Takeaways & Reflections | Our Food Relationship & Eating Our Feelings
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
What is your relationship with food? Would you say it’s healthy? Does it leave you often feeling shameful? Does the self-critic lurk out from the shadows after you’ve eaten something that isn’t deemed “healthy?”
I know I’ve left a drive-thru at times wondering why on earth I ever stopped, as I just feel like physical crap after eating something I know isn’t serving me. Perhaps that is my intuition and my inner-knowing saying “I told you so!” Or, perhaps it’s neither good nor bad; rather these are labels that, as a society, we’ve placed on food? Either way, shame is often a large part of our food relationship.
We often “eat our feelings,” as the saying goes (which seems to be a buzz phrase nowadays), and then feel shameful for doing so. We may then eat, even more, bingeing and stuffing, only to feel like physical crap later or, as my guest from last week’s podcast shared, develop an eating disorder.
Our food relationship starts in childhood. Whether you were forced to clean your plate, food was used as a reward, you grew up with food insecurity, food was part of a punishment, or became a means of control in body image – I guarantee that many of the patterns of behavior that existed with food in childhood, still exist in your adulthood. At the root of it, however, is grief.
I don’t think this is a topic talked about as it relates to grief. So, I’m happy to share this week’s episode and, I encourage you to listen to last week’s episode as well. I will be talking about this again this fall with a therapist who struggled with an eating disorder as well. We dive into the topic of food and kids more in that episode coming up. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, after you listen to this week’s episode, I encourage you to give some thought to how you feel about food and your relationship with it. Is it a means to survive or is it a means to thrive?
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We Do All Have Relationship to Food
So today’s episode is about food. It is a follow up to episode 94 with Hannah Howard my perfect obsession, and today’s episode is going to dig deeper into the topic of food as a grief STERB which STERB is a short term energy relieving behavior and the relationship that we have to food because we do all have a relationship to food. And just like in Hannah’s story, hers was shaped in her childhood and took a different turn in middle school, being a teenager is hard enough. You know, we deal with body image issues. And even the kids today maybe even have it harder than say I did growing up because we didn’t have social media, we didn’t have cell phones, it’s just a very different time, I think to life moves a little bit more at a faster pace now than what it did in probably the 80’s and early 90’s even. And so that has changed how we now connect with food if we take the time to connect with food and eat mindfully. How many of us really, truly do that. I know I’m guilty of not always doing that. But that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We often find ourselves self soothing ourselves with food and we learn this. Usually in childhood.
One of the first things that often parents will do when a child is sad or upset is say, you know, hey, let’s go for ice cream. You know, don’t be sad, let’s let’s go get some ice cream that’ll cheer you up, you know, something like that, or they’re sad or upset and they give the child a cookie. We learn these things in childhood, we learned that food can be a self-soother. And so that lesson we take with us into adulthood. So if we were someone who self-soothe with food as a child, we likely will do the same as an adult. Now for me personally, my relationship with food as a child was one of scarcity. But it wasn’t because necessarily financially, there wasn’t food, although we were in the lower class, we were not upper middle class, middle class, even I would say, you know, we had a roof over our head, we had food on the table for the most part. But after my dad died, that kind of changed. My mom worked until she didn’t get home usually until 7:30 at night, so she was never home to make an evening meal, I would get off of school, little after, you know, 3:15 or so 3:30. And there would be no one at my home, I would be by myself or you know, I had my brother. He was a teenager though. And so he was kind of doing his own thing.
So my relationship with food was you know, and my mom didn’t have a lot of time to do the grocery shopping. And she also worked weekends, so there just wasn’t food purchased, because there wasn’t time. And so it was a pretty bare fridge. But it wasn’t until maybe I was 10 or 11 I started doing the grocery shopping and I could pick out things that I would eat that I could eat easily for just you know, being by myself, so I ate a lot of Fruity Pebbles. In my elementary years, I could go down half a block down to the end of the street and there was like a hot stuff pizza place. I could get four breadsticks $4 that was often my meal or I really enjoyed pork egg rolls. So I mean, these are the things that I would eat. We often had bologna sandwich with Doritos. Don’t knock it till you tried it. I haven’t actually had one of those in years actually haven’t had bologna in probably more than 20 years. But in any case, this is what I’m saying our relationship with food definitely take shape and form in our childhood.
