by Gyl Rae, Teacher, Scotland
I have grown up most of my teenage years and adult life with an eating dis-order. This has not been outwardly obvious to people as in being anorexic, as mainly people commented on how good I looked, how great my body was and how slim I am. I have never physically stuck my fingers down my throat to be sick, nor hidden food to binge eat later, but I did eat in a way that was very obsessive and controlling, and at times worked out how and what to eat and drink in a way that would make me be sick after I ate something I knew wasn’t good for my body.
The reason I had an eating dis-order is because of the lack of self-worth and self-loathing I had for myself. I have come to know that I also eat to not feel all that I do, I eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness). I didn’t and at times still don’t want to feel what’s going on around me, as it means I would have to speak up and be more responsible.
Over the years my body has shared many things I knew and know I shouldn’t be doing. Like being in abusive and un-loving relationships, saying yes to things or people when everything in me was saying no, to not wanting to feel jealousy from others, this is a big one for me. I now know this is all okay to feel as I am learning to respond, observe and not react to what I feel. I now know that what I feel is not wrong and there’s nothing wrong with feeling all that I do. The key is observing it and not absorbing it, to live my truth.
Going back to when I was around 13 years old, I remember eating a bowl of ice cream, normal size, no big deal and running up and down on the stairs afterwards, using it like a step machine to burn off the fat and calories. There was absolutely no intention to love and nourish my body, I was treating it like a machine. A lot of this was influenced by ideals and beliefs in the world and images I saw around me of women in the media, of what a woman’s body should look like to be beautiful or fit in, to be liked and accepted, and hurts I didn’t want to feel. I never felt good enough. Like something was wrong with me.
In my 20’s and 30’s, to other people, on the outside I looked the part, the perfect picture, slim, fit and athletic, eating healthy food, working as a fitness instructor, so really you would think I knew it all. I was training and advising people on health and well-being, yet behind closed doors I was a mess. I ate a so-called good diet, but the truth is, you can still abuse yourself and have an eating dis-order with healthy food. I ate for pure function, not to nourish, love, deeply care for and nurture myself. I didn’t eat to support my body and my being. It wasn’t only what I ate but the way in which I ate, shopped and cooked my food; all from lack of self-worth and self-loathing, not taking the time and care, to lovingly buy, prepare and eat food that nourished me, but rushing and in dis-regard. I also drank alcohol and partied hard, as many people in the fitness industry did at that time, I don’t work in this field anymore so I cannot comment on what it is like now.
For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.
The choice to change
It’s only since attending Universal Medicine presentations, workshops and courses that I have begun to look at my relationship with food. The choice to change didn’t come from being told what to do, or what to eat by Serge Benhayon. I was presented with truth, a choice: I could listen to, nourish, and honour my body; or I could keep on abusing myself. This was something very new to me as I had grown up on a diet of deliberately misleading information through books, magazines, the health industry, media etc, with mis-leading information like the pyramid triangle, and we need to drink milk everyday to get strong bones. I was never truly educated, told the truth, or asked to listen to my body and feel what I needed to eat.
I will be very honest here, even in the past few years I thought I had a very healthy relationship with food and eating, but I was still eating from what and how much I thought I ‘should’ eat based on outside beliefs and comparing myself to other people, so even though, yes, I was eating a healthier diet, and making self-loving steps here, it came from knowledge, a disconnection to my body, not listening to and honouring my body. There is no joy, fun or evolution in knowledge; only in connecting to your body, listening to it, and loving yourself deeply.
Sometimes I eat food which I know doesn’t support my body, but I know it’s not the food that’s the issue. For example, I crave sweet food at times. But, to heal this it’s not about cutting out sweet food, that doesn’t work. I used to use force myself to try and stop eating a certain type of food, but I’d just end up eating it again. Beating myself up doesn’t work either; it just makes it worse, if you saw someone walking around hitting themselves with a big stick, you’d stop them, or at least see how unloving it is, yet this is what we are energetically doing to ourselves when we give ourselves a hard time. Accepting where I am at, understanding and appreciating myself is key.
Last year, I had incredible support from Miranda Benhayon: her support is so simple, deeply understanding and absolute pure love; she is a true inspiration to me. As a result I have come to love myself and my body more, I have a deeper understanding for myself and my body and am far less harsh and regimental with food, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks or eats.
She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away. She also helped me to realise that if I have no joy in what I eat, I’ve disconnected from my body; instead it’s about connecting to my body, feeling what it needs, as well as how I approach preparing and cooking my food, doing it lovingly.
It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.
Read more:
Medicine and Serge Benhayon 
It is common in our world to have a facade of perfection and seek the picture perfect life but we often feel like a mess on the inside or behind closed doors. This lifestyle is not sustainable, sooner or later our facade may crack and we are left with an empty shell, feeling exhausted and beaten for chasing a life that is void of truth and love. When we let go of seeking perfection and live who we truly are, life becomes very simple, joyful and heaps of fun.
It is an ongoing process reflecting the way I choose to it, what and how much, which always needs refinement, the more I say Yes to my power. The moment I settle for a certain way of eating, I am plateauing, and holding back, what my body is able to let come through energetically.
