid environment when it came to food choices, you may have adopted a “FORGET-IT” attitude where you feel as though you are asserting yourself as an adult to eat whatever you want whenever you want it. It could also be that the rigidity has caused a fear of food, calories, weight, and body-judgment from others.

BOTH of these experiences can be met with desiring change, a desire for a different way to be with food—to be with yourself. Both of these examples of possible experiences from your youth can deeply impact how you interact with food, your body and your life to this day.

There are many other common messages you may have received surrounding food, such as: food is love “I made this just for you”—or, food is comfort: “I knew you had a bad day so I made you your favorite ____________”—or, food is a reward: “You did such a great job on ______________ I made you this treat to celebrate!” These are just a few examples of how messages can be received that can create dysfunction within your relationship with food, especially if it is already complicated!

More subtle messages man be in the mix as well, such as a parent who feeds the family but was always on a diet and they restrict their portions or eat different foods from the family at mealtimes. Or, maybe if your family perceived your body to be overweight, they may have put you on an undesired diet or worse, even locked food away restricting what you could and couldn’t eat. This may have caused a desire to hide, sneak and steal food, eating it in secret. No matter what messages you received about food—or your body—the impact runs deep and creates complication in the process of making peace with food.

This is where writing your food story—your personal history with food—can be enlightening, empowering and freeing. Writing your food story is an exercise I have in my book, Wholistic Food Therapy and I wanted to share it here as it is an incredibly important part of your healing journey.

To begin, think about your history with food. Consider the various messages you received about food and your body that were both direct and indirect. Spend time identifying emotions that drive you to desire comforting foods. Consider memories or phrases you heard that impacted you and how you felt about food and your body. Spend time journaling and writing it out for as long as it takes.

When you complete your story, review it. If there were some particularly challenging moments you came across, picture that version of yourself and offer that picture in your mind of yourself kindness and compassion. Acknowledge that your needs were not necessarily met and as an adult you will empower yourself to meet your own needs. Thank yourself for putting in this powerful effort to heal from the deepest roots, to face and release old messages, thoughts, feelings and experiences.

When you are working towards healing and change, awareness is always the first step. Acknowledge how this increased awareness can help you change as you move forward from this process of examining your food history and writing your food story. It may be helpful to tell your story to someone you trust, someone you do not fear will judge you. Having your story to be witnessed by another is powerfully healing, and you never know how your story may inspire another person.  

I’d love to hear your story! This process is covered in depth in my online course, Freedom From Emotional Eating. If you are ready to immerse yourself in a process towards healing your relationship with food, you can check it out on my courses page to learn more!

I look forward to walking with you along your path to healing your relationship with food.

3 Nutritional Ways to Aid Your Body's Natural Detox Process

Earlier this week I posted about how this time of year is synonymous with a desire to create change, cleanse, detox and just overall feel more balanced and healthy. In case you missed it, you can catch it here! I wanted to follow up with a post about how you can address the concept of cleansing and detoxing from a nutritional perspective as well!

When your body is well nourished you create a solid foundation to find and create balance in body, mind and spirit. When you feel healthy and vital physically, you have an opportunity to focus your energy in many other fulfilling areas of your life. However, when you are feeling unwell and as is if your body is “toxic”, it can be challenging to live in balance or focus on wellness beyond the physical.

When your body is in a state of wellness and balance, there is no need for any major or extreme measures of cleansing or detoxing. As I previously stated (and will probably mention countless times in the future), your body is amazing. Your body is designed to find and remain in balance. When you create an environment of wellness, your body will work hard to heal itself!

If you started some of the cleansing practices I discussed in the previous post, I hope you are finding them to be useful. Below are three nutrition-based elements to incorporate into your wellness routine. These nutritional additions will assist your body in the process of maintaining balance by keeping its natural detox channels working efficiently and effectively. Here are three super simple and quite delicious additions you can add today!

1.    Chia Seeds

Many parts of our body are lined with a mucous membrane that secrete mucus, which is a thick protective fluid (I know—kinda gross to think about). The mucus helps to rid your body of toxins, microbes and pathogens. I remember learning in my anatomy training to become a yoga teacher that we swallow some disgusting amount of mucus daily. This mucosal lining helps assist these foreign invaders to the exit routes of elimination! The exits again are elimination through your bowels, urinary tract, your breath on the exhale and through your skin.

