Trusting Ourselves with Food & Pleasure

Trusting Ourselves with Food & Pleasure – In Session with Marc David

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

Jill
Hi, thank you!

Marc David
Thanks for being here. For those of you new to the podcast, the idea is Jill and I are meeting for the first time, and we’re going to do a session together and see if we can make some good things happen. So Jill, if you could wave your magic wand and get whatever you wanted with food and body, what would that be for you?

Jill
I would be just in my intuitive rhythm of eating when my body and soul is hungry, and stopping when it’s enough, and moving on with my day. And I think it would be reflected in so many ways in my life, but physically in terms of my body, I’d love to just experience my body more as a playground rather than a battle zone, and to have fun with it, with with being in it, and to have fun with the journey of tweaking things to alter the appearance, and so there would be less fat and more muscle too.

Marc David
How much fat would you lose, or how much weight would you lose?

Jill
You know, I’m not sure, because I would be fine if I stayed where I’m at if I had significantly less fat and significantly more muscle. But I guess I’m looking at like a 10 to 20 pound idea. There have been times in my life where I liked how I looked at 10 or 20 pounds less, more like 10 to 15 pounds less.

Marc David
These days, what does it look like when you’re not in the sweet spot that you’d like to be in with food and you’re not in that natural flow? Describe what shows up for you that doesn’t feel so good.

Jill
Yeah, like a lot of angst and desire and fixation on this idea that I want more, that I don’t have enough, and then sort of a shut down, like a rumination around feeling kind of trapped and pissed at my body.

Marc David
Pissed at your body, because it’s not doing what you want it to do?

Jill
Yeah.. pissed at me for for putting my body in a state where I’m not comfortable in it. Those are the bad days.

Marc David
Okay, and then what does that look like in terms of food? Give me some more details about on a day to day basis, like, what’s going through your mind in relationship with food, with your meals?

Jill
Right. So like, in this very moment, I am eating kind of specific, like my meals are kind of planned out. So if I’m training at the gym, I’m eating a certain set of meals, and it is that every time I train, and when I’m not training, I eat another set, but then I have this free meal once a week. So I guess within that framework that I’m currently in, it’ll be like, you know, I’m finished eating, and I feel this frustration, and I start feeling this trigger to go look for more, which is not in part of the plan. And it feels almost like there’s a temptress and and I’m being tortured.

Marc David
So the torture is, correct me if I’m wrong, you kind of want to stop where you are and hold your cards and not eat anymore. But there’s this other part of you that wants more.

Jill
Yeah, wants some chocolate, wants some decadence, wants extra!

Marc David
How old are you, Jill?

Jill
44

Marc David
When was the first time you remember I want to change my body. I want this thing to look different.

Jill
I mean, I remember being really little and being in a swimsuit and saying I’m fat, and I wasn’t, but I remember saying, I don’t want to go out with the kids in my swimsuit, I’m fat. So it’s been a while.

Marc David
So, do you remember when you first started sort of dieting, or trying to manipulate the food on your plate so you could look different?

Jill
Yeah, when I was in sixth grade, my dad and I started going to the gym together, and he had high cholesterol, so I would bake things with no egg yolks, and this was the way that I would care for him. And then we would wake up in the morning, he would drink a Slim Fast shake, I would drink a Slim Fast shake, and I got thin and muscular, but I was just doing it to bond with dad. It wasn’t like I had, any body issues at the time I don’t think. But a few years later, I started to get a little fluffier and battle. And that was when it it turned darker.

Marc David
Are you in a relationship these days?

Jill
Yeah, I’m married.

Marc David
How long?

Jill
Well, we’ve been together eight years, but we got married last year.

Marc David
Kids?

Jill
No.

Marc David
How does your partner feel about your body?

Jill
He loves it, and I think he probably wishes that I loved it more, because then he would have more access to loving it and we could love it together.

Marc David
Isn’t it strange how life works like that sometimes? Well, the good news is you have a partner that loves you the way you are. Nice to get that reflection coming back your way. So, are you working with a trainer?

Jill
Yeah. So I’m working with a coach that has me on a training protocol and on this food protocol. And right now we’re in this phase of just repairing and letting my body rest from all the years of stressful dieting. But I think down the line there will be a deficit at some point, which I feel is looming, and I’m nervous.

Marc David
What do you mean down the line is going to be a deficit? Explain what that means to you.

