How To (Skillfully) Love Food – In Session with Marc David

Marc David
Greetings everybody. I’m Marc David, founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. We’re back in the Psychology of Eating Podcast. I’m with Romana today. Welcome Romana!

Hi, I’m glad we’re here, glad we’re doing this. If you’re new to the podcast, Romana and I haven’t met before, and we’re going to do a session together and see if we can make some good things happen. So, Romana, if you could wave your magic wand, if you could get whatever you wanted with food and body, what would that be for you?

Romana
Hi, Marc!

So there would be a mix of a few things. First and foremost, I would love to eat only if I’m hungry. Second of all, I’m no longer using food to soothe me. And third of all, I would stop holding myself back from coaching women, because there is a part of me that believes I need to be perfect and I have to have this thing behind me so that I can start…

Marc David
So, you turn to food sometimes when you don’t really want to, and it happens anyway.

Romana
Yeah..

Marc David
How long would you say you’ve been doing that for?

Romana
Oh, for a while, for very long, I guess. I thought it was just lately, but I realised I did it back home, in teenage years, and I had very, very turbulent relationship with food.

Marc David
What age do you think it might have started that you can remember?

Romana
I truly don’t know. I really try to bring myself back. And it was like, okay, when did it happen? I cannot really find any answers, but I know that anytime we had food at home. We wouldn’t really have sweets, my mom would always bake something on the weekend, sometimes, not every weekend. But if we had something, let’s say, my dad would buy many biscuits, it would be gone very quickly, because it would be either eat it then or never. So yeah, it was like that. And then I started dieting when I was 16, and yeah, that was another roller coaster.

Marc David
So, do you think of yourself as dieting these days?

Romana
No, I no longer diet. I have a very good relationship with food when I’m hungry. I eat very balanced foods, and I love food. I’m a proper foodie! Like, food means so much to me. Like before, or maybe still up till today, I would say that it’s my number one thing. Yeah, I just love it!

Marc David
Would you say you’re happy with where your weight is at right now?

Romana
Yes, with weight, yes. But there is a part of me that feels I could be further along on my fitness journey if I didn’t have counterproductive behaviour with overeating. Because sometimes I want to go to the gym, but then I would choose to eat, and I would eat more, and then I wouldn’t go to the gym. I would skip it. So….

Marc David
So, do you notice any particular times when you tend to eat against your own best wishes? Like, is there a typical time when that happens?

Romana
Yeah, it’s usually in the afternoon, maybe, I don’t know, 4 or 5, and then later, sometimes in the evenings, like late before I go to sleep. When I’m still not ready for bed and it’s 11 or something, then I would go for nuts. But I don’t do it so often. It’s really every now and then.

Marc David
And in general, do you tend to be a fast eater, a moderate eater, a slow eater?

Romana
Very fast eater, very fast! It’s gone before I know it. Even if I try, I really say, Okay, today I’m just gonna maybe have a prayer. “Thanks for all the vitamins coming into my body.” And before I know it is all gone. And I just noticed, you know, the rush I’m in when I eat. And I’m like, okay, Romi, calm down, we are safe.

Marc David
How old are you, Romana?

Romana
35 I’m gonna be 36 next week.

Marc David
Do you have kids?

Romana
No..

Marc David
Do you plan on it?

Romana
Not sure, not sure. That’s something which is on off, but at the moment, it’s off. Let’s see if it changes.

Marc David
So, when you eat against your own wishes. I’ll call it emotional eating, for lack of a better term, right now, what happens afterwards? What do you say to yourself?

Romana
Hmm, now, I’m better because I worked at this. You know, I really stopped beating myself up, which is huge for me. But before, I would really beat myself up and I would feel terrible. But now I’m just sitting with the pain and saying it’s okay. I’m trying to be the adult to my inner child that was just kind of naughty, and I didn’t give it any joy. So basically, I feel like I know all the inside outs. I was able to reuse it maybe 80% but there are still these 10 to 20% when it just not. That it’s still in my life, and I would love it to be gone.

Marc David
Got it! So let me just repeat that back to you, just to make sure I got that straight. So, you’ve been able to take this particular challenge with eating too much food, overeating or emotional eating, and you’ve reduced it by about 80%, but there’s this sort of 20% left that you would just like to get rid of.

