As the creator of the Feed Your Soul, Feed Your Body workshop, I have done a lot of work on finding ways to feed the soul that don’t involve food. I think it’s really important to know what to do for yourself to feed your soul but there’s also a way to allow food to feed the soul without eating for emotional reasons. For years, I saw food or the enjoyment of food as the enemy. I thought that if I allowed myself to eat something that I enjoyed, I would never stop eating it. I didn’t understand that the enjoyment doesn’t always come from eating fun, fattening foods. It comes from the circumstances around the food that you’re eating. It’s what the Buddhists call “mindful eating”. I had a wonderfully spontaneous example of this when I was in Mexico last year, and I know just like everything else– it works if you work it.

I’ve had a a lot of resistance to bringing more attention to my eating because for years I was hyper obsessed with it. But I was putting the wrong kind of attention on it. I was mainly focused on eating what I thought were the right foods whether I liked them or not. My focus was on eating the lowest calorie foods that I could find and not deviating from my food program–needless to say I didn’t experience a lot of pleasure during meal time. Mindful eating is not about eating fattening foods and getting the pleasure from them, it’s about eating healthy foods and taking the time to sit down, use a plate and proper cutlery and experience the food that you are eating without distracting yourself by reading or watching TV while you are eating. I have to say that this is very hard for me to do most of the time and I’m really not sure why. I think some of it has to do with always being in a hurry and if I’m being totally honest there is still a part of me (and I know there are millions of you out there) who feels guilty about eating in general. Wow, that’s a big realization. I actually had no idea that I still felt that way but it totally makes sense. If it were published I could refer you to my play: Thin Body, Fat Mind: One Woman’s Lifelong Struggle with Dieting, Bingeing, and the Pursuit of the Perfect Fit and you could find out exactly why that is, but I have told that story so many times that I just can’t revisit it now. Maybe in 10 years I’ll do a revival.

In the meantime I’m working on mindful eating. Savoring my food, taking in my surroundings while I eat and just crafting a whole new experience out of the whole thing. You’re not going to find me using my car keys to cut into a frozen Sara Lee cheesecake and wolfing it down while I’m driving home from the supermarket because I don’t want to wait until I get home to eat it. Nope, not me sister.