Food Take Us Back In Time
Food can take us back in time, it can remind us of things that maybe are less than loving feelings, right? Maybe food was used as a way to gain control for the other person, it could have been used as a reward, well, meaning parents are doing the best that they can, right. But they too are resorting to what they know, and to their stories with food. And this is why especially when I talk about grief, these things pass on from generation to generation, many, many years ago, food is the one thing that would bring many families together, like that’s like food was a family affair, the family cooked together, they ate together, they shopped together. And so much of that has gone away, just as we’ve kind of distanced ourselves and disconnected ourselves from death, we’ve kind of started to do the same thing with our food, we go to something that’s quick and easy or fast, like fast food, or, you know, we’ve just really gotten away from learning how to put flavors together and preparing a meal with our own hands and sharing in that breaking of bread with others.
And you know, that’s can bring a sense of community and support to when we get together with food with others. But instead, it’s often used as a band aid for grief, it’s often used to self-soothe. And so it becomes this almost shameful thing. And we develop this shameful feeling towards food. So all of a sudden now it’s not something that we participate in preparing and sharing in with others. It’s something that is tied to negative emotions, it’s tied to, well, if this doesn’t make me feel better, which it might for a time, like I said, you know, if it’s something you’re indulging in, and then you feel terrible, after ask yourself, am I eating this cake or bag of chips, or whatever it is, or going through the drive thru line because I’m bored, or I’m sad or angry, or depressed, or I’m really in the midst of grief, who has the energy to cook when you’re grieving, right? like who has that energy. And that’s why I think it’s such a wonderful idea when people who are going through a difficult time that loved ones and friends gather around and create a food, train and prepare food for the family and deliver it, right?
Food Help Us Connect With Our Family
It’s a beautiful offering of love and support, because you really don’t feel like cooking a meal when you’re grieving. And heck, like I’ve said, most of us don’t feel like cooking a meal on a good day. You know, I personally don’t love cooking, there are some times where I enjoy it, especially when I have help in the kitchen when I feel like it is one of those the family is helping and we’re doing it together. And then we’re sitting at the table together, which we do always do, we always do sit at the table together. And no devices. That’s one of our rules when we eat as a family, because that is the time to connect, you know, with kids being busy with activities. And you know, like most households, both my husband and I both work and we’re a busy family busy home. And that is the one time during the day where we can connect and laugh and share about our day. And so I think it is important to make that a non-negotiable. If that is what works for your family. It’s definitely been something that I’m proud to share with our kids. And I hope that when they eventually have a family, they will do the same that it’s a time that even though it’s you know, not necessarily the most five star restaurant, put together meal, right? It’s the bond and it’s the time together a meal is bringing us together for that time.
And you know, how often do we do that now maybe maybe at the holidays, we get together as a huge gathering in my husband’s family. They’re very large family, we make it like a potluck. So like kind of everyone brings a dish so that one person isn’t you know, doing everything and so that’s kind of fun too. You never know what someone is going to bring if something new and so you can kind of have a you know, play with food too you know in that way learn new recipes and things over the years. But again, this episode is really about how we form these beliefs around food and often the damage that comes about because now we take those beliefs and those lessons about food to our to adulthood.
Eating Disorder
Now Hannah actually had a very good upbringing around food, like it was something that her mom loved to cook. And she involved in the kitchen. And food was a huge part of her family’s life, but she still developed an eating disorder. And so it’s no one’s immune to these sorts of things. You can grow up in a home where that is the case, and you can have an eating disorder, or you can grow up in a home as I did, where food was scarce, often, but and I too, had a struggle for a period of time with food. It didn’t last long, though, I did try to make myself throw up a few times. And I wasn’t very good at it. So that didn’t last too long. But I also wasn’t I, I really didn’t eat that often, either. So no, there wasn’t a lot of snacking, or anything like that. And so I was very small and in for my age, but I do recall a time, especially in high school, where I would wear like, really baggy clothing, I did not want to show I didn’t show my figure at all. And I think a lot of teenage girls go through that and experience that they just go through this phase where you don’t like your body or you’re embarrassed by your body. And so you want to hide it and wear big baggy clothes to do that. That doesn’t mean you have an eating disorder. I’m not saying that. But that’s where growing up is so, so difficult. It’s you’re going through all of these changes, and all of these things, and especially with body image, and boys can struggle to that are there no, you know, males can have that challenge as well.