Romana
Yes, I would love to.

Marc David
I just want to point out that’s a pretty big accomplishment! That reducing it by 80% is really big. So many people struggle for so long, even reducing it by 10% or 15% is a lot. Do you feel a sense of accomplishment with that?

Romana
Yes, I do. I no longer have this pain in me. It was huge before, so I was beating myself up very badly. Which is just gone.

Marc David
So typically, what time do you eat breakfast?

Romana
Quite late. Usually around 11 I get hungry. The thing is, I get up quite late as well. So if I get up at nine o’clock, I would eat maybe 11, or 11:30. If I wake up at six, then I would eat maybe by eight. So usually two to three hours after waking up.

Marc David
What might be just a typical breakfast for you?

Romana
Oh, very different. Either I have pancakes with some cottage cheese chocolate banana, or I have porridge, or I have protein bread with some ricotta and some fig jam with nuts. Yeah, I love my breakfast!

Marc David
Good for you. What time would you eat lunch?

Romana
Lunch, maybe three hours after.

Marc David
So what might be a typical lunch? Give me a few ideas.

Romana
Oh, maybe a wrap with something maybe, depending what’s going on, some salad with protein bread. Sometimes I would just not have lunch. I would have some crackers with protein shakes. Really, I’m more into dinner. A proper big dinner and lunch is something, just little bit. I still make sure I have carbs and protein in it but it’s not always that I have to cook for it. So it could be bread, it could even be a good sandwich.

Marc David
So the point that you had mentioned before that if you overeat or emotionally eat, it might happen in the late afternoon, or it might happen sometime in the evening. If it happens in the late afternoon, what are you doing that you’re emotionally eating? Like, what are you eating? Is it overeating your lunch, or is it adding something else to that?

Romana
It will be like, I had my lunch, and then maybe half an hour later, even though it will speak, I would suddenly have, maybe almost the whole bag of rice crackers, maybe peanut butter on it, and banana, cinnamon and stuff like this. So I still overeat on a kind of healthy stuff, or it would be nuts. Nuts are usually evening stuff, so I wouldn’t really have it in the afternoon. Or just bread, basically the whole bread, 400 gramms, and I’m able to eat almost all of it!

Marc David
Yes. When you were growing up and you were eating with your family, when you had family meals, what was that experience like for you, sitting down with your family? Did you sit down with your family for lunch or for dinner?

Romana
Yeah, we would sit down for lunch, but it was like we had to eat everything. So we always had to clear our plate. And it wasn’t very nice. It was kind of stressful. We couldn’t really speak. You know, my dad didn’t like that we speak. It was just eat your food. You know, it wasn’t a very pleasant experience.

Marc David
So, when you were young, do you remember when eating was a nice experience?

Romana
Yes, when my mom it would be sometimes, like when we were celebrating something, my mom would just make an amazing dinner, and it was really time when there was love in the house. And I really loved those evenings

Marc David
And dinner time, same situation when you were growing up? Was it stressful sitting down at dinner?

Romana
No, usually we will just help ourselves. So we had this toaster, and we would just make bread with cheese and ketchup, like very easy stuff, usually bread with something.

Marc David
Romana, let me share with you some thoughts that I’m having so far about you and where you’re at. I really believe that you are doing far, far better than you think you are when it comes to food and when it comes to your relationship with it, and when it comes to just how far you’ve progressed.

What I’m hearing from you in our conversation is that you love food. You really appreciate your food. You appreciate good food, you appreciate healthy food, you appreciate the pleasure of food. That’s huge when it comes to having a healthy relationship with food. It’s really big because so many people are literally afraid of food. We can be so upset about, oh, my God, if I eat this, I’m going to gain weight. And I’m not saying that might not be in the background for you somewhere, but I think the core part of you loves food and loves the experience! And I think what you’re dealing with, in large part, on the one hand, is an old habit. And I think one of the old habits that you’re dealing with is that eating is a fast experience, and eating is not always it wasn’t presented to you as a pleasurable experience, even though you as a person, essentially loved food when you were growing up, you as a kid, most kids love food, you know. They don’t have a problem with it, until we hear you’re chubby, you’re fat. There’s something wrong with you. You need to go on a diet. Most kids don’t have a problem with food. Part of it was we absorb from our environment eating speeds. If our family’s eating fast, if our friends, our brothers and sisters, whoever, our culture, we’ll tend to eat fast.

