When I was little, weekends at Grandma's house were my safety net. My comfort zone away from the uncertainty and chaos of dysfunctional parents. Always, the safety net was filled with food - apple turnovers from Publix, meatballs from Grandma's kitchen, Hershey's bars shared with Grandpa.
The other food extreme came when I was away from Grandma, with far less plentiful cupboards at home. Many of those nights away from her, I would lay in the dark and pray the simple prayer of a Catholic grade-school student: "Dear God, please make everything better."
I didn't realize it then, but those early experiences would shape my relationship with food - one that is, thankfully, far healthier now than it once was. My extreme was dangerously limiting my food, with the occasional overeating of turnovers and meatballs and chocolate in between. There I was, vacillating through my food between the deprivation of one household and the plenty of Grandma's kitchen - a symbol of her comfort and love. Controlling my food was how I coped.
After reading Women Food and God, I know I am not alone. In her newest book, bestselling author and longtime compulsive eater Geneen Roth draws upon her own experiences at extreme ends of the scale (from 80 pounds to dangerously obese) and with time spent leading retreats with hundreds of fellow weight loss strugglers to conclude this:
Our measurement of food is a measure of our faith.
"As I've taught the retreats, I've learned that each of us has a basic view of reality and God that we act out every day in our relationship with our families, our friends, our food," she writes. "It doesn't matter whether we believe in one God, many gods or no god. Anyone who breathes and thinks and experiences has beliefs about God. I turned to food for the same reasons people turned to God; it was my sigh of ecstasy, my transport to heaven, my concrete proof that relief from the pain of everyday life was possible."
It's not a crazy notion. Think about it:
When we reach for the third helping of brownies that we know we don't need, are we really just reaching for some sort of anchor? When we starve ourselves even as our bodies wither into bony nothingness, is it a reflection of our deepest beliefs in ourselves, in our loved ones -- and even in a higher power?
So often our "cravings" really just a case of eating to cope with our emotions - or more specifically, our attempt to avoid feeling them and dealing with them. It can be as simple as a bad morning at work that makes us reach for the M&Ms, or it can be something as devastating as a family death or emergency that either sends us diving into that pint of Ben & Jerry's or swearing off the kitchen altogether.
For anyone with a compulsive eating problem - anorexia, bulimia, a combination - this relationship with food plays out every hour, every day, to the extreme.
For me, it was easier to deal with the self-inflicted hunger than it was to deal with the baggage of my difficult childhood. As Roth puts it: "Being thin becomes The Test. Losing weight becomes their religion...an endless succession of dietary privations." It was only when I came to terms with that baggage that I was able to let go. I could get through anything, I realized, and it didn't require me to restrict my calories so dangerously that the scale stayed below three digits.
I also had a moment of clarity that remains with me today: a moment when I came to see my body as a blessing. It is a powerful vessel from a higher power, and the least I can do is take care of it. That means not starving it or stuffing it. That means moving it and putting it to use - for myself and for my fitness students.
Roth, the author, had a similar "come-to-Jesus" moment, so to speak.
"The shape of your body obeys the shape of your beliefs about love, value and possibility," she writes. "To change your body, you must first understand that which is shaping it. Not fight it. Not force it. Not deprive it. Not shame it. Not do anything but accept..."
Reading Women Food and God, I kept thinking of an awesome woman I met last month during a business trip to Atlanta. She is beautiful, smart, funny, accomplished. She has also struggled with being overweight for a long time. At the hotel bar one night, we started talking about health and fitness. She told me that she knows what she needs to be eating and how she needs to be moving to lose weight. But often, all it takes is catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror to send her down a path of food-filled defeat.
She said she sees not the accomplished and beautiful woman that she is, but "a fat person." And she thinks, 'Well it's too late. I might as well just eat.' And that one moment of self-doubt often ends with her eating far more than she needed or even wanted to. So goes the cycle. After our talk, I kept thinking about what she said. I was struck by its honesty, and the pain inherent in it.
Roth says in her book that ending patterns like that happens when we start believing. In ourselves. In possibilities. In a higher purpose. I hope the woman I met in Atlanta, and any person out there battling the same eating battles, reads this book. And if you don't read the whole thing, at least read page 80:
"When you no longer believe that eating will save your life when you feel exhausted or overwhelmed or lonely, you will stop. When you believe in yourself more than you believe in food, you will stop using food as if it were your only chance at not falling apart."
Believe in yourselves, Badasses. Once you do, anything is possible.
Coming Monday: A routine to make the indoor row machine anything BUT routine!