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Full and Fulfilled
The Science of Eating to Your Soul's
Satisfaction
By Nan Allison, M.S., R.D.
and Carol Beck, M.S.
Introduction
Even with the best training from some of
the most reputable nutrition schools in the nation, advanced degrees, and
years of experience, we were still struggling to help our clients in their
battles with food and weight.
Something was wrong.
We had been trying to find yet one more technique for better
motivation - have clients visit more often, call more frequently, and learn
more facts about food, nutrients, emotions and weight control. All these
efforts were exhausting us and our clients; we got frustrated with them,
and they with us.
We talked with psychotherapists for perspectives on
their clients’ struggles with food. We experimented with the assumptions
that
a lack of pleasure and satisfaction could play a role in this
struggle (and tried mightily to have clients interject more pleasure and
planned indulgences in their daily food routines); or that some
clients could be too busy to truly care for their bodies, so worked with
them to find time for their bodies; or that in this society, we
have all been taught to discount, minimize, avoid, cover up, keep a stiff
upper lip—anything but acknowledge our pain.
We recognized that all of these factors played a role in the reasons
people eventually returned to eating in ways they always had, preventing
them from making the changes they wanted to or thought they should make.
But all of this information was not enough. Something was still missing.
Neither we nor our clients consciously realized the connection between
where they were on their life paths and their behavior with food. Their
best attempts to change food habits did not have lasting effects until
they looked at the link between their bodies and their emotional and
spiritual lives. The reason: experiencing the emotional and spiritual
parts of us causes biochemical changes in our bodies which alter our
desire for food. In addition, eating in a way which balances with the
body's needs often gives people greater clarity in getting to know
themselves as emotional and spiritual beings.
People can choose, then, to travel their paths by entering at either,
or both, gateways - by working on food issues and moving on to the
emotional/spiritual issues or vice versa. The important point is to
recognize and understand that the two—cellular/biochemical and
emotional/spiritual—are linked.
As you read the chapters in this book, you will begin to see the
paradoxical relationship between your spiritual/emotional life, eating,
and your physical body. How we eat and how we view our bodies are
metaphors for handling life; our relationship with food says something
about who we are and how we express our very being in the world. Not only
are they metaphors, they are concrete, physical reflections of where we
are on our life's path and can determine how we proceed.
So, don’t stop dreaming about achieving peace with food. Most of us
want that peace so desperately yet are stymied when using the strategies
and options taught us. It is impossible to successfully use these
strategies, however "right" they may be, without first knowing what feels
good and right for you. Our bodies are filled with authentic clues about
what is right for us but we have been taught to discount the very signals
that free us to make the dream of peace with food a reality - to truly be
full and fulfilled.
We finally realized that clients intuitively knew something that
neither we nor they fully understood—what we now label the "intuitive
eater" (body signals) within, and that the intuitive eater is the key to
feeling both full and fulfilled. So we finally gave ourselves and our
clients permission not to know the answers and trusted that our clients'
bodies would eventually give them the clues they needed to begin to
explore and discover their own inner wisdom.
This book is designed for you to do the same thing. Some clients choose
to explore their food patterns and behavior, and in so doing, start to
find the connection between their emotional/spiritual struggles and food
intake. Others will find it more comfortable to explore their
emotional/spiritual paths first. Either way, the biochemical balance in
the body is altered, making it easier to then address the other. We wrote
this book so that you, the reader, can begin to use the power that comes
from listening to your intuitive eater; to begin trusting, interpreting,
experimenting with, applying, and practicing using your intuitive eater.
You have everything you need to feel both full and fulfilled.
This book gives you both the permission and information you need to
discover what's right for you.
What is Intuitive Eating?
Intuitive eating has certain characteristics:
- It varies from person to person. Because our tastes, bodies,
activities, emotions, and spiritual paths are different, what our bodies
require in terms of nourishment also differs.
- It is cyclical. Weekly, monthly, and annual cycles, even life cycles,
change our body's need for, and responses to, food.
- It is imperfect. Intuitive eating does not mean we’ll always choose
absolutely "healthy" or "pristine" foods. We won’t always feel as if we’ve
had a "perfect" balance.
- It is rhythmic. We feel pleasantly full (but not stuffed) after a meal
and pleasantly hungry (but not starving) before the next.
- It includes a wide variety of foods. Cereals and grains, fruits and
vegetables, dairy products, meats, beans, nuts, and even fats play a role
in normal, intuitive eating. Again, the exact balance and variety of foods
must be individualized.
- It is free of obsession. It acknowledges that our compulsions are due
to biochemical or emotional reasons and any over- or under-eating is a
clue to begin looking further as an opportunity for learning.