Jill
So right now, we’re in a phase where we’re in repair and where I’m eating sort of maintenance calories. But you know, my goals are to slim and to be able to reveal some of this muscle that I am working out so hard for. So I know that a few phases down the line there will be a pullback on the food to put me into a deficit where then perhaps fat loss might happen. I’m in anticipation of it.

Marc David
All things being equal, let’s say you had the perfect body. Exactly what you wanted, and no matter what you ate, you always stayed at the perfect weight. How do you feel about food?

Jill
Oh, I love food! Yeah, I don’t love anything more than food.

Marc David
Yeah, I’m glad you said that.

Jill
I really love food. Yeah, I love it more than anything and I think I have this idea that that’s part of the problem.

Marc David
Actually, I think it’s probably part of the solution, believe it or not. And what I mean is the war, the battle, the craziness that you experience, to me, sounds like you are very clear on the one hand, I love food. You’re very clear about that, there is nothing I love more – I love food. So you’re super clear about that, and you’re also very clear I want my body to look different, and my body can’t look different if I’m in love with food, because then I’m going to want to be lovers with this thing that’s going to make me not love myself.

Jill
Yeah.

Marc David
So that is a massive paradox. That is a massive conundrum, yeah. So you’re kind of sleeping with the enemy, so to speak. You’re in love with the wrong guy, so it seems. What I think, and this is in the big picture, and we’ll figure out some of the specifics, but I think ultimately, there’s a place where it’s going to really be helpful for you to be able to fully embrace that you love food and really own that part of you, because right now you’re fighting it, and if you’re fighting your love for something. I don’t know, it’s like if you started saying, Well, you know, I love my husband, but I need to not love him, for some reason. Then you have to fight this feeling of love, or you love your parents, but you have to fight that feeling. No, it would be insane. You couldn’t do that you love what you love, you love who you love. Love is love. We can’t stop what we love.

So I think step one in your journey is really making peace with how much you love food and owning that, because that love is that love is a lot. And what I mean by that is you love a certain kind of pleasure. You love pleasure. You love pleasure from food. If I love pleasure from food, but I’m not allowing myself pleasure from food, because if I allow myself pleasure from food, I’m going to want to eat it more. I’m going to overeat it, and then I’m going to mess up all my goals. So I have to kind of pretend that I don’t love this, and I have to have a relationship with food where I’m really not getting pleasure from it. I mean, maybe you get pleasure from food sometimes when you eat, but I’m going to guess it’s sort of a guilty pleasure.

Jill
If it’s really controlled, I’m able to enjoy it, yeah, but it still feels like, with this analogy, there’s like a lover that I have some access to, but I have to withhold myself from a lot of the time. But also I think some of that comes from like this ‘not enough’ idea like I don’t know like do I really need more and more and more of this one pleasure?

Marc David
Maybe, maybe not. But at the very least, what you need to do is own who you are.

Marc David
Step number one, you gotta own who you are. Who you are is you’re a person, you’re a woman who loves food, and you’re super clear about that. And whenever you own that, you get real happy, by the way. I’m over here, me talking to you, you get real happy. You light up because you’re owning it, and as soon as you try to Unown it so you can diet and lose weight, then you’re not happy. So before we solve the problem, the seeming problem, before we solve the paradox, well, how can I love something that’s so bad for me? Bad meaning, if I’m going to eat and I’m going to gain weight, I’m going to love it too much, and if I really let my love truly explode and expand and be what it is, I’m just going to keep eating and eating and eating. That’s the fear. So that’s the bottom line fear. If I truly be the lover that I am it’s going to be too much, and it’s going to result in this horrific outcome.

Jill
Yes.

Marc David
Okay, so that is a case, I’m going to just get right to the punch line here. To me, your the road ahead of you is called Jill, learning how to trust pleasure as experienced through Jill. It’s just, this is what gives you pleasure. This is you. This is your body. This is your life. And oh, my God, I can. No, we have to drop into the body and own the fact that you love food and just own it and own the fact that food brings you pleasure in a pure way, just like a kid would, just like in the moments that you’ve owned it with me, when you own it, you’re actually in your power.

