What does your body love to eat? Your first reaction might be similar to my son’s: vanilla ice cream whipped cream sundaes and bacon sandwiches. (Not in the same bowl… separately.) Does your body love to eat like a middle-schooler? Really?
Have you ever asked your body what it likes to eat? When I ask my body, images of fresh veggies float through my imagination: warm curries, sautéed greens, asparagus roasted in olive oil, diced avocados. Then big mangoes wander by, followed by juicy peaches, tangy raspberries, and sweet blood oranges.
One of my body’s favorite treats, that it only gets to enjoy a couple times a year, is eating sun-warmed strawberries out of the field.
Nothing compares to the sweet juiciness of a perfectly ripe strawberry plucked right from its squat foliage, and popped into your mouth on the spot. At least nothing I’ve ever encountered.
Sometimes it’s hard to hear what your body wants because your mind gets into Cookie Monster mode: “I want chocolate now. Donuts now. Chocolate donuts. Now.”
Then the mind spends a lot of time strategizing about how to get its emotional fix, the oh-so-brief stress relief that a heavy dose of sugar and fat provides to the brain. But when I ask my body---my best friend---what it wants, it almost never says chocolate donuts.
In fact, it took me years to realize that my body hated donuts, and sugar in almost all its forms.
Every time I ate sugar, I would turn irritable and crabby, and need to go home to take a nap. For years I thought I hated birthday parties… halfway through the party I would think, “Party games are stupid. Birthdays are stupid. Look at all these wasteful decorations and don’t even get me started about the paper plates. Don’t my friends have anything better to do than pollute the earth with more trash?” I turned into a raving party-pooper bitch. Finally I realized if I skipped the cake or ate only one bite, I liked birthdays just fine: I could blow my party horn and enjoy stumbling through the three-legged race along with everyone else.
Your body may not react to sugar the way mine does; I certainly hope not. But how does your body respond to different foods? Do you pay attention to its reactions?
What foods help your body feel full and sated? What foods make it irritated and upset?
Check in with your body and ask it how it likes different foods. How does a vanilla milkshake feel? How does a colorful salad feel? How does a beautifully presented, lovingly prepared meal feel? How does it feel to eat fast food behind the wheel of your car?
Psychiatrist and intuition specialist Judith Orloff recommends going to the farmers market, closing your eyes, and asking your body what it needs, what it wants, what it craves. Go around to the different stands, take in the sights and smells of fresh vegetables and fruits, and invite your body to respond with a “No, thanks,” a “Yes, please,” and the occasional, “Oh yeah, baby, I need some of that!” You’re not shopping for what you think you should eat, but learning to listen to your body’s voice. Slowly you’ll develop an ear for your body’s own preferences and wisdom.
Different foods have different effects on your body. Notice what foods make you feel:
Satisfied
Depleted
Energized
Fatigued, mentally or physically
Clear-headed
Fuzzy
Easeful, content
Bloated or uncomfortable
Happy
Irritable
Keeping a food journal in which you write briefly about how you feel before and after meals can help you tune in carefully to what your body loves and what it complains about.
Even knowing what our body enjoys most, we sometimes eat things that disagree with it. When I do this, the tendency is to give myself a hard time… “I knew better, what was I thinking? Now I’ve ruined my day with this stomachache. Again.” Unsurprisingly this tactic is as helpful and soothing as banging my head against a concrete piling. Instead of knocking myself around, I’ve learned to apologize to my body: “Oh poor body. I’m so sorry about ignoring what you needed. I’ll remember for next time that you really hate it when I don’t stop eating when I’m full. My bad. I’ll listen more carefully from now on. We’re in this together.”
Would you purposefully give your best friend a stomachache? Never. Feed your best friend body what nourishes it, feeds it, and honors it. Learn to listen to your body’s intuition and you’ll find your body returns love and radiance to you a thousand-fold.
If we are in touch with our feelings, if we can move past our animal instincts, our bodies can grant us access to great wisdom, for our body craves that which is healthy and wholesome.
ReplyDeleteThis is interesting, Kashif. You're right, one way to look at it is that we're overcoming our animal instincts. Another way to look at it is that we're getting back in touch with our body's natural animal instinct to be healthy. They say that when cows are sick, they instinctively seek out herbs and plants that relieve their illness. Maybe we need to trust our animal bodies more! It's a good question: does imbalance around food come from the body or from the mind?
ReplyDeletebecause my husband and i like different vegetables and have grown to have an increasingly disparate palate, i've really had to think about what natural foods my body craves. my body runs well on squash, eggplant, asparagus, cauliflower and kale. my husband prefers peppers, green beans, broccoli and tomatoes. we end up making separate veggies a lot of the time, but this way we both end up eating fewer bad desserts and sauces and eating more foods that truly make our bodies happy. it makes a weekly slice of cake or chocolate that much sweeter!
ReplyDeleteMy mouth loves crunchy salty corn chips but my body loves smooth plain yogurt! Really liked this article got me thinking the holidays. I totally just realized maybe the reason I get so grumpy at the end of the night is all the sugar and fat or maybe just the excess. Interesting......
ReplyDeleteKimber, I really like the idea of a food journal. It took me a long time to realize that foods I thought I wanted - specifically cheese and ice cream - were not appreciated by my body. Keeping a journal invites a "noticing" I didn't have before, and that awareness helps me make better food choices.
ReplyDeleteThank you for validating the strategy I've been working on for re-imagining food, from weapon and foe, to friend and fundament. I've struggled to hear my body (or refused to listen) beneath the Cookie Monster cacophany, but have this week written down my body's reactions to what I think I want (how on earth did a doughnut come to seem covetable?) Chocolate - cue shakes, tingly tongue and a sense of toxicity that panics me. Ice cream or milk - enter excruciating bloating. Huge bowl of crisp lettuce, salad veg and ginger chicken - hello comfortable satiety! Not to mention the enjoyment of crunching through nature's candy and savouring the flavours. Your farmers' market exercise sounds like the next step - thanks for the tip. Our bodies truly are temples! xo
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