This post is Part Two in a series about food and spirituality. {You can see the original post here.} There are so many ways in which we feed our souls, through relationships, prayer, meditation, knowledge. And, most certainly, through the food that we eat.
This post comes from the loverly yvette Soler, an international healer, teacher of Practical Spirituality, and founder of Eternal Light Energy. Her personal journey with food and spirituality are inextricably linked. Her insights are many. And her message overarching: when life is in balance, eating is in balance.
Grab a cup of coffee, and settle in. This is one story you’ll want to ready from start to finish.
A year ago, as I sat in my friend Denise’s living room talking about life purpose and dreams, she turned to me and explained, “I will never be fat again!” I should explain that Denise and I met about 15 years ago when we were both living in a city far away from our respective homes. She is an empowered, 6’1″ Black woman. I am a determined, 5’9″ Hispanic woman. At the time, as we built careers in high-tech, we were both about 40 pounds overweight and not very happy about it. We were also struggling with how to get our lives on track…if we could even find the track.
Denise and I bonded over a love of food and technology. For the next few years, we drifted in and out of each others lives, reconnecting at events and parties. One day, when we were both working for the same company, we decided to do “lunch” and excitedly discovered that we had both shed a big chunk of excess weight. Over a tasty meal, we swapped stories about how we had done it.
Unbeknownst to us, we had both reached rock bottom around the same time, or at least felt like we weighed the same as a rock, and decided it was time to change. Being the overachievers that we are, a conventional diet was not going to cut it. The word diet has taken on a connotation of being something temporary even though the word really means “habitual nourishment”. There was nothing temporary about our goals, so we each independently decided to go back to the root of the word and change our lives for good.
I had tried every type of diet and exercise plan imaginable and nothing worked. I decided to try a different approach and consciously asked my body to help me understand what it needed. During a random visit to a bookstore, I ran my hand across the weight-loss books and asked for guidance. One book lead me down a new path that revealed the need to understand the language my body was using to signal when a particular food was not good for me.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back now I see that this was the spark of my spiritual journey yet to come. This is where I started working on meditation; attempting to quiet the mind in order to listen to the body.
Of course, like every human, I had some major setbacks in the beginning and created regimens when my body wanted freedom. But with some perseverance, I started to hear my inner voice and do what it asked, which meant relinquishing control. Conventional lists of foods you “should” eat were thrown out the window and in their place charts were developed that listed foods my body hard a hard time digesting. Over the next few years, I experimented with timing my meals, what kind of foods I should eat when, cutting things out, adding things in, and so forth.
It was working. Slowly, my body dropped weight. The less I tried to control, the more in control I felt. Then I hit the plateau. My body just stopped responding. Though what I was doing worked to keep off the weight I had lost, it was not going to get me where I wanted to go. Given that I was skinnier than I had ever really been in my life, I resolved to embrace this as my new set point. It was a little frustrating though, which mirrored my overall life. Work was good, but not great. Relationship was good, but not great. Weight was good, but not great.
Then one day the penny dropped. The very foundation on which I had based my life for about 8 years shook and I found myself in a season of change. I left everything behind to find ME. I was waking up spiritually which caused me to re-evaluate everything in my life, including my relationship to food. I left all the food charts behind and forged a new path.
I had just moved into a temporary place and had limited resources so I ended up being guided into a “cleanse”. When I emerged with my body clean, I went about cleansing my mind of all my preconceived notions I had created around eating. I was beginning my spiritual journey and starting to explore “who am I?”, so it was perfect timing.
While I had always generally eaten healthy, organic food, I didn’t really think about the nurturing spirit of my food. I ate because I loved the taste and texture, but also because I was bored and not living the life I wanted. I ate because it was the one thing I could control. All these realizations were leading me onto a new path, and I felt it was important for me to invite food to become a part of my journey toward spiritual growth.
When I was hungry, I would eat, but only if it was something I really connected with. Instead of whipping up a quick fix, the preparation of food became a part of my eating process, including a final blessing before ingesting. I stopped thinking about how big my portions were or when to eat and trusted my instincts. It took a while to let back in some of the food I had previously cut for fear of losing control and binging, but the binging never came because there was no control to loose.
I was finding happiness in my life, therefore food was eaten for pleasure, not to cover up pain. Now and then a box of cookies would disappear during a stressful period, but when physical/spiritual balance was regained, the cookies would go back on the shelf for long periods of time (but not too long since I still have a bit of a sweet tooth).
One day I realized that I was no longer counting calories or carbs or anything else. Now, I eat when I am hungry and only if I feel it will nourish my body, soul and spirit. I am still amazed when my stomach growls because I have forgotten to eat, something that never used to happen before. Food still consumes my thoughts, but from a place of pure pleasure. I love being in the kitchen with friends, since I find that the more positive the energy is during preparation, the more delicious and nourishing the meal is. When I have a dinner party, cooking is part of the evening’s activities.
Going back to that day last year when Denise confidently exclaimed that she would never be fat again, there was no doubt in my mind that she was right. Today, she is a published author and sought-after conference speaker, and I am an international healer and teacher of Practical Spirituality. Quite a change from the corporate lives we used to live.
Years later, we are both thin and healthy. She and I will never be fat again, but not because we have some sort of control over our food intake. Quite the opposite. We are compulsive eaters that savor every morsel we ingest. We dream about food, grow our own food, patronize stores with the highest quality food, and generally think non-stop about all the yumminess this world has to offer.
The truth is that Denise and I found the miracle diet everyone is looking for. It does not involve will power or self-control. It really only has one ingredient: happiness. Living a happy, balanced life free of mental, emotional and spiritual clutter so you can listen to your internal guidance.
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