Food is Our Most Intimate Partner

This evening I was over at Irina's, who is still cleansing for a few more days. As I ate my delicious dinner, leftovers so lovingly created by me yesterday for a women's gathering I had last night, I could feel Irina's cleansing energy different than my eating energy. At the end of the 31-day Juice Feast, which we did last April to May, I felt that I could have gone on for the 90 days taken on by some of my colleagues in the field of raw and living foods. However, I stopped after day 31, because I feel that having a healthy relationship with food also means honoring the commitments that you and food make to one another. We can easily be disordered in our eating when we change those just to cater to the "high" of the moment.
Counseling intensively and extensively in the world of eating disorders, I understand how a loving relationship with food can easily beome a controlling one. I do see the health value in a 90-day cleanse, and at some point I may undertake it, but on May ninth of last spring, I resumed my regular eating. This time around, I might have extended my cleanse, but ironically, I was entering into some mealtime sessions with eating disordered clients and knew I couldn't show up to lunch drinking a bottle of clear liquid. There is sometimes a fine line between a loving, healthy and nurturing relationship with food and a withholding, anxious and controlling one. If someone has lived in the latter for many years, as is the case with many of my clients, and they see their therapist drinking yellow liquid, they don't see "cleanse." They see it as another way to keep their disorder alive. My question is: How many ways do we find in our lives to keep our own disorders alive, and how does food play a pivotal role in this?
As the unique species that we are as human beings, we have a myriad of subtle and self-deceptive methods to keep ourselves small when we are yearning to be large. As a counselor, I see this all the time. Food is only one of these ways, but it is the foundational one that is merely a metaphor for all of our other relationships. How often do we choose one more way to obsess about our food and body imperfections instead of putting our focus and energy into something that will make us grow and expand; something for which we secretly long? It's easier to take this beautiful sustenance we call food and abuse it rather than to look at what's missing in our lives and go for it.
When you are struggling in your relationship with food, try this exercise: Think about the most passionate and loving relationship that you either have or desire; your spiritual soulmate, so to speak. Then write down all the adjectives that would describe this relationship, such as; loving, compassionate, adventurous, exciting, honest, trustworthy....whatever you desire in this person. When you are finished, read the list again. Now think about your relationship with food. Does it meet this description, or does it sound more like this; angry, starving, fat, ugly, scary, unpredictable...
Our relationship with ourselves begins with our relationship with food. We are fed from when we are born.
If you are looking to quell the source of some of your personal conflict and unrest, look no further than your relationship with food. Food creates the energy in every cell, organ, tissue and muscle in our bodies. It feeds our blood and nourishes our brain. The way we feel directly correlates to what we eat, and what we eat determines how we feel and what we attract into our lives. If we keep suppressing our souls in this most intimate relationship; punishing ourselves by either withholding or overconsuming food or eating foods that do not honor us, we disallow ourselves from the intimacy we so desire. If we cannot be intimate and loving with our own self first, how can we allow for others to love us appropriately?
Dream large and create. Then start each day by nourishing your body with the foods that make it shine. Never say you are "bad" or "good" because of what you eat. Choose your foods with love and let them love you back. Let go of any unwanted thoughts that keep you stuck in negative body image. Instead, put your energy into your passions and desires and keep your focus there. Allow food to elevate you into action rather than suppress you into sadness.
Having returned to the world of eating again post-cleanse, I am conscious of the space I was given through those ten days to reconnect with and reaffirm my relationship with myself. That was my commitment in undertaking this cleanse; to clean out whatever old "waste" was stopping me from being my highest self; physically, emotionally and spiritually. That has been met, and now I can lovingly renew my relationship with food and all of my relationships; those present and those yet to be.