When you owned it several times in this conversation, you didn’t have to run to the refrigerator and prove your love. I think there’s a strange way that when we hold back, I’m holding back my love. I’m trying to hold back my pleasure, but because it’s in there, you’re going to want to explode. And I’m holding back, I’m pulling back, I’m pulling back. It’s almost like a rubber band, and all of a sudden, boom,

So a lot of times when you just want to eat something, or you just feel like, Oh God, I don’t have enough. This isn’t enough. I’m on this diet, but this is not enough. What’s driving I think the not enoughness I don’t have enough is that you’re not letting yourself feel enough. When you start to let yourself feel enough, like, oh, this food really tastes good. I love this. It’s okay that I love this. I trust myself. I trust that I’m not going to sit on the couch any food all day because I’m such a lover. Like you’re such a lover. Just own it, and you’re not going to be eating cake and ice cream all day. That’s called trusting yourself. Like I trust myself that I can learn how to manage my pleasure. There’s probably other things in your life that you love that you just manage very well.

Jill
Yeah. Trust is a big piece that I’m working with right now, trusting the universe, trusting in enoughness, trusting that I’m enough, trusting that there’s enough business for me, trusting that there’s enough food.

Marc David
And trusting that your desire and your love and your pleasure, and your relationship with desire and pleasure, especially as it relates to food, trusting that that’s ultimately okay and there’s nothing wrong with it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. It’s a beautiful thing. It makes you interesting. It makes you you. You’re a lover and you’re trying not to be a lover.

Jill
In the past, I couldn’t trust it, because I would go to crazy.

Marc David
Yeah. Okay..so pleasure, we cultivate pleasure. We learn how to take this experience called pleasure. Oh, my God, that’s so good. When you’re three years old and you have ice cream, oh man, this is, like the best thing ever, Mommy and Daddy, let’s have this at every meal and every snack. Why wouldn’t we? It’s so good. Okay, so then you got these big adults who kind of understand, we’re not going to be eating ice cream all day, every meal, all the time, because, you know, it’s not going to be good for you. So when it comes to pleasure, the voice of wisdom is invoked at first, hopefully with the big people in our lives, with the parents helping guide us. Yeah, these drugs are good. This alcohol is good. But you know, something that’s a pleasure, you might want to really learn how to moderate so it doesn’t trap you or it doesn’t addict you. Yeah, sex is pleasurable, but does that mean that you jump in bed with every guy or girl just because it’s so pleasurable? No, I gotta really determine do I want to be with this person, that person? What’s right for me, even though the urge might be there. So all I’m saying is, we learn how to regulate pleasure in our body. So you’re learning. You’ve told me in the past, yeah, I wasn’t so good at that. Okay, great. You’re 44, a smart woman, you’re wise, you have a lot of experience, and like everybody else, there’s certain places in life where you’re a learner. You’re learning how to, in my opinion, be with this thing called I love food. I love pleasure with food, you’re learning how to manage that. Step number uno is to embrace it and accept it and own it and not try to hide it and not make it wrong, it’s a beautiful thing.

Jill
Yeah, I think that isn’t as difficult for me as trusting that I can moderate it. You know, that’s a big one to trust that, you know, maybe I haven’t moderated it in the past, but I have more skills now, and I could be more present with it. Because I think that fear was driving me to just eat past it.

Marc David
Yes, yes, yes. Um, is your mom still alive?

Jill
Yeah.

Marc David
How’s your relationship with her?

Jill
We are…. I’m working on it. It was pretty broken for a long time, and I’ve just sort of come to a place in the last couple years of like, deep forgiveness and really seeing her for who she really is, and just kind of falling in love with her again. And so we’re in a repair process.

Marc David
How’s her relationship with food and her body?

Jill
Yeah, you know, I think it’s also tricky, but she’s not much of a communicator, so we can see it, but we don’t hear it so much. She’s been dieting on and off her whole life, and also is a lover of food and hasn’t been able to moderate it at times.

Marc David
In the past, what was your in terms of your relationship with your mother in the past, where was the trust quotient? Where was the trust equation with her. Did you trust her? Was she a trustable mother for you?

Jill
No, I trusted that all my needs would always be met, all of my physical needs, but my emotional needs would not. And she didn’t trust me because I was like a bad kid. You know, I was a classic bad kid.

Marc David
So you trusted that, you know, my mom’s going to take care of my physical needs, but I can’t trust that my emotional needs are taken care of. Coming back at you from your mother was, I don’t trust this kid. She’s a bad kid. So there’s a lot of mistrust in the system, which makes sense to me that you’re in a place right now where you’re learning trust in your life, about everything. Trust in universe, trust in God, trust in your body, trust in life, trust in the flow of things coming your way, trusting..You know what it is. I think a lot of times we think, Well, how can I trust my body if it gains weight? Or, how could I trust my body if it has all these desires? It’s not about trusting my body will have this perfect shape. It’s not about that. It’s about trusting yourself, I think, that you will stand by yourself no matter what.