When humanity will finally believe what Universal Medicine presents, that how we move distinguishes our everyday choices, what we think, what we crave, regarding food etc. it will change everything. Nothing ever comes out of the blue, it is always to what energy we have chosen to align that gets played out.
Sometimes my body acts quicker than I can consciously think. I might be at a social event where food is laid out that I would normally not buy… and before I know it those crisps or sweet goodies are in my stomach, swallowed and chewed before the word ‘no’ is uttered! Sometimes, I have a craving and I will have an inner more prolonged dialogue and it’s a do I or don’t I situation, but honestly, even getting to this stage the craving usually takes over and I cave in. There is much to question about why the cravings are there in the 1st place and why I am prepared to go through the bloating, dulling, increased adrenal response and lethargy that eating unsupportive food brings. At the end of the day, it is a form of self-abuse but one that I am very accepting of and in the moment, don’t care about. My sense in changing this is that I need to truly value, appreciate and honour the feeling of clarity, lightness and openness that can be physically felt and the word ‘no’ wouldn’t even be needed.
No matter how righteous or ‘good’ something looks if it doesn’t carry within it the quality of our heart, then it’s not Love.
Oh, I love that – ‘… appreciating the sweetness…’ inside and out and there is always a greater depth of appreciation for the sweetness that lies within and around us.
It truly is a science in itself the way we eat, why, what and how much we eat and the only professor in this science is our own bodies.
I had many eating dis-orders for the first 50 years of my life, caused by eating foods that my body couldn’t deal with, like dairy, gluten and sugar. I was never advised to remove them from my diet, but at 50 I made the choice for myself and my health improved dramatically. But there was still something going on in my body at times and it was from attending the presentations by Serge Benhayon that I began to see that on many occasions I was feeding my emotions and at other times, feeding my exhaustion. Healing these disorders is taking a little longer but well worth the commitment.
Good or bad, an ideal is still an ideal.
“For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity.” When we truly regard healthy eating in this way, it exposes the massive level of disregard we have allowed our selves to fall into, particularly in consideration of the amount of sugar, additives, colourings, hormones and chemicals added to everyday food and drink. We have not really fully understood yet the devastating effect that these things have on our finely tuned hormone and chemical systems within our bodies.
What a fantastic blog Gyl, I love what you share and all of us can relate.
“It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” Gorgeous – this takes away all that unnecessary to be something and someone else. We are beautiful and the more we claim this the more our choices confirm this. A cycle of love confirming back on itself.
when I feel good about myself I don’t need to eat so much so it makes sense to develop self love
If we cannot first be honest and accept where we are at, without judgment, it is very difficult to acknowledge that we have disconnected from the truth of who we are.
Our eating behaviours can be damaging and destructive in many cases, especially over the long term but they may simply be a reflection how we live the rest of our lives and not be a separate disorder and may simply disappear when we work on the other aspects of our lives.
Appearances can be deceiving but what we feel will always reveal much more.
We are more than a book cover unless that is what we choose to show the world!
When we teach in schools about food and nutrition, we really should be discussing, at the table (excuse the pun) all the ways we use and abuse food to numb, bury or distract ourselves from what we are feeling. I am sure this would support students to become far more aware about the choices they make.
Everyone has a true shape- the moment we interrupt with ideals and pictures how we think we need to look like, we are dismissing the angle we are here to reflect by our body shape. We build a body that is not true but accepted in society, which gives us security and seemingly control. But the security never equals the contentment and self confidence you have by being who you really are.
‘I eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness). I didn’t and at times still don’t want to feel what’s going on around me, as it means I would have to speak up and be more responsible.’ Sometimes this speaking up is directly to another or more than one person, other times it can just be a reminder to oneself. …and quite often these reminders to ourselves are crucial to our growth as a loving and responsible human being. At times we can ignore what we know is good for us and then feel horrible afterwards….feeling horrible can be a ‘good; thing because next time we can remind ourselves of that feeling and choose to go a different route- make different food choice.
Some of the things I used to eat people would swear blind that they were healthy and yet my body would reject them but I would persevere because they were on the must-have healthy list. I can see now that in itself is abuse.
‘I now know that what I feel is not wrong and there’s nothing wrong with feeling all that I do.’ I think a lot of people will be able to relate to this as we feel so much but we tend to turn that in on ourselves; believing that it is wrong to feel certain things and that we are the ones with something wrong with us. As you have expressed, there’s nothing wrong with feeling everything that we do. It is actually a great thing.
There are a myriad of tantalising treats out there to eliminate feelings- from foods, exercise, certain conversations, arguments, reactions etc the list is endless. The key is that we use them to not feel.
And therefore are more of a symptom than an underlying cause and changing a symptom without dealing with the underlying cause may simply shift the symptom with no benefit.
We are highly sensitive human beings and sensing everything in every moment however we may find ourselves in reaction to the behaviours of others, although in truth we are in reaction to Our movements, to find ourselves scoffing food and consuming alcohol in large quantities, however we don’t have to eat and drink in excess to distract and bury ourselves; eating what is regarded as a ‘healthy’ food can also be used to numb what we are feeling.