Now, a big piece of what’s going on for you is, even though you love food, you don’t always get the love you want from it. Meaning, when you’re eating, if you’re a fast eater, you can’t get all the taste and the pleasure that you’re actually wanting, that you actually enjoy. And part of it is, I think the old you is wanting to eat and get it done fast, because this is how you did it as a child. You just get it over with fast. So there’s just this old programming, this old habit, you just got to get it done fast. And there’s a little bit of guilt around it, because you can’t talk and you can’t really enjoy it. And then when you start dieting, when you’re young, food becomes a little bit of the enemy. So you want to eat as fast, because whenever we’re dealing with the enemy, we just want to get it over with quickly. So all I’m saying is you’re learning. You’re learning how to be in your body when it comes to sitting down with food.

It’s almost like, are you in a relationship?

Romana
Yeah.

Marc David
How long?

Romana
Nine years.

Marc David
Nine years, okay. So I’m going to guess that if you’re in a nine year relationship, there’s a part of you that you know how to be present with your partner, and your partner knows how to be present with you? Would you agree with that? That you’re both able to listen to each other?

Romana
Yeah, it was a craft, but now it’s where we are. It’s amazing. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Marc David
So it took a little time, but you learn how to be present to each other. Now what’s interesting is human beings go through the same thing, often times, in our relationship with our own body or in our relationship with food,

We’re not taught as a young age, you don’t learn in school. Okay Romana, here’s how you be present with your body. Here’s how you listen to your body. Here’s how you sit down with food. When you sit down with food, wow, this is amazing food. Let’s relax. Let’s enjoy this. Let’s eat this. Okay, now we’re going to play a sport. Let’s pay attention. Let’s be in our body. Let’s be present. Okay, now we eat a meal. Let’s listen to our body. How does that feel? How’s your digestion? Are there any aches and pains? Are there any symptoms? Or does it feel really good? So, so much of the eating experience is really breathing ourselves into our body, and saying to ourselves and just saying to life, it’s okay for me to be an eater. This whole experience is safe. I can relax into this eating experience. There’s a part of your brain that completely understands that you can relax into the eating experience. You love food, you love good food, you appreciate it. So half of your brain knows that. But the other half of your brain also thinks, oh, we gotta get this done quickly, because this is how I learned. And eating is a stressful affair and and those two haven’t resolved themselves yet completely.

Romana
Yeah, and what is also a bit of an issue for me, or I feel like it’s an issue. Sometimes I’m so excited about food that, honestly, Marc, I’ve bitten my tongue couple of times because of how I was like an animal, and I would be standing on the counter. And actually, I love to take pictures. So most of my meals, I always take picture. It’s my art. But then I can’t even take the picture because half of the breakfast is already eaten. And sometimes I need to calm myself and I catch myself like okay, put it down. I don’t take the time to bring it to the table. If I make it I’m so happy that, oh, my breakfast is here! But usually I can just eat in a kitchen just standing. And this is what I don’t like, that. I can’t just wait, you know, like, literally, it’s like, yeah, just this urge I can’t control, like, there is a part of me that has hard time controlling it and just be like it’s okay.

Marc David
Yes, so there’s a hard time, there’s a part of you that has a hard time controlling it. Where that’s coming from is your excitement. Where that’s coming from is your appreciation for life, your hunger for life, and your love for life. So I just want to point that out, it’s exciting to you, your body, your mind, does not yet fully know how to manage and contain and work with that excitement. So all I’m saying is you’re learning how to do that. There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s no different than you know, so many men when it comes to sexuality have a similar issue. A man can get so excited and a man can get so turned on that they don’t know how to manage their energy, and they have a hard time going slow. They have a hard time moving slow.

A lot of times we love food so much that we have a hard time moving slow. So pleasure is something that we learn how to cultivate. Pleasure is an art. Pleasure is something that we have a relationship with, that we grow in ourselves. So you can’t really know if something is truly pleasurable unless you taste it, unless you experience it, if you go travel somewhere, chances are you look, you drive around, you listen, you see, you take in the sights.

Romana
I’d look for the next best restaurant!