And so I think we just need to really think about our relationship with food as individuals and as parents, what do we want to pass on to our kids? When it comes to food? Do we want to share the story of food being nourishing life giving that high vibration food is what brings high vibration in your body, such as, you know, plants and vegetables, you know, the good stuff, the green stuff, the stuff that comes from the ground? Or do we want to pass on the story that food is best prepared by someone else, real fast, the greasy, or the better.
Food Takes Us Back To Our Childhood
And that’s nourishing, I think that’s just eating to survive, if it’s not eating to thrive, and I very much am a work in progress in this area of like I said, I struggle because I’m not one that loves to cook. But I think it’s also because I don’t really know how to put flavors together. It is on my bucket list to take a cooking class to learn how to put flavors together. And I think I would maybe enjoy putting a meal together that I felt confident in. Maybe that’s what it is maybe I just don’t feel confident in the kitchen. I know I can cook I can follow a recipe but to find something that my entire family would like that might that is the biggest challenge for me. Well I’m we actually live in a very rural area, we do have a restaurant here in my itty bitty town of like 60 people that offers German food, which is our background, like the dumplings and Neff law, which is like basically dough and cheese buttons and things like that, which if you’ve never had cheese buttons, your soul missing out, you know, just like other backgrounds and traditions, we have our German traditions. And so there are certain things that we do have some times that do or take me back to my childhood because my mom one of the meals she did make when she did cook was dumplings, you know he sliced potatoes in a pan and you put some water and oil in it. And then you’d actually take frozen bread dough and my mom would she took frozen bread dough cut it into like these little balls let that rise while she’d actually let the bread loaf rise. And then she make the little balls and then let those rides and then put them in the pan and cover the pan and let it simmer and cook. And the trick is to not open the pan at the wrong time. Because if you open it too soon, the dumplings will kind of go flat, then they’re not light and fluffy. So but still tastes like dough.
That is one of the ways that food takes me back in time to my childhood. But yeah, I think just thinking about what our relationship is to food and the traditions and the teachings that we want to pass on to our kids. But I just think more importantly, you know, ask yourself, Do I want to self soothe with food? Or do I want to nourish myself with food and thinking about eating the high vibe food because you know, I think that’s where they get that you know you are what you eat if you’re just eating fast food and low vibe stuff that’s not proactive in your body for thriving, right it’s loaded with sodium and sugar and all of these things that get people addicted to that stuff whereas you can eat the same amount of calories in probably as much as you want in fruits and vegetables or vegetables at least and it’s going to help you thrive like I said I am a work in progress in this area.
I am not perfect when it comes to food I’m it’s always something that I’m trying to be more conscious of. And I just feel like you know we all have a relationship with food and it can be a positive, thriving one, or it can be one of shame and suffering and low vibe. And we always have a choice. And it’s not easy in the lifestyle that many of us live today, but it’s definitely an investment in ourselves and in our kids.
So I hope this has given you some food for thought and view enjoyed it, please share it, leave a review, or reach out to me if you have any thoughts on this topic. Or if you’ve never thought of this before, in never thought of food this way before. And you might want to listen to an earlier episode on stirpes short term energy relieving behaviors, I’ll actually put a link to it in the show notes. I think that might be helpful for you to get a better understanding of what I’m talking about and how how grief can connect us with food and what how they are related. So I hope this was helpful. And I invite you to subscribe, or head to my website to learn more about everything that I have to offer www.theunleashedheart.com and in the meantime, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life much love.