- It is nourishing to the body and spirit.
- It feels good. Good food in the right amounts and at the right times
excites the senses. It provides tactile and taste sensations as we eat,
and a pleasurable "full" feeling afterward. When we finish a meal, we feel
comforted and renewed - physically, emotionally, and even spiritually.
- It is an essential component of self care. What better way to nurture
ourselves than with the foods we need and enjoy in the amounts we require?
The Fight To Eat "Right"
If you are like most of us, you have struggled for a long time with
food—or against it. Think about all the times you have turned down dessert
(probably more occasions than you realize), and the times you didn't let
yourself eat what you really wanted. In following a prescribed diet, you
may fill yourself full of foods you actually hate while you come to
despise foods you actually like, such as tuna, cottage cheese and Melba
toast because you associate them with the "diet." You may eat combinations
of foods which seem odd or unnatural to you. Maybe you measure or weigh
every bite that goes into your mouth.
You work very hard to eat right—yet derive little or no lasting
benefit. And, you may continue to struggle - your relationship with food
does not become easier over time. Clearly, something is wrong with this
picture! Work this hard ought to produce results. When it doesn't, the
overall scheme of things needs to be revisited. This book helps you do
just that. It helps you understand what is going on biochemically at the
cellular level, how that is connected to what your mind is thinking, your
heart is feeling and your soul is believing and how all these connections
translate into the foods you are drawn to, the eating patterns you
follow - your eating style. It's about how foods and your eating patterns
affect your biochemistry in such a way that your heart and mind can open
to your soul and grow at this deep level. This spiritual growth
subsequently affects our drive for certain foods and ways of eating. So,
eating not only keeps us connected to the physical world but can also
allow us to grow as spiritual beings and listen to and care for our souls,
not just our bodies.
Fighting the Wrong Battle
No wonder we lose the battle with food and weight over and over again.
We were not born to fight it. In fact, so long as we continue to fight
with food, we will never have all the energy we wish for, our scales will
continue to show numbers that we don't want to see, and our reflections in
the mirror will fail to please us. This is a battle we were never supposed
to fight and are destined to lose. For we and food are meant to be natural
allies - not enemies. We can go on fighting - many of us do for all our
lives - but we can never win. We only grow weary.
Maybe you've been doing things that don't work because not only were
you unaware of the impact of the spiritual/emotional/ biochemical
connection in your life but also because the food plans and diets you've
tried won't work (indeed, will never work) for you. Perhaps, along with
millions of other people, you've been provided with rules about food that
simply don't apply to you. We're assuming these rules and diet plans were
based on each author's lifestyle and experience, and successfully might
have helped them control their weight.
But, that does not mean their plans will work for you. For example,
Oprah Winfrey found a nutritional system that worked for her; Richard
Simmons has his own exercise and diet strategy; Susan Powter, author of
the popular book, Stop The Insanity, found her way to a satisfying
relationship with food.
But, each of these programs was based on individual physical needs,
personal tastes, schedules, and personalities.
Fortunately, there is another way. Here, in this book, you have a
step-by-step guide to do exactly the same thing—only just for you, going
even broader and deeper by incorporating your biochemical/
emotional/spiritual connection.
The Journey of Discovery
This book is here to help you reclaim your intuitive eater within. It
is here to help you give up your struggle with food. Intuitive eating is a
guided individual journey. If you are looking for a list of do's and
don'ts, or for a new set of battle plans, you will be disappointed. In
fact, you will find very few case studies or client examples in this book.
Those examples wouldn't be useful. Your relationship with food is yours
alone. It's not like anybody else's. Intuitive eating is not a food plan,
but an opportunity for you to explore your own reactions to, and
experiences with, food. We encourage you to learn which foods please you,
nourish and sustain you, and to learn about how your body and food
interact.
Like any journey of discovery, intuitive eating takes time. Clients
ask, "How long does it take?" Our answer: "It takes as long as it takes."
Throughout the process, there will be times when a whole world of answers
will open to you; other times, the insight gained will be more subtle. In
fact, just by trying some of these experiments, things will change. You'll
find there isn't one correct answer. Don't be surprised if you don't get
the same results every time. What is real for you is based on the mode of
consciousness that you bring to bear at each moment. Along the way, you
will sometimes experience what feels like failure. But the effort is well
worth the rewards. Each failure will provide insight to move you one step
further along the path toward success.
You will move to a place where you
are:
- naturally, effortlessly, and comfortably eating foods you enjoy in
moderate and healthy amounts
- eating when you are hungry, not starving
- stopping when you are full, not stuffed
- accepting, not panicking, when eating doesn't go just right.
- Intuitive eating means feeling confidence and trust in yourself when it
comes to food because you are learning to accept your body, emotions, and
food, and the ways they work together.