Marc David
So again, this is a product of your exuberance for life, as opposed to something is wrong with me. So I’m just trying to help you re imagine or redefine what you think is a problem. Because if you’re attacking this as a problem, you’re going to see yourself as having a deficiency or something’s wrong with me, whereas you are just learning how to manage your own energy, and part of your energy is I’m really excited to be here. I’m excited to be an eater. I’m excited to have this relationship with food where I love it so much that I just can’t contain myself. So you’re learning how to do that, and this is what the learning looks like. So part of it is learning how to slow down, if you were learning how to drive a car, and you get so excited. Oh my God, I love driving. This is so great. I just want to push the foot to the metal, and I always want to go as fast as humanly possible. This is so much fun. Okay, no, that’s not going to work. I mean, it’s exciting, and once you develop your skill, then sure, maybe you could drive fast, but you learn by first doing things slowly, you learn by breaking things down. So what I want to say is your practice is accepting this part of you. I love food, and it’s this part of me that’s a lover of food and a lover of pleasure and a lover of sensation that goes overboard sometimes. What a good problem to have!

Romana
But sometimes it really hurts, Marc. I could get myself to the point when I’m no longer comfortable, and all I can do is just sit down, because I’m just stuffed! Because I go over feeling full. But it’s rare. It’s not so common these days as it was in the past, which was very often.

Marc David
So when you’re doing that, you’re being an exuberant child. I don’t know how old you are. Maybe you’re five, maybe you’re six, maybe you’re seven years old, and you’re just being free, Romana. I’m just loving life and this is just so good. So your practice is invoking the adult in you, more of the queen in you, more of the witness consciousness in you that when you eat once again, there’s nothing wrong with you. I’m a lover of food. And you know, sometimes I can get excited. Sometimes I get so excited that I get a little bit out of my body.

Romana
Every time. I’m so excited about every single meal! Yes, life just started again, I can’t explain it in words.

Marc David
Yes.

So the practice is doing whatever you can do, and it’s a practice, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be perfect. Is to create the conditions where you can slow down and experience, so it feels in the moment like it’s punishment, because I just want to do this! But what it really is is you becoming present with yourself. So it’s learning how to be present with yourself in a place where there’s a part of you that can’t contain yourself. So it’s being present. And being present means I breathe. Being present means I slow down. Being present means when I’m eating, I take the time to really enjoy and I say to myself, I love this, because you do love it. In fact, I love it so much I want it to last. I love it so much I want it to take a long time. If you love sex, you wouldn’t say, Oh, I love this so much, honey. Let’s get it over within 20 seconds.

Romana
And that’s me. I eat quickly, and then I’m like, oh, it’s gone. You know? I wish there was more, but I already had huge portion, but because I eat it so quickly, it shovelling down.

Marc David
So that’s why you’re returning to food after you’ve eaten, because your brain hasn’t gotten the pleasure it actually seeks. We call this the cephalic phase digestive response, the head phase of digestion. We require taste. We require pleasure, aroma, satisfaction. We’re different from the creatures. We’re different from the animals in that way. We require an experience, and when we don’t get the experience of, ah, that felt so good. I mean, I just had this meal that I love. When we actually don’t register all that love and all that sensation, the brain goes, Huh, I don’t remember eating. Your belly might say I’m full. Your belly might even say I’m hurting from so much food. But the brain is saying, I don’t remember eating. I didn’t get pleasure. I want pleasure. I want satisfaction. I love that so much. I didn’t get it. And then your brain is screaming hungry, and your nervous system is overriding your best intentions, because you didn’t give your brain what it wanted in the first place. You didn’t give your body what it wanted in the first place, which is the experience of pleasure, and pleasure best thrives in an environment of slow. That’s where pleasure gets its best experience, because then we can feel the pleasure, we can notice the pleasure. We can we can pick up on the little nuances. So then when you pick up on those nuances, then all of a sudden you start to feel satisfied!

But I’m calling this a practice, meaning you’re not going to be perfect at it and

I want to suggest that you let go of the goal of, well, I’ve healed myself 80% here I just need to fix this other 20%.

Romana
Yeah, basically.