Here is where chia seeds come in! Many of us may have a slightly challenged digestive tract, so if you are like me, I’m sure yours can use all the help it can get! Chia seeds, when soaked in liquid, become viscous or gelatinous. The membrane that surrounds the chia seed—once eaten and as it swells—helps assist your body in the process of absorbing microbes, pathogens and toxins from the digestive tract and move them into the proper elimination channels: the bowels. Chia seeds also contain antioxidants, fiber, omega 3’s and protein. Try adding chia seeds to salads and smoothies and make chia pudding (there is a recipe on my resources page) as a super tasty and super nutritious treat! 

2.    Fresh Herbs: Spotlight on Cilantro and Parsley

While all fresh herbs offer a ton of nutritional benefits, cilantro and parsley offer some special super powers! Not only are these herbs rich in phytonutrients, antioxidants and delicious flavor (although there is a small slice of the population to whom cilantro tastes like soap—so sorry—it may not be so delicious to everyone!) they are also shown to bind to toxic metals, loosen them from your tissues and assist with eliminating them from your body! That’s pretty amazing.

Heavy metal toxicity is becoming more common with the amount of heavy toxic metals we are exposed to through our food containers, binders in vaccinations and otherwise. Heavy metal toxicity has been shown to decrease mental wellness and memory while increasing headaches, anxiety, depression—and it can cause disruption in the elimination systems and immune system. This is not good! Adding in cilantro and parsley regularly will help keep your body healthy in ways you may never have imagined. 

Try adding fresh organic cilantro to stir fry’s, salads, guacamole, dressings and other dishes. Add parsley to salads, sauces, dressings, and marinades to receive all of the powerful benefits.

3.    Turmeric-Ginger-Lemon-Honey-Super-Shot

The health benefits of fresh turmeric and ginger are many—add in some lemon and local raw honey—and you have a power shot to keep your body functioning in top notch form! I prefer to blend all of the ingredients together (recipe below!) and drink it as a shot. You can juice the turmeric, ginger and lemon and add in honey as well. 

Turmeric is known to be a helpful aid to your body’s natural detox processes as it helps your liver to efficiently process metabolic wastes and toxins. Turmeric heals your liver by rejuvenating liver cells and protects your bile ducts. It also soothes the digestive tract with its anti-inflammatory properties, helping to ease digestion. That’s pretty awesome—and this is only how turmeric benefits your body’s natural detox channels, it really does much, much more!

Ginger also has anti-inflammatory properties and is used in typical “cleanses” because it stimulates digestion and circulation. Due to the warming qualities of ginger it induces sweating—another of the body’s natural channels for detoxing—elimination of toxins through your skin! The increased digestive power helps to cleanse any built-up waste and toxins in your digestive tract and colon. Healthy elimination equals a healthy body, and a healthy body helps to create the opportunity for a healthy mind, spirit and life!

Lemon is another powerful natural cleanser. It adds so much more than delicious flavor to this cleansing super-shot! Lemon helps to flush toxins and potentially harmful bacteria out of your body by giving your liver a boost with its high vitamin C content and increased hydration. Lemon juice also strengthens your digestive fires and encourages the production of bile. That’s some good cleansing that’s safe to do every day. 

Raw, local honey has many health benefits as well. When you focus on its ability to assist with ridding your body of harmful toxins, it is right up there with the other three ingredients in this super-shot. In addition, honey adds sweetness and allows the flavors to all come together. Raw honey offers many healing enzymes and bacteria eliminating properties that aid your body in finding balance and overall wellness. Adding honey to this natural cleansing power shot assists in healing your digestive tract and releasing toxins from your system through elimination.

Recipe:

2 inches fresh turmeric, peeled and chopped

2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

Juice of ½ a lemon

½ teaspoon raw, (local if possible) honey

¼ cup filtered water

Blend all ingredients in a blender and enjoy!

While there are certainly MANY other beneficial nutrient dense foods that aid in your body’s natural cleansing and detoxing processes, these three options are a simple and great place to begin. If you begin to incorporate any of these into your daily wellness routine, I’d love to hear how they work for you!

How to END Feeling DEPRIVED and START Feeling EMPOWERED by Your Food Choices

Have you recently set out on a wellness journey where you want to begin eating healthier to feel good, build energy and feel more comfortable in your body? The momentum often begins with feeling strong and empowered and you have determined your WHY! Then, you are inevitably thrown into a situation where you are around others eating the very foods you have chosen not to eat because they do not support your wellness journey to feel healthy. Even though you know those foods may leave you feeling miserable (you know, feeling bloated, have an upset stomach, they zap your energy, give you skin breakouts and experience brain fog or another obvious sign that these particular foods are JUST NO GOOD FOR YOU) and yet you now feel DEPRIVED.