If I just consider the 3 words, honour, love and support and apply these to my relationship with myself I have got some great tools to review where I am at, how to deepen my commitment to life and how to feel the magic, learning and fun that is available in every interaction.
So many of us treat our bodies like machines without any intention to love or nourish them often totally abusing them with harmful substances or over the top fitness regimes. Even if it looks like we are eating healthily by what others deem to be a heathy way of eating, it still may not be what our body truly needs for us to keep on evolving.
Do we eat to support us to be who we are or do we eat to support us to be who we think we should be?
Or, do we eat to ignore who we truly know our selves to be?
Deepening our relationship with ourselves/life or continuing to modify ourselves to fit an arbitrary external picture?
Eating disorders, self-harm and any form of shutting down exists when we do not adore our body and absolutely cherish who we are. Like you’ve shared Gyl, eating disorder doesn’t mean it is just the more obvious choices but to simply overeat is already a disorder.
Giving up alcohol was easy, my body never liked it anyway; giving up smoking was harder, and took a few turns, but my body knew it was bad for me and supported me to give up eventually. Giving up certain foods has been more tricky, because the amount of food I eat constantly dulls my awareness and my sense of purpose is less clear. There is within me a deep knowing but there is also my recalcitrant mind which is constantly overriding the knowingness in my body and setting myself up for ‘failure’ so much so that after giving up gluten and dairy for over 13 years, I have ‘naughtily’ returned and snuck in the occasional sugar-filled, dairy laden fully glutenised cake and biscuit. My body is suffering – it is putting on weight, my nose has been blocked, and all the symptoms I have been free from are returning. Rebellion serves me not. My body is in pain and I need to stop back pedalling and allow myself to face the future, to be the future that my body knows itself to be. Life has become more challenging and instead of burying myself in food I know I need to face those challenges and pull through, let my inner light be seen in all its glory.
It’s can be so easy at times to fall back into the old patterns & behaviours as they were once our ‘automatic go to’ survival techniques I know. How awesome is it Carmel that you can hear your body now where once you didn’t and your coming back to what you know your body needs where once you would have just continued eating. As Gyl shared: “It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat. Love is the answer to not only support us with our food choices but with everything.
It can be easy to self-castigate and in the outplay of our actions believe we are going backwards, but what if you are simply deepening Carmel, but there is a resistance to that, for whatever reason.. and that is all? It is so important to bring in understanding for the tensions and challenges we are facing in life, deepening our love for ourselves in the appreciation of how far we have come and how much we have already learned. There is so much in you Carmel that inspires others; something in you that is so steady – a true stalwart who keeps things grounded and real but also warm and all-encompassing, inspiring trust. In this, you offer all others the potential for more in the natural beholding you bring. I am learning too and I am learning that when we allow ourselves to surrender more we can let go of the trying and the need to pull through; we can start to naturally make the choices needed when we come from a platform of tender gentleness for ourselves – from the all that we are rather than the perceptions we have of failing, being less or not good enough.
Isn’t if fascinating how we can be so convinced that what we are choosing and how we are living is normal and that we have no issues yet when we start to be honest and transparent we start to see that actually there are many things that are not from who we truly are and honouring this.
Absolutely, that´s why it is so important, that we get and are different and true reflections, because without them, we can stay in the conviction that we feel great and nothing is wrong, as everyone is doing it. Although I have to say, whenever I was having my eating disorders there was a knowing in me, that something does not feel quite right. But the overriding of that feeling was much stronger, as the hurt underneath was too huge and unresolved.
We are taught to finish our food, not waste any, to sit at the table properly, have table manners and not speak with our mouth full, but we are not taught to eat in a way that is loving and supportive for our body.
So true Alison. It’s like we have the cart, the harness and the horseshoes, but no horse! Put ‘learning how to eat lovingly’ in the middle of all of that and then our everyday meals become our everyday medicine.
Yes we don’t realise that food can also be part of our medicine. I know if I rush my food or don’t take the care in how I cook it that it doesn’t nourish me in the same way and I either feel awful afterwards or feel I need to eat more. We underestimate how much food plays a part in either healing or harming our body.
How can food ever be more important than our own well being and body?
You make such an important point here from your own realisation Gyl that diets and beliefs we hold about what should be healthy for us do not work and actually do us harm if we do not listen to our body for what it needs in terms of nutrition and therefore learn to understand why we sometimes feel like eating food which is not this.
This blog takes dieting to its truth. I remember when I first started cooking for myself after leaving home and thinking about what I should eat, what is best for me, when is simple etc. It was only when I reconnected with my body I actually found cooking very simple fun and easy and supportive for my body. The body does not work with shoulds and nor should we pun intended.
Recently I could sense I was not enjoying the food I was eating. It had become dull and boring. I had become rigid and disciplined and this didn’t feel good or supportive in my body. I began to let go of beliefs and ideals I had been holding in my body based on what I should or not should eat and see how that felt in my body. I noticed I was reaching out for foods that I hadn’t eaten in a while and experimented with making soups and meals on what would support my body at that time rather than come from my mind. Immediately I began to enjoy what I was eating. I am also exploring the effect of how present I am with my body when I prepare food and the quality I choose to be in when I eat knowing this has an impact on my body and the way it feels.