Marc David
Okay, you don’t need to fix anything. There’s nothing broken. Here is what I’m saying. Romana, nothing’s broken. You’re just learning. There’s a difference between learning and broken. There’s a point at which you and I were kids and we couldn’t read, and doesn’t mean we were broken, it just means I haven’t learned how to read yet. There’s a point at which you didn’t know how to ride a bicycle. It doesn’t mean you’re broken, it just means you haven’t learned yet. So you are still so many of us, we’re always learning how to be an eater. We’re always learning about our relationship with food. I don’t know that that ever stops, you know, till the maybe till the day we die, we’re still gathering information about ourselves. Here’s what I like, here’s what I don’t like, here’s what works for me, here’s what doesn’t. Oh, I wasn’t paying attention. Oh, I can slow down more. So let’s look at it as your relationship with food is teaching you right now, you’ve come so far, this is not a deficiency that you have. There’s nothing wrong with you. I really want to hit that on because when you think there’s something wrong, that actually short circuits your ability to slow down.

Romana
Yeah…

Marc David
So there’s nothing wrong, just old habit. Habit is automatic, repetitive, unconscious behaviour. Habits just do themselves. Yeah, automatic. It’s repetitive. You don’t have to think, I need to have this overeating habit. I need to have this emotional eating habit. No, it just does itself.

Romana
May I ask you something? Sorry. I just don’t want to lose it. Because I was just thinking, anytime I eat out of anxiousness or uneasiness, even it could be excitement, like I’m so excited someone wants me to write a review, and I’m like, Oh my God, I want to do it right, or I’m anxious, or something is going on, and then if I eat to ground myself. You know, I want to go from sympathetic to para-sympathetic, which helps afterwards. But while I eat it, I’m not enjoying it. You know, I basically enjoy it afterwards. I enjoy the feeling that I’m like ahh. But I don’t enjoy while I’m eating. It’s because, like you said before, when you are not in a calm state, you can’t enjoy it.

Marc David
Yes. So you are learning how to create that state of calmness, that state of relaxation, that state of presence when you eat. So you can actually fully experience all the sensations that you love anyways. So it’s really learning how to contain our excitement and our energy, meaning create a container for it, so we can best manage it, so we can have our best experience. So when you slow down, when you eat, it’s a speed but it’s more than just a speed. It’s you learning to breathe yourself into your body, because there’s plenty of times when you’re present and you’re not doing things really fast. So you know how to be present in your life. It’s just that certain times with food, you just get really excited.

Romana
Yeah, like, it’s almost hard for me to have cashew nuts in the freezer, because when we have it every evening, I would go there, and as long as I have them, if I buy a lot, I don’t stop. Usually I maybe eat 100 grams or 200 grams, but I’m literally there next to my freezer. The freezer is peeping like all the time, and I’m just so embraced in the flavour, and I cannot stop. And really, part of me wants to put them away, but the other part enjoys it so much that it just can’t stop till I really feel okay. Now I’m full, it’s okay, but I just cannot stop because it’s Oh, it’s got lots of calories. I cannot. It’s not enough for me to stop.

Marc David
Yes. So you know, this is just think of it as a part of you. Think of it as a persona in you. Think of it as an archetype in you. We can call it the hedonist. We can call it the pleasure junkie. There’s a part of you that’s the pleasure junkie that loves pleasure, and she just exists. Let’s not make her wrong. Let’s not try to shut her down. Let’s not attack her. Let’s understand that she’s there, and sometimes she can get so excited that she does things that we don’t want her to do. So you are learning how to be in relationship with that part of you. So there’s the part of you that’s clear and that’s balanced and does things just so. And there’s this part of you that just wants to eat and doesn’t even care what your body’s saying. What your body’s telling you, you just want to keep going, because this is so good.

Romana
Exactly.

Marc David
So once again, all I’m saying is this is not a problem. This is you learning how to be in relationship with that part of yourself. This is what makes us human. This is what separates us from the animals. We are learning growing human beings. We expand in consciousness. And in order to expand in consciousness, we often have to look at the places where we go into darkness, or where we go into unwanted challenges or problems or symptoms. So this is an unwanted challenge for you. You don’t like this.

Romana
Yeah, especially if I want to coach women and help them with the same issue, and I’m like, but I could do myself so, so much. So even if I can help them to get them to the place where I am, it’s amazing. But there is another part. No, you have to have it gone. It can’t be present in your life, because then you are fraud. You know?