Jill
Yes!

Marc David
Trusting that Jill will not abandon Jill because I ate too much. I have dessert, I shouldn’t have that. So if you abandon you, if you attack you, if you belittle you, you’re not trustworthy. You’re not standing by yourself. You can’t trust yourself. So it’s not trusting that you’re going to be perfect. It’s not trusting you have the perfect body, the perfect relationship with food. It’s trusting that, no matter what, you have your back.

Jill
Yeah, and that’s really new for me, like I have a lifetime of turning my back on myself, and in the last I’d say, you know, five, six years, I’ve been doing a deep repair process with myself. And so what would happen in there is that whenever there was alone time, it would be a battle between me and the refrigerator, because I couldn’t tolerate time with myself. I didn’t know what it was. It just seemed like it was this vacuum of life. And now I’m finding you know, through my meditation practice, through my personal growth journey that the nectar of life is here with me but there are these old neural patterns of the refrigerator, right? How do I indulge in the moment? How do I partake or consume the moment without needing to be in the refrigerator.

Marc David
Yeah, that’s such a powerful journey to be on. You’re learning how to regulate your own emotional self. You’re learning how to be in your body in the world in a way that works for you. So it’s like, okay, here’s me, here’s Jill. I got a lot of feelings, got a lot of emotions. I got a whole past. I got a present I’m dealing with, and how do I breathe into that and not have to lean on this or that or go to food to soothe. Here’s the thing, the reason you go to food to soothe is because that makes perfect sense. That’s what every creature does. That’s what every human being does. Nothing’s wrong with you for doing that. Every crying, screaming little infant who’s upset and yelling and emotional, and you give them the bottle or the breast and boom, they’re relaxed. So we all have the very powerful and clear genetic evolutionary memory of feel bad, eat food, feel better. So there’s nothing wrong with turning to food to feel good, by the way, there’s nothing wrong with that. It can become problematic when that’s my only way of regulating my emotions, and I overdo it, and then, oh my God, this doesn’t feel good. I feel sick. I feel queasy. Is too much. I’m gaining weight. Okay? Then we start to see, how do I manage myself? Really, all I’m trying to say is you’re on a journey. There’s nothing wrong with you, nothing broken here. In fact, I’m very inspired by your story and inspired by your journey. You’re so on it, you’re so working on yourself. And you’re on a journey where you’re becoming a better and better version of Jill. I really hear your commitment to that, and that’s a beautiful thing. You know, repairing our relationship with a parent when it needs repairing is powerful work to do while our parent is still alive, not easy. So to me, you’re doing it. You’re absolutely doing it. You don’t have a food problem.

Marc David
Food is a symptom. Turning to food is just a symptom of the challenge, the growth challenge called I’m learning how to be me and regulate my experience. So part of the process is owning the places where it’s healthy to own. And again, I want to get back to you’re a lover of food. When you own that, you’re in your power. You can come to food, you can come to any meal. You can come to any snack every time. I would love for you to put a big sign on your refrigerator. I love food an saying it: I love food. So every time you literally, yeah, I do love food. Doesn’t mean I have to eat it, or maybe I will. But you know something, I’m not going to suppress that beautiful truth. Because not only do you love food, you love love, you love pleasure period. You want to experience your body loving your own body. You want to be with your partner and be in a flow of love. So that’s what I hear as a bottom line. Your love of food is really just like a metaphor. It’s a reflection of how you love life.

Jill
I love life really big. And there’s a part of me that wants to just like overindulge in life. I just want some freedom to, just like, eat the whole country!

Marc David
Great. What that says is that you’re owning your appetite. I got a big appetite for life. So this is a good problem. I would rather you do that than have the tiniest appetite for life and want to starve yourself out of existence and into death and to press yourself into oblivion. No, you have a big appetite for life. That’s a great place to start from. That’s a good problem to have. Got a big appetite for life. Okay, gotta learn how to manage that, big thank you for being alive. Thank you for being a person who loves life. There should be more of that,

Jill
But there’s this trust piece around, can I trust that it’s enough, right? Because it’s like, do I need to eat the cosmos, right? Or can I just trust. Like when I look in the mirror, I see somebody who doesn’t trust that there’s enough, and so she’s storing, she’s gobbling more, she’s taking more, like she’s holding on to, she’s carrying around this fear of not enough. I’m not enough. It’s not enough. It’s like, I’m trying to step into trust.

