A Survival Guide to Quarantine for Beginner Intuitive Eaters
If ever there was a reason to stress eat this Pandemic qualifies!
Cooking and eating have become a national pass-time—meals are the highlight of the day. The curative qualities of cooking and baking are smeared over the internet like icing on your chin—working with your hands is meditative, measuring takes your mind off the news, sharing creates connection, eating brings comfort (we won’t talk about clean up). And once it’s in the oven, well, just the smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, a roasted chicken, an apple crisp or pie, or homemade bread (slathered in butter while it’s hot), is enough to instantly reduce your stress level—except when it isn’t.
As if the uncertainty and the tragedy unfolding daily isn’t enough, for some of us thinking about cooking and eating adds to the stress rather than offering relief. There may be a moment of fleeting release as you take a bite, but once that bite becomes 10, or 20, or the kitchen, you’re no longer in the ‘comfort-zone’ food can offer. You’ve set off an internal chain reaction that simmers around feelings of disgust, loathing, rebuke, self-doubt, or maybe just end up in tears. The good news is you’re no longer concerned with the world falling apart around you, the bad news is, well, you know, don’t you?
I’ll be the first to tell you that if eating is your way of coping this is a tough time to think about creating a new relationship with food, which is what Intuitive Eating is all about. It may seem like the wrong time if you’re quarantined with family that’s used to eating a certain way, or if you live alone and you feel particularly isolated right now.
But this is your life and it matters. Everything may feel out of control but you still have choices, and this is an opportunity to practice making them. How we respond in this storm and its aftermath will say a lot about who we are. This is an opportunity to tune into your needs and learn something new about yourself.
So for those of you who may be new to Intuitive Eating and feeling vulnerable I want to share a few thoughts to help you through.
Part One: Inspiration
1. Understand that eating is the way you’ve learned to cope with emotions, uncomfortable feelings and stress. (We all need something!)
2. You’re not alone.
3. Treat yourself like you would a child that has no other skills—with patience, compassion and love.
3. Each moment of each day offers an opportunity to begin again.
4. An episode of binge or over-eating is filled with information.
5. It’s not what you eat, or that you overeat that matters, it’s how you respond to the situation. Hint: learning from it is the goal.
Part Two: Self compassion is the KEY that opens the door out of overeating.
This doesn’t need to take more than 5 minutes. Before you try this know that if you still want, or need, to eat after you do it, go for it. This is not about stopping you from eating, it’s designed to help you get in touch with what’s going on with you and food.
1. Next time you’re going to eat take a minute to notice if you’re truly hungry or eating for some other reason, fear, anxiety, stress, anger, loneliness, grief, sadness, confusion, overwhelm, boredom, let me know what I missed.
2. If you find you’re eating for something other than hunger DO NOT JUDGE or berate yourself, just move on to #3—and remember you can still eat when you’re done with this. If you’re eating for hunger keep this for another time.
3. Get a paper and pen. Write down everything that’s freaking you out. List it, rant it, write a poem or song, a letter to yourself, however it comes, just get it out of you and on paper.
4. Eat if you still want or need to.
5. Map your experience.
a. If you didn’t end up eating why not, did you learn something helpful? If so thats’ yours to keep.
b. If you did need to eat did it feel different to eat with the awareness that you were filling a need other than hunger?
c. If you ate did you eat more or less than usual?
I’m on this same wild ride with you and I imagine my fears and feelings overlap some of yours. I live alone these days, my daughter is in another city, actually another country! about to graduate from college and I can’t be with her. I have moments of feeling alone, isolated and afraid for the future, hers in particular. I no longer eat to deal with the overwhelm which means I’m dragging a little less baggage down this road to who knows where, which makes room for me to think about the things that truly matter. Like what to do to keep myself healthy and sane through all this so I can hug and kiss my daughter soon. And I will be baking bread, I’ve started growing a sourdough starter for the fist time in my life. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Part 3: The payoff
Give yourself big props for caring enough about yourself to take the time to consider your relationship with food. Seriously, if you took the time to write and reflect don’t just brush it aside—it says something about you and who you are choosing to be!
Stay inside, wear a mask if you go out, wash and rinse your hands for 40 seconds (20 to wash, 20 to rinse), and don’t close the faucet with your clean hands. Be well.