Marc David
So, I understand that voice, not how it works. The way you help another human being is you be one step ahead of them. That’s all. If you’re one step ahead of somebody, you can help them. If somebody’s blind and you can see in one eye, you can help them. If somebody is 90 years old and can barely walk, and you’re 85 years old, but you can walk, you can help them. So all you need to do is be one step ahead of another human being to help them.

We don’t need to be perfect to help somebody. That’s something that we make up in our minds because of the perfectionist in us. It almost becomes an excuse for justifying I need to be perfect, because how could I help somebody if I’m not perfect? I help people all the time. I ain’t perfect. You help people all the time. Everybody that you know helps somebody. Our parents helped us. They were imperfect. So none of us are perfect, and this is also, I think, a part of our conversation is you, more and more, letting go of the tyranny. Perfectionism is a tyrant. It’s a mean bully, it’s a bad dude. It’s not a friendly voice in the head, so when you hear that voice, you have to respond to it very clearly with no, I am not going to subject myself, because when we try to be perfect..always around the corner from perfectionism tends to be self abuse.

You show me a person who’s trying to eat perfect or exercise perfect or be perfect, and I’ll show you a person who, at some point is self abusing. They’re abusing themselves with food or with negative thinking or negative self talk. So we’re very imperfect, and here we are. Here you are being imperfect. Yeah, there’s this part of me that knows exactly what to eat, and I can do it 80% of the time. I do it well and okay, there’s this other 20% of the time I’m doing something that’s kind of out of my control. I don’t want to do that. Okay, so now we’re breaking it down, and we’re looking at it as a learning opportunity. We’re looking at your relationship. Your relationship with food is a great teacher for you. Your relationship with your body it’s a great teacher for you, and that teacher is teaching us throughout our whole life, and it’s up to us to respond to it. So I’m always listening for you know what’s what’s your relationship with food, trying to teach you.

Romana
It helped me so much. I’m so grateful for my eating disorder, you know, bulimia in the past and everything, because I wouldn’t reconnect myself to the depth that I reconnected, I would be still beating myself up. I wouldn’t do the inner work, you know, and I would be very lost today. So yeah, I’m grateful I had that issue.

Marc David
And I’m grateful that you’re having this challenge now, because it’s teaching you how to be the queen of pleasure in your own body, how to learn to orchestrate, contain, experience, manage, conduct, the experience of you being in pleasure.

Romana
It’s a bit obsessive as well. But yeah, I just have to slow down and see it Okay? I ses you would love to be the first person taking the food. Just, wait, wait, wait. So I gotta be like, first one, just to make sure I I have enough choice to choose from. And part of me feels so bad because it feels so, you know, I just look for myself, but there is like, it’s okay, Romi, we can maybe leave one per person. And let’s start. I understand you want to be the first one, but you know, it’s like,it feels almost like a selfishness, because I want the food so much and I want to be there to choose from, you know, when all the bowls are full.

Marc David
Yes, that’s the child in you. Yeah, that selfishness is the little girl. So whenever she’s showing up, you do just exactly what you did right now, which is, you talk to her. We don’t need to do this. We can slow down. It’s okay. So you are literally looking to be a good mother to the child who’s inside of you by loving her and giving her wisdom and giving her guidelines. So here’s how we eat when we sit down for breakfast. Here’s how we do it. Play some music. Create something in your environment that helps you relax.

You know, music is the easiest thing I can think of, but whatever you can do in your environment that helps you relax and gives you the reminder to slow down, the more you slow down with each meal, and the more you receive it and learn how to contain that excitement, so that excitement translates into fulfilment. That takes time to learn how to take excitement and translate it so it becomes a sense of fulfilment. Ah, that felt good, as opposed to, oh, I’m so excited. Oh, that feel good, but, Oh, that feels terrible.

Romana
I have both. I experience they are mixing each other. Sometimes it’s like, amazing. I don’t miss anything. I’m so happy, you know? And sometimes I’m just like, Oh my God, I didn’t even enjoy it, and now it’s gone. Like, what? What happened? Like, where’s my pleasure?