Marc David
Yeah, so that’s what you’re doing. That’s what you’re doing.

Marc David
You’re not trying to control your eating. You’re not trying to have more willpower to resist food. No, those are not answers. Those are not solutions. Those are not good tools or techniques. You’re learning how to trust, because then when you can trust in life, when you can trust in yourself, when you can trust that you’re enough. Trust, think about what it does if I’m in a moment of trust, I relax, and when I’m relaxed, guess what? I don’t need to binge. I’m relaxed. I don’t need to grab. When I’m relaxed, I don’t need to devour. When I’m relaxed, I’m relaxed, I might eat. I might not eat. I might indulge in my appetite or not. That’s up to me, but trusting is another way of saying deeply relaxing. You’re creating by trusting, we’re literally creating a physiology. We’re literally creating parasympathetic nervous system dominance, relaxation response, a classic physiologic state where you digest very well, you calorie burn most efficiently, and your appetite is most naturally regulated when you’re relaxed.

Jill
I want that.

Marc David
You’re on the right track! You’re doing the right work, which is learning how to trust all of it, learning how to trust that, in a sense, that your journey is good. Your journey is yours, like when you tell me your story, the little bits that I’ve heard so far, I heard a really beautiful, powerful story. It’s like, yeah, it wasn’t easy at the beginning and here was me, you know, maybe I was a bad kid, but look at me now! So your journey is good with a capital G! Where you’re at right now was sweet. It’s beautiful. It’s lovely. Nothing wrong with it. Yeah, ain’t perfect. But who is? Nobody, and you’re you’re in a sweet and tender place in your life.

Jill
Yeah, absolutely.

Marc David
So from that place, I’m curious as to really, what serves you, and I don’t know, I don’t have an idea right now, but I’m asking myself the question. I’m asking it out loud. That I’m curious about what would really support you in your journey right now, your journey of learning how to trust it all. What would really support you when it comes to your diet and when it comes to your workout and your personal training that you’re doing. Because if all of that, my diet, my exercise, the personal training, if that’s being driven by I’m not good enough. If I get to this goal, then I’m good enough. If I don’t get to this goal, I’m not good enough. And if I weigh myself and I gain half a pound, that’s bad. If I lost half a pound, that’s good.

So I’m just, I’m just wondering, and it’s fine, it’s it’s beautiful to have your preference when it comes to weight and your body, like it’s fine to have your preference. We all have our preferences. What we drink, what we eat, what we wear, who we hang out with, so it makes us uniquely us. We have our preferences. So the way you want your body to look, I would consider that a preference. It might be a strong preference, that’s fine. So preferences are completely cool. They’re wonderful. We get into a little trouble when we make that preference a God. When we make it a task master, when we make it an all or nothing. If I don’t get this preference, I’m screwed. If I don’t get this preference, this exact weight, this shape, I’m unlovable.

Jill
Yeah, I think this is the first time in my life where it’s shifting a little bit into I want to have fun with this process, and I’m starting to have some fun with it. I don’t feel like I’m in a complete state of terror, where, food owns me, and I’m, you know, at its mercy. I feel like I have agency, and I’m walking on this on this road, and there’s still a long road ahead, right? So, yeah, what am I trying to say? I think finding the fun in it, because it’s never going to end. I’m not going to get to some goal. I’m athletic. I work out. I like working out. It makes me feel good. I like experimenting with my food and pulling strings to see what happens when I pull them. What the effect is? So I want to step more into that framing.

Marc David
Bingo! I love this for you. I think it’s such great awareness, because really what we’re saying is this is part of who you are. You’re a creature of love and pleasure, amongst other things, and love and pleasure is fun. So if you’re having fun, then that’s a really good sign that you’re on the right track with how you’re doing things.

So if you’re going about your exercise and your dieting and it’s not fun, then it’s not working. Yeah, it doesn’t mean it might not be a little challenging sometimes, or there might not be difficult moments. Because anytime we’re having fun, there could be a difficult moment, it happens, but overall, the overarching experience is: I’m in my body, working out. This is cool. This feels good, yeah. If you want to change your body, this is a secret. This is a secret. More people should know this. If you want to change your body, you have to be in it. You literally got to be in it.

