Per request to write more about food and eating, here is an essential that I always put at the top of my list. I hope you find it helpful!
After leaving the eating disorder clinic with even more determination to find real answers, I began trying to figure out how to listen to my own Body to see if it would tell me what I was doing wrong and what I needed to do right. I knew I had grown up with a distorted perspective of food and appetite and emotions concerning eating and generally nourishing myself. So, one day I asked my Body for some help when it came to food proportions. I simply asked Body, specifically my stomach, to show me in a visual way what it’s size and capacity was. Here is what I received as my answer.
Prayer hands. I had an image in my mind of prayer hands. Then I got the feeling to put my own hands together in the same position, like this: (Sorry no amazing, professional photos here, just me taking a real photo of my own hands.)
Then I got the idea to relax my hands from being fully pressed together with as much flesh as I could get to touch, to instead holding them softly together and allowing a gentle space to open up between my palms, so just the fingertips and outer edges of my hands were touching, like this:
This is what I was told was the size of my stomach, and how it preferred that I might fill it to this capacity (this includes my flesh and bones in the photo, it’s not just the “empty space” between my hands). I was told that of course Body would comply to my wishes, and of course the stomach would expand if I kept filling it and filling it. But that it was not ideal and it was uncomfortable for the stomach to stretch so much — it was just too much to handle all at once. I got the idea to stretch my hands out to have a visual of how odd this looked and how odd it would be for my abdomen to deal with, like this:
I understood that my expanded stomach loaded with too much food would actually press against other organs because there was only so much room inside my Body and the rib cage. I understood this through conversing with my Body, as well as actually experiencing it with keen awareness after I had forgotten the above and Body was giving me reminders that I knew better… that a stretched stomach would push up against my lungs, creating shallow and shortened breathing; which was most uncomfortable and my breathing only went back to normal after I had digested enough (not necessarily all) for the stomach to get a little smaller, more like normal size again.
I was asked kindly if I would remember that my stomach inside my Body was about the size of my own hands with a gentle space, and my whole Body would perform optimally if I fed myself accordingly.
Now, food proportions will vary depending on where you go. At a fancy restaurant they may be smaller and you might scoff and feel ripped off. A diner may serve larger portions and you might feel like you are getting a great deal for your dollar. Remember that your own Body will operate best on the right proportions and that will vary person to person. When I was at the eating disorder clinic I heard lots of things that people do…. One was going to a doctor and they put a tube down your throat into the stomach and they can give you an accurate size of your stomach. I didn’t feel like I needed an exact size or measurements. Feel free to do whatever you like. I preferred a less-invasive approach, where I learn to communicate with Body directly, and learn to understand it’s way of communicating with me. If you choose to ask your own Body directly it may show you with your hands or with a measuring cup the next time you are cooking or it may show you some other way. If you truly want to know and ask kindly and open to receive, you will.
I was also told that the image I was given (of the prayer hands, with a gentle space between the palms) was after my food had been masticated. Which is obviously going to be smaller than it will appear on my plate beautifully presented. So make sure you are thinking about the amount of food after mastication. Each food item will condense down differently from another. If you want to get really OCD about it, you could actually put a measured portion of that food in the blender to get it’s exact size after you might have masticated it, thus how it will end up inside your stomach. I think that would be overdoing it, but you get the idea — just that you might want to remember that it is different on your plate when your mouth processes it, from when your stomach begins to process it.
One more tip: Think about timing for digestion. Experiment and pay attention to how long it takes to digest certain foods. Which means you need breaks in-between when you stop eating and when you starting eating again. (Sometimes we keep eating throughout the entire day, with few breaks for proper digestion: “snacking”.) Notice when you feel hungry again, not antsy or bored, but real hunger. This will vary depending on your physical activity and what you have already eaten. Keep this information in your memory or write it down if you need to. Make a little chart listing foods and proportions and approximate digestion time. If you are having trouble with your relationship to food / eating and / or your weight and if you are really serious about making healthy changes, keeping track of it for a few weeks just until you have a good understanding of your Body and different foods might be helpful. After you get it set into your conscious memory and unconscious habits you won’t need notes or charts or visuals anymore. But use whatever tools you need while you are learning and experimenting.
May we all learn to understand the language of our own Bodies. May we learn to nourish ourselves in healthy ways. May we all be happy and comfortable in our own skin.
Bliss and Abundance!!!
Hope Grace Roe 🙂