It’s great to get to the bottom of why we eat certain foods and look more deeply at the cravings we have, I would never have said before reading this blog that I even slightly had an eating dis-order, but now if I’m honest I certainly do.
What I love about this too is that it wakes me up to the responsibility we all have to raise our relationships with food, rather than stigmatising the more overt cases of eating disorders.
It has been so helpful to be aware of how I feel when I eat certain foods and not only that, to also be aware of the quantity of food and quality of how my food was cooked which can affect how I feel too. So, I like to check in and ask myself, do I feel light, heavy, dull or racy after I have eaten?
“For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.” This is a great definition of an eating disorder and if we are honest most of us could say we have some level of an eating disorder under this definition.
The more I listen to my body, the simpler my diet becomes, the more I recognise how we can develop serious eating disorders that don’t have the usual labels, but do make us sick, tired, numb and headachy. That to me equals an abusive eating disorder and most of the population do it on a daily basis without batting an eyelid, just as I used to before meeting Universal Medicine.
For every person who has found a way to be open about an eating disorder there are many who do not and who are still on a journey with it – the more who share their experiences like this the easier it is for the next person to talk about that which is often so well hidden and so on.
Reading your description of your eating habits I found they strike me as either very normal or better than most. This shows me what standard in eating is considered normal.
Recognising that beating ourselves up energetically when we eat something we feel does not support our body is a double hit – thank you for your beautiful sharing from your time with Miranda – ‘She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away’.
Most of us would have disordered eating, I know I do. But part of the learning here is to not self blame but to care for myself and appreciate myself even more. This is what will support me to have a more true relationship with food – with no ideals and no pictures of what it should look like.
Doug incredible isn’t it that we are all able to side step what is ‘in our faces to be learned’.
Very significant observation that you sometimes eat food that you do know doesn’t support your body, but that the answer is not forcing yourself to not eat that type of food and how with Miranda Benhayon’s support you deepened your understanding about your relationship with food, for example “to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.”
Often in life we try to use will power to change our behaviours, yet how much wiser it is to address the underlying issues that got us to those behaviours in the first place.
When I first considered the thought to eat to nourish your body that meant to me to eat healthy food. Of course that is part of it but what I have come to understand is that it is about nourishing your body from a point of where it is coming from me nourishing my feelings and impulses in how it wants to be looked after and cared for. I have come to realise that this a whole other dimension that I haven’t considered in the detail you can do this for ourselves. I’m still exploring this and can see how it will always be and exploration as I grow and evolve. This has all been supported by the teachings of Universal Medicine and the depth of what we are truly capable of and that is truly our natural way of being.
Here here I completely agree that there is no fun or joy in following rules or knowledge or information we have picked up from outside of us. It feels completely different when we listen instead to our inner wisdom through what our bodies are telling us.
We don’t truly get how abusive our eating patterns are also abusive ; as you say, anorexia is more obvious but overeating and choosing certain foods that do not nourish are also abusive.
We can also have an un-loving diet of empty food that can keep us thin. But, our eyes are the windows to the world, that others can also look in and see the emptiness.
Great point Carmel, why do we often only choose to see more obvious abusive choices but ignore the subtler ones? It is because we think we can get away with it or is it because we as a society have accepted abuse as normal?
When there is no joy in what we eat, we are disconnected from our bodies, I know this one, it makes absolute sense; if eating is in any way a chore, what are we doing and how are we in that moment? Increasing our awareness of this is supportive in looking at how and what we eat and takes us away from a regimented approach to food.
I found that my eating is usually a consequence of how I live during the day and not so much the other way round.
“It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” A beautiful recipe for life.
Very cute Mary…and love is the key ingredient!
It certainly is Mary and it looks like many of us have forgotten some of the most important ingredients for life, hence why we have a high rate of illness and disease in our world.
True pearls of wisdom from Miranda Benhayon. Thank you for sharing them Gyl. Not only a gorgeous reminder to appreciate my own sweetness but there is permission there to really enjoy the food I eat and not hold back in the expression of this area of life. I realise that I have had a cautious approach because I have had a perception of food as the enemy as something I need to nail that I continually fail to do! Great to have exposed that one!
Michelle there would be so many women who consider food to be ‘the enemy’, which makes me wonder how the body feels when it eats what is perceived as ‘the enemy’.
It’s really interesting how subtle this perception can be – great food for thought! You have reminded me once again how important it is to treat the whole package of food with integrity – from how we plan our menus, to how we shop, how we cook and how we eat.
For me my meal times have become a time to deeply honour my body and the process begins when I am in the shop choosing what to buy, how I select the food that I do, how I store it, how I cook it, the tray that I lay out to carry my food to the other end of the flat, The fact that I avoid chipped crockery, the cushion that i sit on to eat, the way that I eat and the way that I clear up. I truly feel that I am worth it, whereas before food was something that I ‘got inside me’ with no regard as to how it did.
It will be great when we have zero pictures of what health ‘should’ be like but instead come from how we feel within, as you say we can ‘look’ a picture of health but how we actually feel about ourselves and what goes on behind closed doors can be far from it.
There is makeup that is meant to cover up the dark lines under our eyes. Are we using our face as a canvas to the outside world of the picture we have created within our head?