What happens is, a lot of us go up here into the head, okay, I’m in my head and I’m worrying about food. I’m thinking about food. I’m thinking about my body. I’m thinking about, God, If only my body looked different, I would be having so much fun, I’d be having so much pleasure. I would be like, living a good life if I just had the body that I want, but I don’t have the body that I want, therefore I can’t have fun and and then we’re living in our head. We’re not actually in our body. And if I’m not in my body, I can’t really shape shift it

Jill
Totally, yeah! It’s crazy. Today I was on the elliptical trainer, and I realized I just had this moment of, where is my body? You know, I was listening to a podcast or something, and I was like, I’m grinding away, and I’m living up here. And I instantly dropped down and was able to kind of bring my life force into my feet, into my legs, and notice, like, Oh, this is uncomfortable, like I’m pushing. There’s some discomfort, and maybe that’s why I’m dissociating from it, or maybe it’s just a habit. But it was nice to kind of come in and visit it and welcome this strain, you know, to be like, this isn’t pain, unwanted pain, you know, this is exertion. It’s what I like.

Marc David
This is brilliant.

I really think this is brilliant, because you have a clear distinction of what it’s like that I’m doing this exercise, but I could actually be in my head doing the exercise, or I could be in my body doing the exercise, and it’s two completely different experiences, and I believe it’s two completely different outcomes. Now, apply that to food. Apply that to eating. Every time you eat, drop into your body, like okay, the old talk, old talky talk, but no, drop into your body. Drop into all your cells, drop into your feet, drop into your belly, just inhabit all of your body. And then think about food and then eat food.

Jill
Yeah, I love that as sort of a meditation to to keep coming back into the body while eating, like, what’s there?

Marc David
Because when you’re in your body, you are definitionally here. You’re here. You’re in your power. It’s very, very, very hard, you can do it, but it’s very hard to be in our power if we’re not in our body. Now, granted, there are some really old people have a hard time being in their body, but for a lifetime, they’ve done it, and they’re in their wisdom now, and they’re occupying their soul, but for where you’re at right now, it’s you’re learning, maybe for the first time, how to be in your body. And that’s a beautiful thing, because we’re not taught that in school. Nobody says, Okay, here’s how you be in your body. They throw you into gym class, but you can do sports your whole life and never really learn how to be in your body.

Jill
Yeah, I did!

Marc David
So you’re learning how to be in your body. You’re learning how to call yourself into your body, because that’s how you do it. You literally call yourself in. It’s like, okay, whoa, get in my body, breathe, bring awareness into my body, drop it down from my head, which oftentimes means letting go of the mind chatter.

Jill
Mm, hmm. I love that you say that because it’s intentional. It’s not just like, Oh, I’m just always in my body. It’s like, we have choice to invite it.

Marc David
So when you’re in your body, you will be in your power, and you will have more facility with your body. You will have more authority in relationship with your body. You will be able to dance more with your body because you’re in it. You’ll be able to flow more with your body, because you’re in it. Body is an animal, like in a beautiful way, body is a natural animal, and we live very unnatural lives. It’s just hard. We’re human beings, and we’re different from the animals. We’re not quite animals, and we’re not quite the gods. We’re sort of halfway in between, but we have a very animal nature, a natural expression, and the more we own that and get in contact with it, the more wisdom speaks through us, the more body wisdom speaks through us.

So you have a natural appetite, you have a natural hunger. And when there’s no mind chatter, your body would just eat when it’s hungry, it would enjoy the food. You would love it. You would say, Oh, this is so good. I love this. Ah, complete. And then you be on to the next thing, because it’s, oh, my God, I should or shouldn’t eat this. We’ll lose weight. So when we let go of the conversation and we experience sensation. So sensation without the conversation that helps us be in our body, and it’ll help you learn to trust yourself around food.

Jill
Yeah, I’ll tell you one place where it’s challenging is when I eat out at restaurants. It’s like, the stimulation of the environment, it makes it so hard for me to be present and be embodied. So I just sit there with the food in front of me, and I just feel torn in 1000 directions. I start eating to the beat of the music, and I’m breathing shallow to and it’s like, I have to keep putting my fork down. It’s insanity. And I love it. It’s fun! I want to be able to have fun and be embodied.

Marc David
So that’s a great practice. So there’s an opportunity, if you’re going to go to a restaurant, you know this about yourself. You know that you’re sensitive to your environment. You know that you’re sensitive to stimulation. You also know that you want to inhabit your body and be in your body, because that’s where your power is. A person, in your case, a woman who is inhabiting her body definitionally is in her power.