Marc David
So that’s you learning. That’s you learning simply how to be present. You’re learning how to breathe yourself into your body when you eat. Because there’s a part of us that can get so excited that we actually aren’t present, that we actually leave the body. So it might mean, when you’re eating, where are your feet? Are your feet touching the ground? Taking a few deep breaths, am I present in my body, or am I just in my head? Oh, my God, this food is so good on. Because a lot of times that’s where we are when we’re eating. We’re in our head. We’re eating with their head, and so maybe I can suggest you think of eating with your body.

Romana
I read your book, but I didn’t really, I couldn’t apply it.

Marc David
Well, now’s the time to start applying it! Now’s the time. It’s hard to apply, because that the old habit is telling you otherwise, that’s all. Old habit just says, No, I don’t want to I don’t want to listen. I don’t want to do that. And the way we change an unconscious, repetitive habit, is by introducing consciousness. Is by introducing awareness, because the habit does itself, you’ll continue then to eat unconsciously for the rest of your life, unless you invoke or bring in consciousness, bring in awareness, bring in the light, and go, Oh, wait a second. This is me. I’m doing this thing that I don’t want to do. You start to witness yourself. Oh, I need to remind myself.

How do I eat with my whole body? How do I breathe myself into my body? Can I feel myself? Can I feel my arms? Can I feel my leg? Can I feel myself sitting in the chair? Can I feel my feet on the floor? Can I feel myself being present and grounded? So that’s what you’re learning how to do, is to ground yourself in your body. It’s almost as simple as that.

Romana
And I use the food for grounding as well. And I actually started grounding activities like walking barefoot and I became a breath work instructor, you know, I did everything because subconsciously, it was drawing me there. But one thing is knowing, so I understand a lot, but then to bring it when there is a food that’s like. Wow! I tried a few breaths, and I was like, okay, I wanted to try five, but I was like, let’s do two, three, because I want to start eating! Makes sense. It’s just a child that’s super excited.

Marc David
Yeah, so pretend you’re holding hands with that child and you’re just helping her slow down, you’re just helping her calm down. You’re just helping her relax and helping her get into her body. So, yeah, a lot of us use food to ground and food does and can ground us. And one of the keys is to ground yourself first as best you can, so you don’t need more and more food to ground you. Because eventually, if I’m in my head and I’m all scattered and I’m just all up here, if I eat enough food, there’s going to be so much food in my belly that body wisdom is going to say, Okay, there’s a lot of food in here we need to digest. And in order to digest, we have to go into a relaxation response. So your body will naturally relax itself. At some point after we’ve over eaten, you might feel like you have an upset stomach, but all of a sudden you’re a little more tired, you’re not as excited, because you’ve forced the relaxation response on the body by giving it so much food.

Romana
Exactly. And I just wanted to try to find connection with my nuts. Why when I feel like snacky, I go for nuts? And they don’t need to be, you know, salty nuts. It would be just plain, but it means they need to be from the freezer. Because from the freezer they are very crunchy. I love the combination of all of it together. But I wonder whether it’s because I want to ground myself, that’s why I always go for nuts. Or because back with my family back at home, we didn’t have so much money, so when I wanted to have nuts and it was only for baking, my mom would hide them from me, so I wouldn’t eat them because we needed it for baking. So is it maybe the reason why I’m so obsessed about nuts now, or is it more grounding? Or do I even need to know? Or can I just let go and just enjoy them without knowing why I’m so obsessed about them?

Marc David
Yes to all of it. You know, part of it is the memory of it was forbidden on a certain level so now you want to go for it. Kids love to eat the forbidden. As soon as the parents tell us you can’t have this, this is special, or this is no good, or we only eat a small amount of this, then if something’s forbidden, we tend to want to break the food rule, and we want to go for it. At the same time, it’s a food that you also love. Your body loves it. You enjoy it. So it turns on your senses. You like it. You said to me, I like the crunch. Well, the body, the brain, loves texture, and some of us like mushy, some of us like crunchy, some of us like whatever textures we like. So everybody’s different.

So this is, this is you just being specific. It’s okay to be specific. People are very specific about foods. I like my steak like this, and I like my vegetable steamed just like that, and I don’t like this kind of salad dressing, but I love that one. So, it’s okay to be specific, that’s just part of what makes us interesting. So I wouldn’t think that there’s anything wrong there whatsoever. It’s just your interesting, curious relationship with food.

