Repairing Your Relationship With Food

My relationship with food has been complicated, to say the least.  To back it all the way up to the beginning, I did not get off to a good start.  My young mother was convinced by her doctor to bottle feed her babies.  And so I was. You see, back then, formula was pitched as being superior to mother’s milk - sigh.  My infant gut, with a family history of digestive issues, did not stand a chance.  I did not get that immediate, first line of defense, from mother’s milk. 


There’s been a ton of research done since the 60’s and now we know how beneficial the colostrum, in mother’s milk, is for babies.  There’s been so much published on the benefits of breastfeeding in the last few decades… here’s what Wikipedia has to say about colostrum, specifically…
 

 “Colostrum has an especially high amount of bioactive compounds...to give the newborn the best possible start to life.  Specifically, colostrum contains antibodies to protect the newborn against disease and infection, and immune and growth factors and other bioactives that help to activate the newborn’s immune system, jumpstart gut function and seed a healthy gut microbiome in the first few days of life.” — Wikipedia

Now, in mom’s defense, I was not a sickly child.  In fact, quite the opposite.  I was a healthy kid with a healthy appetite.  I was a growing girl - always taller than both of my siblings - younger and older.  (I eventually grew to be taller than my dad).  The problem was, we were a relatively poor military family that only shopped at the commissary every 3 weeks or so.  The military base that housed the commissary was pretty far away so my parents would load up the car until it could hold no more. 

They loaded up on canned and frozen foods, buying the most food they could afford and then anything fresh, including meat and milk, would be frozen to prolong its shelf life.  Luckily, my mom was raised on the farm and knew the importance of fruits and vegetables. But sadly, minus the occasional fresh apple or orange, they too, came frozen or in a can. 

My parents did not waste their money on junk food, or so they thought.  They did, however, buy TV dinners as they were both working and going to school while raising us kids.  I also want to add that in the late 60’s and early 70’s, foods like Velveeta cheese, bologna sandwiches, Wonder Bread, Count Chocula Cereal, and Frosted Flakes, weren’t considered junk food, but part of a balanced diet, at least in my household.  

Then in 1977 the government came out and told America to eat less fat.  Everyone, including my mom, jumped onto this bandwagon.  Margarine replaced butter, Olestra replaced the fats in chips, and then food like Snackwells cookies, professing to be a “healthy” low fat cookie, started to show up in our cupboards.  Artificial sweeteners showed up in soda and in packets for your coffee.  We thought we were so healthy eating less fat.  But what really happened is that we took out the fat and we got fatter. 


You see, what was left when the fat was removed was less taste - so food chemists and manufacturers replaced it with salt and sugar.  So yogurt went from being a healthy whole food to a high calorie, high sugar food.  The calories of the low fat food also remained relatively stable, so we just ate more of our supposed healthier foods, which did not give us the satiety factor of fat and thus we got fatter. (Source - PBS Frontline)

 So the food I was getting at home wasn’t the best. Combine this with my ever growing frame topping off at 5’11” in the 8th grade that was now starting to pack on the pounds with my low quality diet.  I was distressed.  I went from being a runner on the cross country and track teams in the 8th grade, never thinking about how I was fueling my body, to a pretty curvy, bottom heavy freshman. 


One of my most embarrassing moments was when the track coach filmed our running form while having us run away from the camera.  Well, my growing bottom was hanging out of my track shorts for all my peers to see.  It was at that moment, amidst their chuckles, my struggle with body dysmorphia began.  I tried just about every diet out there with no success.  I was yo-yoing up and down by 5-10 pounds.  As an athlete, and a self-conscious teenage girl with a fairly slow metabolism, I was always thinking about my weight.  

 By the time I was a junior in high school I checked myself into a weight loss program at the hospital where my mother worked.  I needed to lose probably 10 pounds and had no business being at this meeting (BTW, I was told by several participants that I did not belong there.)  I left and cried.  I still had no answers.  I did not know how to eat.  So, I turned to exercise, or over-exercising, I should say.  Whenever I ate anything, I would go for a run.  I would do whatever it took to burn off the calories I had just consumed.  At that time, I had no idea what I was setting myself up for.


 This continued, in one form or another, for two more decades.  I became addicted to exercise and neurotic about my food consumption, surviving on salads, bagels and pizza.  And after a brief stint working in a fast food hamburger joint in high school, I swore off all types of meat.  I immediately became a “vegetarian” surviving mostly on carbohydrates. It wasn’t until I was pregnant with my first child in my 30’s, I returned to eating meat.


 To this day, I am recovering from my disordered eating, my fear of food, and my tendency to over exercise.  And as a recovering “addict” I have asked for help, sought answers and education, and learned to repair my relationship with not only food, but with myself.  The feelings of never being fit enough, thin enough, good enough are subsiding. 


As a health coach and a yoga teacher I have learned that this process of healing starts with me. 

I have learned through trial and error what works best for my energy, my gut and my muscles. 

I’ve worked with dietitians, acupuncturists, chefs, Ayurvedic and Integrative doctors to find the formula that works for me. 

I have learned the importance of a balanced diet, with macronutrients including adequate amounts of protein.

I have become a flexitarian, with no forbidden foods - just occasional ones.   And just like yoga is not really about the pose, disordered eating isn’t really about the food - it’s about our relationship with it.

I would like to share the wisdom I’ve gained from my experience with you in my new cooking series, starting October 18th. Choose one class, or all 6 in this series, and start introducing balance and harmony into your diet, long-term.