When you have turned the corner from making a choice that certain foods just DO NOT serve you, and you clearly know this (uh, remember the above miserable symptoms?), it does not mean that it is easy to choose not to eat them and that you won’t feel deprived.

It takes time and effort to change our minds about those types of foods and to create the shift from feeling deprived. Just because you have made the decision to no longer eat those particular foods, that does not mean that you are not human. That does not mean that there will not be cravings. That does not mean that you won’t secretly be jealous or resentful of everyone else who seems to be eating these foods with no problem at all (at least, so it seems).

Learning to listen to your body is a journey and it is definitely not a straight-line kind of a journey. Nope, integrating mindful and intuitive eating principles into your life often comes with many twists and turns. I know this personally from my struggles with leaky gut and SIBO that there are some foods that my body really does not like. At. All. One for sure is cows milk—which sadly includes cheese. You know, like the super delicious cheddar cheese, muenster cheese, swiss cheese... I pretty much used to be pretty much a chees-a-tarian. Ahh, I do love cheese, it just does NOT love me back. Do you think I didn’t test this many, many times? Of course I did! But with time and practice I had to come to realize that feeling horrible is just not worth it! It took a long time to not feel deprived when I didn’t eat cheese and I wanted it. And there are still cravings, (which are usually more emotionally based) and I have had to practice awareness and managing those desires for comforting foods when I am stressed, tired and anxious, in other ways. 

So how do you release the feelings of being deprived when you choose NOT to eat something you want despite how it makes you feel? Just like any other feelings, you have to learn to be present with them, to accept them and to ensure yourself that you are NOT ACTUALLY deprived. You are making a choice based on your wellness goals, based on what your body needs to feel vital and healthy!

When you connect with your specific WHY driving your decision to eliminate a certain food from your meals it will help to shift how you feel about your choice. Reminding yourself of your personal WHY and ensuring you are NOT restricting foods, not basing this on actual deprivation (like a diet) in any other areas, will help you refocus. My personal mantra is, “eating that gooey cheese is not worth an upset stomach.” I worked way too hard to heal my gut, I do NOT want to destroy it again.

Deprivation mindset is not healthy. When you deprive yourself and restrict certain foods out of fear of taking in calories, fearing weight gain, or to punish yourself because of your own negative body image it will inevitably lead to either malnutrition or a binge. Restriction and dieting do NOT work long-term and will set you up for bigger struggles with food. Research shows that the majority of diets fail and DO NOT last for the long term!!! That is significant and eye opening. IF you make a choice about the food you eat based on how you want to feel, you can simplify your decision-making process.

When you make your decision based on how you want to feel you create an internal experience of empowerment, confidence and self-respect. When you make choices based on building these feelings, you create a powerful shift internally. You regain a sense of control and mastery over your choices and respect your feelings and choices. Experiencing true health and well-being is a reminder that you are making progress towards your personal wellness goals. It is a process and a practice which will take time, effort, determination and focus.

One way to decrease your feelings of deprivation is to create healthy or adapted version of the foods you love. Another way is to explore any emotional food cravings and explore how to get your emotional needs met in non-food ways. An example would be if you find you crave comfort foods when you are anxious and tend to use food to calm yourself down, try a deep breathing practice, journaling, movement or talking to someone you trust about your feelings. Notice the impact of using this non-food-based tool and continue to practice it.

Having regular self-care practice and becoming more comfortable with feeling your feelings will help you choose a different way to eat, to be and interact with food and will help you begin to shift from feeling deprived to feeling empowered! Start each day with asking yourself how you want to feel (mentally, emotionally, physically and energetically) and notice how that begins to impact your choices.

The next time you notice a sense of feeling deprived in relation to a choice you make related to food, check-in and ask yourself: what’s really going on? Why are you choosing NOT to eat that particular food? Continue to be certain that you are not restricting because of a thought that it is a “bad” or “off limits” food due to calories or fear, but because it is a food that does not serve your health and wellness goals.

Are there any foods that you are working to shift your perspective from feeling deprived to feeling confident, empowered and strong? Remember that healthy eating, intuitive eating and mindful eating are form of self-respect. Let me know how this process works for you!

If you haven’t signed up for my 7-Day Kick Your Food Cravings to Curb Challenge, you can do so here!