This is really interesting; ‘I eat to fight my sensitivity (awareness).’ It feels supportive to know this and to work on allowing ourselves to feel what is going on and to work on not trying to dull our sensitivity.
Most of us seem to have lost our natural ability to discern what food to eat, the quantity and quality. I feel this is due to the fact that we have lost our natural way with ourselves, our loving way.
I love your honesty Gyl and you made me understand that eating disorders are not just anorexia and bulimia but pretty much everything we eat that in truth our bodies aren’t asking for. I would never have even considered before reading this that I have an eating disorder, but I feel the time has come to re-asses my relationship with food once again.
Our relationship with food is like every relationship we have with our body – ongoing and refining. This exposes to question if I am deepening my relationship with myself in every area of my life or only in those areas that suits?!
It is also so easy to hide our personal confrontation with food. Could it be our little secret that keeps it a need?
‘I could listen to, nourish, and honour my body; or I could keep on abusing myself.’ – when we commit to really understanding and listening to our own bodies, and treat them more lovingly, so we start to feel and see more of the many ways that we dismiss or deny the truth of what they’re reflecting back to us. The fact that we are constantly making choices becomes more apparent, and that what we’ve always lived and done, doesn’t have to set the tone for our future choices. We are constantly re-setting the quality of our next movement and moment, through our moment to moment choices.
Allowing my body to guide me as to what to eat, when and how has brought significant shifts in my health, making me realise that much of what I used to consider was food is in fact extremely toxic for me.
Thank you Gyl for expanding the currently held view on eating disorders, it is a big topic for many.
So refreshing to read that there is another way to share and talk about eating dis-orders. It is pretty common to think of all the ways we eat in order to avoid nourishing and evolution in the body.
It really does feel totally different when we prepare and cook our food lovingly and take the time to connect before we eat.
Gyl, this is really beautiful, thank you for sharing it; ‘She supported me to see that to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.’
I have noticed a tendency to want to eat when I am with my immediate family and although the food that I eat is no different to what I would eat if I was by myself, I am aware that I feel that eating when I’m with them is, in some way a kind of a crutch that doesn’t allow me to stand fully stripped bare when I’m with them. There’s definitely something going on for me to look at there.
If you pardon the pun there is such food for thought in this blog, particularly the relating sweet cravings to a lack of appreciation of our own sweetness. I am learning to not beat myself up over my food choices and instead to read the situation, as in what am I avoiding feeling, what truth am I avoiding reading. I have a few major challenges in my life at present and sometimes the overwhelm gets medicated with food.
Oh! I can so relate to what you have shared Carmel. And the not beating yourself up for the food choices you have made is so important otherwise the beating up becomes the ‘next’ reason for eating more and so the cycle continues. Being able to ‘stop’ ourselves first, before reaching for the comfort food and simply asking ourselves what’s going on, why are you wanting that, what don’t you want to feel or what’s hurting. If we can get to that why that’s a huge step forward to stopping ourselves from medicating. And if you still eat the comfort food, well so be it next time however you may be able to stop and then not have it. It’s important to allow ourselves space for making more loving choices.
I think you’d be hard pushed to find many people who have a true relationship with food. Most of us are embroiled in some kind of needy relationship with food. A pushing and a pulling and a rather jumbled relationship that lacks clear boundaries and understanding.
Absolutely Alexis. If we were all honest we would share that most days we over eat or eat things that dull or numb our bodies, knowing that when we do this it isn’t healthy and then either go into denial about it or feel guilty for doing so.. perhaps prompting us to eat more to deal with the tension!
I have to agree with you there Alexis. Even if we have a ‘heathy’ diet. We have lots of ideals and beliefs around food, then there is the need to use food to numb and dull what we feel, whether it be with what we eat or how we eat, such as overeating. It even gives us a sense of relief from the tension of everyday life. Our relationship with food however is a simple reflection of how we are with ourselves.
I love this line Gyl – ‘It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.’ This makes so much sense.
Like with anything else it is only the extreme cases that are seen as an issue; if we are functional in society then it doesn’t get addressed.
Functional is a very apt way to describe how most of us walk through life, usually without even realising it. Being functional allows us to operate under the radar and continue living in a convenient comfort that doesn’t rock the boat. It’s not until the storm hits and threatens to capsize the boat that we are faced with a choice: either cower below in the cabin and blame the storm or rise up and take responsibility for the fact that operating under the radar is what put us out to sea in the first place.
Food and what we ‘should’ eat is absolutely riddled with pictures, theories and philosophies and despite knowing this cognitively, I still fell into eating in a way that was governed by a belief. The belief was that I thought that the less a person ate, the more evolved they were and conversely, the more that a person ate, the more energetically dense they were. This belief was firmly fixed in my body and infiltrated my thoughts and my behaviour around food, making it nigh on impossible to feel the truth of what and when to eat. Even though I have a lot of awareness around this belief, I am also aware that is still influencing my choices to a certain degree.
Serge Benhayon’s presentations opened my eyes to being more aware of the body and the wisdom of communications it constantly offers to us. Having been a ‘serial dieter’ for the majority of my life before meeting Serge, it was a revelation to discover that by stopping dieting and simply bringing more awareness to the finer details of self love,-care and nurturing of myself – very strong sugar cravings completely disappeared – there was no giving up of sugar required, the need for sugar just disappeared.
