My Journey with Food
It’s taken me a little while to write this as I truly wanted to be transparent as it hasn’t always been pretty. For many many years I kept it quiet, hidden as much as possible as the shame, guilt and embarrassment was high.
For many years I have had a love hate affair with food – ok yes my body too – they usually go hand in hand for many women!
I only started sharing my journey a few years ago with friends and family and now after reading stats and understanding on a deeper level or programs, beliefs etc I want to come out of the closet so to speak! 🙂
When I was 15 years old I started down the path of Anorexia which then turned into Bulimia which literally ran my life for almost 10 years.
My Anorexia never hospitalized me as my weight only dropped to about 88 pads – I’m only 5’2″ and was maybe even shorter then! At about age 16 I also got into partying and smoking pot – so on weekends I would get the ‘munchies’ so at least my weight was ok – but I was not eating healthy and living healthy by any means.
I left for college at the big age of 17 and lived with an aunt and uncle in Toronto – she was big into health and ahead of her time so I learned a lot. My first natural path Dr visit – alternative flours, honey instead of sugar etc – this was the early ’80’. I even became an Aerobics instructor but boy did I battle with low self esteem and Bulimia.
After a couple of years of living in TO, I moved back to my home town and became a waitress and bartender – no – there was never any partying going on there!! Over the next few years I went back to college, moved to Banff and then Nova Scotia – still mostly in the service industry and still struggling with my eating disorder yet when I was eating ‘normal’ I ate very healthy……….talk about incoherence in my being!
It did slow down a fair bit and I realized that I cycled – it was mostly Jan to May – hence in Canada the colder, darker months – no wonder I love being in Mexico – the sun and warmth nurture my soul big time.
While in Halifax I became part of a 12 week study group out of the hospital with approx 10 women who struggled with na eating disorder – the stories were crazy yet I felt ok and not alone.
Most people then didn’t understand what having an eating disorder was truly about as there was no internet (ok I am dating myself here) and well it’s food – eating when you are hungry, stop when you are full.
Yeah right, sounds easy but in reality it’s not about the food at all – it’s just the drug of choice for many women instead of drugs, alcohol, gambling and even sex.
For some reason, at the time I was not aware, yet looking back on it I understand more now, but I faded out of my cycle. I had 2 beautiful children – who kept me busy and I never worried about weight between running after them (not quite 14 months apart) and working even part time. I felt I had conquered it – so much so I became a Certified Raw Food Chef and wrote some recipe books. I was still and always have been big into eating healthy.
About 12 years later, I went through a year of some hard times, almost bankruptcy, moved across the country and stayed with my parents for almost 2 months and had to start over – things were tight and I watched myself get triggered. I knew I hadn’t really gotten over it completely.
I dove into different modalities to help – EFT being the biggest one but many as main stream counselling did not work for me. I am not knocking it as we are all different but I only used it about half a dozen times and always left feeling way worse than when I went in and I was left hanging as well time is up and my next client is here……….
I’ve had triggers in my life since, yet I know that when we emotionally eat we are stuffing down our feelings as we don’t want to feel – it may be too painful, overwhelming, confusing, stressing or yet it’s all Emotion – Energy in motion unless we block it and push it down. Energy modalities and self love have been a huge part of the journey
Once I started or better yet stopped pushing emotions down and got in touch with more of me, I started seeing patterns and programs in my life.
You can’t explain an eating disorder to most people – as the one thing that separates out an eating disorder or emotional eating is you can’t quit cold turkey like you can alcohol and drugs – you need to eat and food is everywhere. It’s not always an easy battle but it’s so worth it as you get to re-claim more of you. And the world needs all you and your light.
When we choose to go down a road of addiction – it’s a program as it’s run by the mind and it’s not a healthy one (and I will post more on that) – somewhere, usually before the age of 7 as that is when all programming is done we created some story of not being good enough (and more).
While driving around Vancouver 2 years ago I heard a show on Eating Disorders – it shocked me to know that 40% of 9 year old Canadian girls were or had been on a diet……are you kidding me?? What messages are we sending our children I thought!!
Now, I am not a counsellor or Dr – yet most Dr’s don’t know how to deal with this issue – as the success rate of overcoming an eating disorder is less than 30% from going into treatment……….something on many fronts is not working. The stats on eating disorders is scary. I’ve had my own personal journey so I know what it’s like to be in between the fridge and the toilet – in other words deep shit – so I get it!!
Where did we get so off?
I love eating healthy, I feel better – in more ways than one especially since I have become the master over my food and more importantly my emotions (for the most part after all I am still human and have them but they don’t control me like before). I’ve created a 21 day email program to help intercept patterns and programming – it may seem different and it is!! This is not dealing with hard core eating disorders yet it can and work well with any program or counselling one is going through.. I know – I’ve used all the tools and tips in the program – time and again.
We have to re-program – which we can do, we have to really up our self love, we need to stop buying into the bs media advertising of you aren’t good enough the way you are and get off of the processed foods and I will explain that part why in my next post.
I am going to share things with you that are out of the box – the box sucks, is too small and conforming and most of us don’t fit in it so stop trying to fit in – you were meant to stand out and shine your light. It just got dimmed for awhile while you developed amnesia forgetting who you truly are at a deep – Soul level.
Part of my mission here on planet earth is to help wake women up to their uniqueness, their beauty, to unplug with the I am not good enough programming in the matrix (yes it is kind of like the movie!!) and to help you see that you are worth it!!
You may think it’s hippy dippy, out there, weird, different and it is – it has to be as look around at society and the world – how’s it working for many people??
Some are asleep and will never wake up – it’s not their journey possibly this lifetime, if you are reading this chances are you are waking up and know or want a different way!
21 Days Food & You – is about breaking free – an email a day for 21 days and more. You may not have a break thru experience in the 21 days – it may take going through it several times – who cares – it’s your journey and the one back to self and health is different for everyone. That is the cool thing – you can re-do it over as many times as you need – programs run deep in us.
2018 is the year to step into more of you with more self love – are you ready?
Much Love
Jodi
Click here to check out 21 Days Food and You!