As you inhabit your body definitionally, you are in your power because you’re experiencing your pleasure. Pleasure is a power. Oh, that food taste so good. I love it. Oh, man, I took a walk. It was so great. I love it. Oh, I just had sex with my partner that was so great. I love it. That’s our power. Pleasure is a power. Being in your body is a power. So you get to practice when you go to a restaurant. How in the universe do I be in my power in this moment? What do I have to do? Do I have to sit there and close my eyes and take some deep breaths.

Maybe you just have to really call yourself into your body. Maybe you have to plant your feet on the floor and just really get connected. And I think that’s always going to be the reference point for you is just meditating yourself into your body. Nobody’s going to care if you close your eyes for a minute at a table. Chances are, and if they do care whatever.

Jill
Yeah I don’t care!

Marc David
So you’re just getting into your body. Like, own it, own your moments. Like, I need to get into my body. And you might even have guidelines for yourself when you go to a restaurant. That’s fine, you know? I want to have certain guidelines. Guideline number one, I want to leave the restaurant and be able to say to myself, that was a good experience. So let’s reverse engineer that for a second. What would help you go to a restaurant, leave the restaurant, saying that was a good experience. What needed to happen?

Jill
I need to stay present. And staying present means not getting caught up in sort of the pace of the music and the conversation and the noise and the stimulation, but staying at my pace and being really mindful when I’m eating like I want to taste the food, and I don’t want to rush it or rush past it. I want to leave not stuffed, but fully satisfied. Yeah, that would be the big one that I somehow was able to stay at my pace and feel like I engaged with the food, rather than mowing past it.

Marc David
There it is. That’s brilliant! That’s your guideline. So what I hear is that you need to tap into your pace. So in general, you’re a fast eater, moderate eater, slow eater?

Jill
Fast. And I’m really trying to slow down. So like right now, everything is quiet in the house when I eat and I put my hands in prayer. But I’m really working on it. I’m not successful a lot of the time, but I am trying.

Marc David
So keep on doing that. That’s your lifelong practice, which it’s not going to take a lifetime. Eating slow is not a speed in particular. So I want you to think, yeah, it’s a speed, but it’s way more interesting than just a speed. Eating slow means I am present. I’m aware. I’m receiving pleasure. I’m doing the thing that I’m doing, and I’m relaxed while I’m doing it. Definitionally, when a human being eats fast, your body will go into a stress response, or you will eat fast because you are in a stress response. And if I’m in a stress response, the cortisol that I’m producing, the main stress hormone, blunts our pleasure receptors. So when we are stressed, the chemistry of stress causes us to have less receptivity to the chemistry of pleasure, which then means I kind of need to eat more of the chocolate cake and more of the bread and more of all that stuff so I can feel the pleasure that I would normally feel had I been relaxed.

So really, what you’re learning how to do is relax with food, yeah, which means really trusting the eating experience. Trusting that, okay, I can do this. Yeah, this is okay. So you’re literally learning how to create a relaxation response, create trust, create connection with the thing that’s normally kind of freaking you out a little bit. Oh, my God, I love food, but I shouldn’t love food, but I do love food, but this is terrible, and the net result is a stressful internal conversation, right? And eating past the food, right? So which is why I want you to own your love for food. Just own it. I love food. Now, if I love something, if I love sex, I don’t say to my partner, Honey, I love sex so much. Let’s do it in 20 seconds. It’s so good. It’s like, No, you want pleasure to last. So that’s the voice of wisdom speaking when it comes to pleasure. In order for you to fully embody your pleasure, you need to experience it. In order to experience it, pleasure wants slow. There’s certain things you could do really fast, go down a roller coaster that’s that’s its own kind of pleasure. But most of the human pleasure we experience, it needs spaciousness. It needs us to slow down. It needs us to be relaxed, to experience the very sensations that we’re wanting. So the more you actually relax into pleasure, the more you own your pleasure, which means relaxing into it, the more you can experience pleasure, and the less you’ll have to grab after it because you missed it in the first place.

Jill
Yeah, it’s crazy just to notice that, like I started noticing a couple months ago, I’m eating to get it over with, and then all I long for all day is to get to eat again. What is that about?