Giving up old habits is not easy. Abandoning the struggle is - well - a
struggle. As you explore intuitive eating you'll get to know food again.
You will become sensitive to your body's needs and signals related to
food, and its responses to your emotions and spiritual growth. You will
re-examine old ideas and behaviors. You will take some risks.
Waking the Intuitive Self
The process of learning how to feel full and fulfilled will put you
back in touch with your body so that you can "hear" its signals for
certain kinds or amounts of food. In some ways, finding the intuitive
eater within is like waking a good friend from a lifetime slumber. A
gentle touch may be all you need. The knowledge that you carry inside you
is like this sleeping friend—unconscious, but not deeply so, and waiting
to be wakened.
Unfortunately, each of us also carries around vicious food
prohibitions—notions imposed on us by others. We absorb these rules and
regulations, which may not be right for us, in the effort to do the
"right" thing or look the "right" way. Along with these rules are pieces
of misinformation and misconceptions about how our bodies work. We also
carry the feelings associated with them—shame, guilt, even fear. All those
layers of misinformation and bad feelings must be recognized and peeled
away before we can rediscover the memory of how good it feels to eat
naturally and intuitively.
In this book, we will help you wake your intuition about food by
combining:
- facts about the way bodies work, how emotions influence bodies,
and the role of food in the interaction between the two. This information
will help you understand why you just haven't been able to do what it is
you thought you were "supposed" to do with food. This knowledge will also
give you "permission" to risk eating more intuitively.
- activities to help you explore your inner knowledge, allowing
you to recall old food-related experiences and create new ones. These
discoveries will help you reorient your thinking about your body and the
food you use to fuel it. They will also help you learn to make food
choices with confidence.
- Intuitive eating is a journey. This is its beginning. Expect the
exhilaration and excitement of any journey, along with its discomforts.
Anticipate moments of insight and surrender. The good news is that you
need not make this trip alone. This text will be your guide. And your
intuition, too, will journey with you. Now it is time to wake your
intuitive eater from its slumber.
Chapter One
"Plato argued that learning is basically recovery and recollection—that
in the same way that bears and lions instinctively know everything they
need to know to live and merely do it, each of us do, too. But, in our
case, what we need to know gets lost in what we are told we should know."
Dennis Warren On Becoming a Leader
Isn’t that the truth . . . especially about food and our bodies. One of
the first things we often do with clients is invite them to set aside
their beliefs and allow some space for other possibilities.
Unlearning is often the basis for true understanding. Unlearning old
food patterns is absolutely essential to discovering what foods, in what
amounts, eaten at what times feel right for each of us.
The following activities are designed to help you recognize where you
may be getting messages about what to eat and how chock-full of all these
voices you are. You have little room to make sense of these messages, much
less to hear the voice of your own intuition. Exploring is the first step
of unlearning.
Hint: You may want to turn off the phone and television and find a
quiet corner to complete this activity.
Imagine yourself in the TV section of a local appliance store
surrounded with television screens full of talking heads—faces and voices
blaring.
On one, a talk show host tells you to do what she has done for her
weight; on another, a competing talk show host sells her approach to
eating and health; on another, a model demonstrates weight loss exercises
you ought to do. Don't miss the screen of your parents—their eyes rolling
at even the thought of you wanting seconds of your favorite food. Of
course, one screen has your co-workers discussing all the pounds they've
lost on their latest regimes. Your spouse on the next screen reminds you
what your body could be like—if you would just do what he or she does.
Competing with these, a screen flashes a magazine listing of low-fat foods
you should eat. The next screen babbles with an interview of a researcher
about a new anti-food diet. And, finally, you fill in the rest of the
screens with other messages you've received that we haven't suggested. Who
else polices your food? What else pressures you to eat a certain way?
Now, surrounded with all the flashing screens and blaring voices, pick
up the remote control, and, one by one, shut off each screen—zap, zap, zap
. . .
With all the screens blank, take a moment just to feel the silence.
This quiet space is where unlearning begins. This quiet is where you begin
to discover and explore your own inner wisdom about food. This quiet is
where you can begin to hear your own voice, rather than what the latest
talking head tells you to do.
What foods make me feel satisfied? What amounts of different foods give
me energy? When am I hungry?
We all have many opportunities to collect more and more voices and
talking heads. It's so noisy and confusing we don't even notice one more .
. . until we take time to be quiet.
This might sound simple. Yet, it is often scary to experience such
silence and not have any direction or guidance about food. It's difficult
to feel comfortable moving around in the uncharted territory of
self-discovery. But, once you do, you will be able to decide from your
inner knowing rather than from absorbing information.
 
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