‘I ate a so-called good diet, but the truth is, you can still abuse yourself and have an eating dis-order with healthy food.’ Now that’s a real myth buster! Over eating the healthy stuff is still overeating. It can cause bloating, lethargy and sleepiness… this is still abusive to the body.
I don’t think many people are aware that overeating is a form of self-abuse but when we understand what love is, we will also understand what is abuse.
When we can feel the adverse effect on our body, that certain items present to us as a side effect, that we put in our body, we have a choice: is a moment of the savouring the silky smooth sensation of say chocolate, worth the headache from the sugar overload. Our body is fantastic at telling us what it needs and what is not needed if we are willing to listen!
“For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve” – this changes everything. The way we use food these days is nothing but this. Food has turned into this all-round substitute for all things we are not giving ourselves otherwise, from a simple source of building and maintaining a healthy physical body.
Gyl thank you. Your blog really resonated with me. I too had an eating disorder earlier in life, fuelled by my self loathing and lack of self worth. I became obsessive about foods and controlled what I ate to the nth degree. It was also my way of showing that when I was upset or hurt, I turned it on myself, by getting thinner was my of letting the world know I was hurting. Although I had already stopped the denial of food when I started listening to the presentations of Serge Benhayon, the cause of disordered eating lingered in my body which subtly influenced my relationship with food. Understanding, like you, from Serge’s presentations that it is how I shop, what I choose to buy, how I prepare and eat my food.. in a loving nurturing way was a revelatory turning point for me and from which my self abused body, which was reacting to most foods, has responded beautifully and as I heal my hurts and accept myself, so too is my body rebalancing and accepting and being nourished by the food I eat.
This is so very beautiful to read. You make loving oneself as simple as breathing.
I can honestly say that I love pretty much everything that I put in my mouth because I eat what my body asks to eat. Sure there are times when I am depleted and calling out for a sugar hit, but most of the time I eat what my body asks for, knowing that what it is asking for will support it in some way.
Gyl, I only can agree to what you have shared in you honest blog: “to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.” It is worth to give it a try instead of using other not so healthy and useful diet tips.
I agree we cannot will ourselves to change our diet and expect that our addiction to certain foods will go away. Our poor dietary choices are the symptom and not the cause and often it all comes down to the fact that we deliberately eat to not be aware rather than eat in a way that supports and enhances our awareness.
Why would we not want to be more aware? Because the moment we register a certain degree of awareness, we immediately register the degree to which we are responsible for doing something with it and this often then exposes the exact degree of comfort we choose to live in. Unless we are willing to truly renounce this lower energetic vibration and dive deeper into the higher vibration we are all constantly being pulled towards, we will keep reaching for foods that make us feel dense, racy, dull and damp so we can continue with our surface existence and do not feel the undeniable strength of the flame of love that lives deep in our inner hearts and so commit to living it. It is never about food, it is always about vibration.
Put simply – we seek density to avoid light.
Absolutely, Liane, “It is never about food, it is always about vibration.” Choosing to eat in such a way that vibration is all but wiped out and completely obliterated, putting us into a straight jacket of denial that demands the belief we live in a solid world of five senses and proving it so by eating ourselves into denseness and contraction.
Brilliantly said Liane, and spot on.
“For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.”
By this definition, the majority of the world’s population, particularly in the West, has an ‘eating disorder’ we do not want to admit to, further more explore what it is we are actually fighting when we treat ourselves this way.
Wow, that is very interesting Doug. What a blessing that you have found the cause and committed to deeply loving yourself and stopped eating the very food that was causing the irritable bowel syndrome for 30 years.
Nothing more illusionary than control. Same quality; better presentation.
The expression that when you are offered a sweet treat and you decline and say ‘no thanks I am sweet enough’ comes to mind after reading this. It confirms what you share and the deep down we know that is the answer…cultivate our own sweetness so we no longer need it from the outside world.
Thank you Sarah Flenley – how much truth there is in that short phrase that is often sneered at as being cliche. Really connecting to the sweetness and preciousness inside is so much easier when we have experienced this delicacy in our own bodies through something like Esoteric Connective Tissue Therapy or even just being with someone who expresses the exquisiteness of grace in their movements and we are open to receiving the inspiration that they bring.
“It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” …… so true Gyl ‘love’ is the answer.
I have totally experienced the dropping away of wanting sweet things when I am more loving with myself and others and it is always a sign I am needing to deepen my appreciation when I start eating foods that are guaranteed to make me racy and less able to feel.
It’s true we have a habit of looking at the extremes in this world and using them to classify what’s ‘well’. Understood like this, the majority of us could be said to have eating disorders because essentially we are consuming food with unresolved emotions underneath.
We have a picture of what an eating disorder is. Someone too fat or thin – but this sharing really exposes how a dis-order is anything unloving and anti evolutionary. I too am a sucker for the sweet. But I love what is shared here about appreciating our own sweetness first.
