Yogurt

I just ate a yogurt, a raspberry cheesecake low-fat one. No biggie, right? Except it was a BIG deal, a HUGE deal if you are inhabiting my body.

I have almost finished reading Geneen Roth's latest book called Women Food and God. And no, there is not a parentheses in the title. It's been both a struggle and an eye-opener for me.

Back to the yogurt, though...

I experienced the yogurt like I've never done before. Yep, I ate it but I felt it and smelled it and savored it and focused on it. I actually turned the TV off while I was eating. That's a biggie for me right there. Then there was the ten-minute process of experiencing the yogurt. Yes, ten minutes. You read that correctly.

For perhaps the first time in my life, I was in the moment and conscious of what I was eating. I was feeding myself something I wanted and taking the time to enjoy it. I felt the texture and the little seedlings that make you think of raspberries. I smelled the yogurt before I even started eating it, felt the silky texture as it glided past teeth and over tongue and down my throat. I thought of my poor esophagus that I mistreated for years when I threw up after almost every meal. I thought about the mistreatment of my body by my own self through food.

There is a line in the book that made me say, "Wow, that is me, too." It's from a letter written to the author after one of her retreats.

The letter writer states,"I keep people out and one of the main ways I do that is by eating."

That is me to a T. I eat for lots of reasons and for a variety of emotions. I eat because I am lonely, I eat because I am alone, I eat because I am a bundle of nerves about my new job, I eat because I feel that I am not enough. I eat to fill up the space between my feelings and the reality.

I eat because I am sick, I eat because I feel good. I eat and eat and eat and it's somehow never enough. The eating isn't the answer but it's not not the answer either. It's time to slow down and rethink my relationship with food. I might finally be able to throw the door open and shine a torch on the dark spaces inside that I've kept hidden. It might just be time for the messy stuff to come out.