From the desk of Lynn Lloyd, L.Ac:
Spring Equinox 2015 Newsletter: Dysfunctional Eating
Recently, while researching eating disorders, I learned of a relatively new eating disorder syndrome. Orthorexia refers to a syndrome of behavior where the person is so obsessed with eating healthfully that they become . . . unhealthy.
My heart cringed as I read of this. Sometimes, working day in and day out with people and their food issues, it seems like our nation is one giant amalgam of dysfunctional eating patterns. We overeat, or we deprive ourselves of food, or we eat in an obsessive way. What is going on here? Why are we so obsessed — with weight, with food, with our bodies? Is anyone simply content with their appearance? Where does this self-focused discontent come from?
We live at a time and place in food history that is unprecedented: As middle-class Americans we have access to unlimited amounts of food of overwhelming variety literally any time and any place. We can eat at home, in the car, on the job, at the movies, walking down the street, at sporting events, in bed, watching TV, shopping.
Abundance without discernment can be disastrous. There is a reason why we don’t give credit cards to children. We have been given unlimited access to food but we haven’t learned discernment. And what many people substitute for discernment is a very fundamentalist, fear-based approach to eating and exercise: I’ll obey a bunch of rules to govern my behavior without really asking whether they’re reasonable, working rules or not.
You’ve probably noticed that everyone seems to have a different set of rules! I don’t eat meat, I only eat meat and vegetables, I don’t eat grains, I have to have oatmeal every morning, I don’t eat cooked food, I only eat raw food, I don’t eat fruit at the same time with vegetables, I can’t eat beans, or nightshades, or dairy, or processed dairy, or gluten, or unsoaked nuts . . .
You get the picture. You — or someone you love — may be somewhere in that picture.
As I’ve said in other newsletters, I’m not here to tell you what to eat (although I admit to giving tons of suggestions!) My job as a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine is to promote balance and wholeness. One of the Chinese medicine classics, the Ling Shu, gives a definition of “spirit” that I just love: our spirit is the part of us that seeks completion. I don’t think any major religion in the world would argue with that definition.
I bring this up because I believe that many of these dysfunctional eating patterns point to an imbalance of spirit: we are not allowing our spirit to seek completion. We’re looking for love in all the wrong places — either in food or the deprivation of food, in thinness and media-driven body image. If you are an over-eater, stop and ask yourself, “What is it that I’m really hungry for?” Love? Self-worth? Appreciation? Comfort? Companionship? Parental approval? If you are a food-depriver, ask yourself, “What do I think I will receive when I am (finally) thin enough?”
When I talk with a young woman who is exercising/starving herself to obtain 6-pack abs, my heart contracts. Women listen up: the female body was designed by nature (a brilliant designer!) with an extra adipose layer (“adipose” is the medical term for “fat cells”). It is what makes us soft and curvy and sexy. It stores necessary hormones to balance our cycles. If you starve that layer of fat off yourself, you are, by definition, unhealthy and out-of-balance with your biology. If you think that is beautiful, you are defining beauty as “unnatural and out-of-balance”.
Who tells us we need to look like that? No one who is interested in our health!
I believe we have to have the courage to go to the source which is FEAR. We’re afraid of food, we’re afraid of being fat, and we’re afraid of not being loved. That’s the biggie, right there. Look it in the face for the monster that it is: we have connected the right to be loved with our appearance and that is about as mistaken a concept as we’ll ever find. I won’t be loved if I’m too fat or too old or if I have a big tush or a tummy or small breasts or a big nose. I won’t be loved for me unless my body meets certain requirements.
This is cause for weeping, ladies and gentlemen.
On the other side of that coin, some of us substitute food for the love we crave. It’ll never work, it never has. If you consistently overeat, you’ve got some personal self-inquiry homework to do. You may need assistance — from a counselor or a weight-loss support group. You may need to journal, pray, make some life changes, do what it takes to give yourself what you really want — and deserve! Then you can stop using food as a stand-in for your deepest desires.
Isabelle Allende wrote a beautiful book, Paula, about her daughter who died of an illness that leads to coma prior to death. In it, she poignantly speaks of how illness stripped away all the things she thought she loved about her daughter — her beauty, her intelligence, her sense of humor, her talents. “But I discovered that I only loved her more when all those things were gone,” she wrote.
That’s real love folks. That is how we should love one another and how we should love ourselves. That is the completion that our spirit seeks. I deserve love simply because I am. Others deserve my love for exactly the same reason. And now, we can sit down to eat in gratitude and fulfillment, in community and wholeness. We are complete and we know it.