‘…I was still eating from what and how much I thought I ‘should’ eat based on outside beliefs and comparing myself to other people, so even though, yes, I was eating a healthier diet, and making self-loving steps here, it came from knowledge, a disconnection to my body, not listening to and honouring my body.’ Breaking through the consciousness of knowledge into simply being impulsed from the wisdom in your body is a very hard one to crack. When we have a problem the first go to is outside of ourselves – seeking the answer through what is known rather than surrendering more deeply to the body and finding the answer there. To be honest the consciousness of knowledge is in everything I do and I am only really beginning to acknowledge that it is time to pay more attention to it and to investigate what surrendering to my body and listening to it really means.
The more we appreciate our inner qualities the more we will eat accordingly.
Sweetness certainly isn’t something that was nurtured in me as a child nor lived as a reflection by anyone around me. However, reading your article, Gyl, has brought back a feeling in me from when I was a toddler – a baby even – of such gorgeous sweetness and beauty and I can suddenly feel deep within that this sweetness and beauty is still there laying dormant. This is quite an unveiling for me as I realise I have kept my sweetness and beauty hidden and buried under many, many layers and for so long that I almost had myself fooled into believing it was gone for good. The amount of sugar I have consumed over the years has been an empty attempt to stifle the craving of a sweetness and beauty that cannot be sugar-coated or consumed as it is a livingness from within. Your blog has touched me and my sweetness and beauty deeply and for this I thank you.
I saw a presentation recently by Tanya Curtis where she was talking about disordered eating rather than an eating disorder. This depersonalises our behaviour and our relationship with food. We don’t have issues with food, but the way we eat shows us what we are not wanting to address in life
Bingo, Richard! ‘When we experience joy, we are really on to something.’ I have experienced moments of joy that so confirm this. These moments of joy also confirm for me two more things:
1) that joy in all aspects of life is sorely lacking and
2) that every step I take towards re-establishing this joy in my body is worth more to me than all the tea in China
‘For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity. Eating in any way that does not support us to evolve.’ I ate for comfort, ate more and more and put on loads of weight. As I started refining my diet, stopping alcohol, gluten and dairy, the weight dropped off, but recently it has gone up again. I’ve had a challenging year and returned to comfort eating instead of being more self loving. I like the idea of honouring sweetness within as a way to let go of the cravings for sugary foods.
Thank you for exploring how our relationship with food is a reflection of our relationship with ourselves and the more loving the latter is will then be evident in how we are with food.
Thanks for sharing this ‘it is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away. She also helped me to realise that if I have no joy in what I eat’ I don’t think I have ever felt or have joy in what I eat but to be honest this brings it to joy in my whole life and do I truly allow and embrace this! My understanding is that if I deny myself of a food the actual denial is far worse than having the food. All in all as with everything it comes down to how much do I truly love me.
“It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” Perhaps the greatest recipe to resolve eating disorders and perhaps even more?
Love is the best ingredient in everything we do and are and being reminded of this today is so supportive for me. Thank you Gyl.
Love transforms anything and everything it touches.
Love is the Master Healer.
Eating for function and eating to nurture and nourish oneself are worlds apart requiring one to ask different questions of what, how and why one chooses the foods one has, which then impacts upon one’s whole lifestyle and that is very healing.
‘Eating for function and eating to nurture and nourish oneself….’ I, for one, was completely unaware that one does not equate the other until Serge Benhayon came along. The understanding I now have of the difference between the two is indeed ‘worlds apart’ and what is considered by most of society as the norm in the abusive way we consume food and drink is a dis-order being reflected back to us in the overall lack of true health and well-being lived by humanity the world over.
Once one starts to eat to nurture and nourish rather than for function it is quite astonishing as one comes to realise how much of the food and diets that are presented as being healthy are actually detrimental to one’s wellbeing and therefore abusive to the body.
To most people I have what would be considered as a healthy diet. But I know that how, when and where I eat sometimes isn’t healthy and certainly not joyful. Reading this was a great reminder that it’s ok to be sensitive and feel whats going on. And more than ok to be responsible.
Our intentions in our food choices determine what and how we eat and the effects that it will have on us. Great to read this blog which shares so simply the way in which we are influenced by beliefs and pictures from outside of us of how and what we should eat and how the answers which truly serve us are available from inside when we listen to our own body. Thanks, Gyl.
“It’s really simple; the truth always is…the more I love myself and my body, the more loving I will be with the way I eat.” Now that is simple. Love it!
“For me, any eating dis-order is eating in a way that does not deeply honour, love and support our body’s natural true light and divinity” This is a new way to look at an eating dis-order. Many of us would then fit into that category…. I love Miranda Benhayon’s suggestion to find the sweetness within to curb your sweet tooth – something I am going to apply to myself as mine is back with a vengeance!
When I began to listen to my body, finally after many years of continuously feeling un-well, there were certain foods that I realised it couldn’t tolerate. My body had patiently been showing me this through a raft of symptoms, most of which I either could not decipher or I ignored. Even though the changes in my health and well-being were amazing once I removed these foods, I could feel there were several pieces of my eating puzzle still missing. These pieces I have finally discovered, and they are; what I eat, why I eat, how I prepare my food and how I eat. To me it’s the science of eating, a science that should be part of every child’s education.