Marc David
So that’s just an old habit. That’s an old habit. It’s the two sides of you talking. There’s the side of you that’s the lover of food that says I can’t wait to eat, and there’s the side of you that’s been conditioned from the world to believe that food is your enemy because food makes you fat and if you’re fat, that makes you unlovable.

Jill
And if I like it too much I’ll eat too much. And, yeah.

Marc David
So that’s why you’re like, oh my god, I gotta get this over with. Why? Because if food is the enemy, the food is a crime. In order to deal with a crime, if you’re going to commit a crime, you want to do it fast. Rob a bank. You don’t want to take three hours to do it. No, you got to go in and out. You do the crime quickly. If you’re going to deal with an enemy, you want to dispense with them quickly. So because part of your brain sees food as the enemy, or food is a crime, you want to do it fast. Because if I do it fast, it kind of means it didn’t happen. It didn’t really go down but then I really love this so I want it. So we want to break that pattern. The way you break that pattern, once again is you start to own your love for food. Own it. Put it on your refrigerator. I love food. Say it to yourself every day and every night. I love food. Just own it. And this makes me a lover.

Jill
I’m a lover.

Marc David
Nothing wrong with that! I love all kinds of things, and I happen to love food just about at the top of my list. Anybody got a problem with that? Only me, and you ought not have a problem about that. It makes you interesting, and it makes you you, and once you own that, you don’t have to fight it, then you can be in relationship with it.

Jill
Yeah. That’s what it’s all about, just being in relationship, right?

Marc David
And if you want to be in relationship with your partner, you’re not looking to squash your love. You’re looking to explore it like, oh, what does this love mean for us? What do we like to do together? How do we express our love? How does this feel? How does that feel? So you play!

Jill
Luxuriate, yes!

Marc David
And you trust that even if you overeat, guess what? You’ve done that before. It hasn’t killed you. You’re still here. You don’t weigh 600 pounds. You’re okay. You trust that I will stand by myself and I will be okay. It’s okay to overdo it. You will survive, right?

Jill
Yeah, I would just like it to be less times, you know, I’d like to be more in integrity with my values of slowness and experiencing the nectar of life here and now.

Marc David
So that’s a practice. Think of it as a practice, not a perfect, it’s a practice. The more you and I practice that, the better we become.

Jill
Yeah, yeah, I’m in it for sure!

Marc David
I think you’re in a great place. I really do. I think it’s it’s a really good time to just bless your journey, just bless it like, this is okay! I’m in a good place. I’m not exactly where I want to be, but it’s not a bad place. I’m so poised to start to have what I want.

Jill
Yeah. Truly. Thank you for that reflection, that blessing,

Marc David
How’s this conversation been for you?

Jill
Great, yeah. I mean, it’s just really validating and nourishing, just to kind of, you know, spread it out and help me, I think, commit more to what the work is, what the practice is. Yeah, to just stay with myself. That’s huge.

Marc David
Stay with yourself. Breathe yourself into your body every time you eat, every time you approach the refrigerator. Just breathe yourself into your body and look at that sign that says, I love food. Because that’s going to interfere with but no food’s the enemy, but I’m really hungry, but I love food, but it’s the enemy. It’s like, no, I love food, and that’s beautiful. Your love is not dangerous, your love is not wrong. Your love is not a weakness. It’s a strength and it’s a power, and you just have to allow that. You just have to allow that love to come through and let it inform you, let it teach you. As opposed to try to squash it so you can have this body that you want, which will then make you lovable.

If you want to get to a place where the destination is, I love myself. Because if I want this ideal body, if I want to reach my goal or my preference with my body, I’m wanting to get to that preference because it means I’m going to love myself maybe more. That’s fine. So the end goal is I’m going to love myself. The journey has to have love in it. If the journey has unlove in it, then how could it possibly have a destination of love?

Jill
Yeah, no way. I’ve gone down that path. It doesn’t work. Oh, yeah, it’s very painful.

Marc David
Well, I think it’s been a great conversation. I’m just so impressed with you and where you’re at and where you are in your journey and I know it’s not perfect for you, but I think you have all the tools. I know you do. You have all the tools. You have the right awareness and just time to really own your power and own the strides that you’ve made, and just see all the goodness that you have and see the victories that you’ve had.

Jill
Thank you. Yeah, definitely taking inventory. Very grateful, and so grateful to have gotten to have this chat with you, truly. Thank you for being my teacher.

Marc David
Thanks so much. I’m honored. Wonderful conversation. I so appreciate you. And I appreciate everybody for tuning in. Take care, everyone.