Romana
Thank you so much. It helped me a lot, because there was, like, what’s wrong with me? Like, why can’t I just let go those nuts? Why can’t I just not, you know, because I kind of try not to buy them, just to figure it out. When I don’t buy them, I’m fine. And then I bought a lot just to test myself. Can I be okay? I just buy because I shouldn’t. But I want to be strong enough to have them in the freezer and not eat them. But anytime I buy it doesn’t matter six bags, as long as they are in a freezer. Every night they’re calling me to go, like, come, come eat us. And then once they’re gone, I’m fine.

Marc David
Yes. So that’s where your relationship is at with it. I mean, you can try to conquer that, you can try to overcome that and maybe you could. I don’t know if it’s worth your time and energy. Honestly…

It’s just that. It’s our unique relationship with food that makes us just very quirky, interesting, beautiful human beings. And it’s important to celebrate that. It’s important to celebrate like, yeah, it’s not always going to look perfect. There’s going to be certain foods that it’s in the refrigerator, it’s in the freezer, it’s just calling me, you know, and certain foods are not going to do that for you, and the foods that don’t do that for you might be doing it for somebody else. So there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong. That just makes us who we are.

Romana
It flipped it so much upside down for me, you know, I felt like, what a problem I had with food because that little part that I couldn’t let go, and I tried really hard to work on it, and I still fall into it. But I’m telling myself, it’s such a small part, why can’t I just be okay with that. But still, there was a part of me who wasn’t and now when we talk, it’s like I actually don’t have problems! I’m laughing at it because I think, Oh, my God, I’m so grateful for having such a beautiful relationship with food now. You know, when it wasn’t begging time, when I was, you know, doing things like throwing up or you know being scared of food or counting calories and you know. So if someone told me that today I will have such a relationship as I have now, I would be so grateful, and now seeing my mind is looking for the little things to worry about.

Marc David
So, now’s the time to start celebrating your relationship with food and seeing it for what it is, allowing it to be imperfect. It was not going to be perfect. It’s not going to be exactly, always what you think it should be. It is what it is, and we can even appreciate that. We can celebrate it. We can laugh at it, and yeah, sometimes you might emotionally eat. That’s okay. You’re a human being. Humans emotionally eat, humans overeat. We all do that. The best eaters that I know, they’re going to overeat. They’re going to emotionally eat sometimes. It happens. It’s not a big deal. Just like the happiest people I know have times when they’re sad, you can’t help it, the happiest people I know have times when things aren’t so great, and they’re going to feel a little depressed or feel a little angry or whatever it is. So it’s allowing just the full range of humanity to show up in our life and to show up in our relationship with food, without making it wrong or bad and just saying, Okay, well, what is this trying to teach me? So your relationship with, you know, nuts in the freezer is trying to teach you, like, this is part of your quirky relationship with food, and it’s kind of fun, and it’s kind of funny, and you can play with it. You know that if you have them in the freezer, you’re going to eat them, they’re going to call you and you’re going to eat them. And especially when I watch you, it’s so funny that your podcast is on, and then I would bring the nuts and I was like this is not okay!

So how you feeling about this conversation, Romana?

Romana
Very good. It’s like, as if something fell down of me, you know, like the mat that was still, like, there, thinking, Okay, I can’t see because that little dirt. I feel like, what’s the problem? Like, I figured it out. I am fine now. I can trust myself.

Marc David
Yes! That’s such an important affirmation. When you say that I can trust myself, part of what that means to me is not that I can trust myself that I’m going to be perfect. No, it’s I can trust myself that I’m a human being, and that even if I do something that’s not perfect or that goes against my own wishes, I trust that I’m going to be okay.

Romana
My body’s going to digest it, you know.

Marc David
Yes, I trust I’m going to be okay. I’m not going to die, and it’s not going to be the end of me, and I trust that I’m going to stay with myself and stand by myself, not attack myself, not belittle myself. So I trust that I’m going to be there for me. That’s a big part of self trust.

Romana
I have that now! It wasn’t like the many years ago or even few years ago.

Marc David
Well, good for you. You’ve obviously done so much work on yourself and I hope you can feel good about that and feel proud about that, and just remember that and celebrate it.

Romana
I will. Thank you so much, really. Truly from bottom of my heart!

Romana
Romana, I appreciate you, I appreciate this conversation. And thanks everybody for tuning in. Take care everyone!