Thursday, March 3, 2011

Women, Food and God

Food is good.  Seems like a pretty obvious statement.  Fat is bad.  Also an obvious statement.  The tension between these two realities can be devastating for women.  Personally, I've struggled with weight and self image issues for years, so I was super interested in this book when a friend gave it to me.  The premise of the book is this:

The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. No matter how sophisticated or wise or enlightened you believe you are, how you eat tells all. The world is on your plate. When you begin to understand what prompts you to use food as a way to numb or distract yourself, the process takes you deeper into realms of spirit and to the bright center of your own life. Rather than getting rid of or instantly changing your conflicted relationship with food, Women Food and God is about welcoming what is already here, and contacting the part of yourself that is already whole—divinity itself.

What I like, and what I'm fully behind in this philosophy, is the idea of owning your feelings.  Of feeling what you feel and looking at it, instead of trying to drug it with food, or television or some other form of self narcotic.  That idea has always made sense to me.  Feelings by themselves are just feelings.  It's healthy and good to acknowledge them.  What we do with them is where the questions of morality come into play for me.  Whether we dwell in the unhealthy ones, how we encourage the positive feelings...these are the questions to ask.

Where I'm not such a big fan is the idea that we are essentially good and that our brokenness comes from separating from our goodness.  As a follower of Christ, of course, it seems more like we are broken and our goodness comes from joining with Him.  Faith is not a part of life experience; it is the life with which we filter experience. 

I've never struggled with compulsive eating, so I don't completely identify with some of the things she talks about.  But I do identify with measuring your self worth by the size of your jeans.  And I like this quote a lot:

"It's never been true, not anywhere at any time, that the value of a soul, of a human spirit, is dependent on a number on a scale. We are unrepeatable beings of light and space and water who need these physical vehicles to get around. When we start defining ourselves by that which can be measured or weighed, something deep within us rebels"

1 comment:

Amber J said...

I have not read this, but I hear it's a GREAT book! Putting eating and food in perspective can be incredibly eye opening!!
chocolate is super spiritual tho right?

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