Loving this, Ingrid, “To me it’s the science of eating, a science that should be part of every child’s education.” Right up there with learning the abc’s.
Appreciation is the total opposite to bludgeoning ourselves hard with our thoughts and making ourselves miserable. It truly works wonders for how we feel about ourselves and others.
We don’t realise how much we can use food to be abusive to ourselves, but as Miranda Benhayon has shown if there is no love in our body, if we are not loving with ourselves, then it makes sense that we will seek it else where, and food offers us that comfort and distraction from what we are really avoiding. I used to love sweet things and still do, but I know when I am seeking them I am using them to dull down my awareness of how amazing I feel.
As with many things in life we have learned to determine what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for us from information we gather from outside of us. Yet we have the absolute best advisor right here with us at all times, our own body.
There is much for each of us to discover in our relationship with food, a journey I am still on everyday. The only true advise comes from our own body and it communicates so clearly about everything I eat. When I get it ‘right’ as in eat in a way that my body needs me to eat it answers by giving me this really warm yummy feeling.
Serge presents what foods are stimulating – racy, dulling, damping etc. The difference to what else is presented via knowledge and what Serge presents is that he is presenting what he has lived from his body. Connect to your body and you will feel what it needs and does not. “I ate for pure function, not to nourish, love, deeply care for and nurture myself.”
We are bombarded with information and with salesmanship of what is good for us. One but needs to read the contents of any packaged food, I have found that if I need Google to define some of the ingredients, it’s not worth putting it in my body! And, if it looks like a short story it is not even read. Have you noticed that it is a requirement to list what is in a product in most countries, but is there no requirement for the print size?
Your article makes me wonder whether an eating dis-order might be a sign of how we handle being in this world, another way we try to shut out, keep at bay, sweeten or dull what is in fact unpalatable and does not feel right.
I relate to much of what you share Gyl – and thank you for that sharing and your exceptional honesty. I too am at the phase you describe – having come a long way with my relationship with my body and food, I can still feel the regimentation that creeps in, and experience blow-outs. It’s wonderful to know these are merely signs to go deeper with my relationship with my body, and my being.
I love feeling joy in what I eat, it is not from shoulds or should nots, but purely from a connection with what the body needs.
Sometimes I run into a situation with busy lifestyle, that I cannot always eat what I want. Even if I prepared my favorite foods and take it with me, there may not be a microwave around to heat it up or a chair and table to sit down, so I learn to surrender. It is absolutely imperfect but I would love to explore more and more the relationship I have with my body. Sometimes there is no relationship, and I want to control based on beliefs as a reaction towards not feeling my absolute worth, but it doesn’t go on for long, because being in contact with my being deeply is really too lovely to ignore.
That makes complete sense to me. Connections and conversations like you had with Miranda is all the sweetness we need.
Knowing that what you’re feeling is not wrong, and that it’s okay to feel everything with the rawness and awareness that you do.. an awesome confirmation of how much we do know, about everything – and the depth that we can then bring to all our relationships and connections, simply by being who we are and expressing what we can feel and observe.
Our attitude and relationship with food has equally an impact on the body as the foods themselves.
Developing a relationship with myself let alone food wasn’t anything I had ever considered nor ever wanted to approach. However, since meeting Serge Benhayon and attending Universal Medicine events I too have opened up and now enjoy a healthy relationship with my self and with food. And it’s something that is deepen every day as the deeper we connect with ourselves, the more loving we become with our choices of what and when and how to eat.
“I was never truly educated, told the truth, or asked to listen to my body and feel what I needed to eat.” A truth that resides the world over but one that can now be transmuted through the loving work of Universal Medicine, Serge and Miranda Benhayon. The tender, wise wisdom that this couple live and share with all who grace their business is deeply changing the way we love and care for our selves, as you have shared here Gyl, of many who continue to resurrect simplicity and truth to our way of living.
‘to truly heal from the sweet food I crave at times, is about me appreciating the sweetness and beauty all around me, and inside of me, and the more I appreciate that, my need for sweet food will naturally drop away.’ I know this to be true for myself and it is so simple but it doesn’t happen just like that – well it hasn’t for me. From childhood I would dismiss myself as being sweet as often it was said with no integrity and it could come as a put down often hiding jealousy. I also associated it with certain grown ups and children who used a false sweetness to manipulate others and there was also an inference among some that sweetness equals weakness.. Allowing myself to accept the possibility that when someone said I was sweet, it was not only a compliment but true in the nicest sense of the word started the change. Also having treatments in Esoteric breast Massage and Esoteric Connective Tissue brought me in touch with my own sweetness and delicacy. I feel I have more to explore with the quality of sweetness in and around me and in recognising it in others – so thank you for this nudge into a deeper and more expansive sweetness.
elainearthey reading your comment has helped me to remember how I perceived sweetness too. ‘You’re so sweet’ was sometimes used as a way to say ‘you’re such a goodie’ or ‘you’re weak or less’. How bastardised we have used sweetness to mean less than what it truly is. Just this week someone said to me ‘you’re so sweet’ and to start with I had a little shudder from past experiences of using this word but then I felt me and what I had done and I accepted that yes I am sweet.