What you need is not a “ new you” but to embrace “You” in 2018!

Probably you have noticed one of those advertisements with the suggestions that you need a "new you" -New Year, New You!- they say.

How do you feel about this suggestion, does it fill you with excitement ? Or perhaps it gives you feelings mixed with dread and shame. To propose that you need a “new you” suggests that you are not good enough. Since you already feel not good enough about yourself the suggestion that there can be a new you, might sound inviting. 

But hang on, how many times have you tried to get to that “new you”? Take a step back and think about what happened the last time when you've tried to change yourself because you felt bad about yourself....

 If you are similar with most of us, you might had some disastrous result with all that changing business. 

I wonder, if you know why...(?)

This is what I’ve realised when I tried to become the new me. 

 Firstly, I cannot make a positive change out of something that is fuelled by self-hatred and negative self-talk.

When you want to change the most important thing that you need is encouragement, positive support and love. 

If you are blessed with loving people around you,  you may have the right support system, But even if you have all that love and support from the outside but you still have those negative self-talks on your inside, you will find that the only thing that is going to change is the level of your frustration with yourself. 

My second big discovery was, that I actually did not need to become "new"!

 Yes, I needed some change in my life..and I believe I will always have something that needs to be improved.

However, it is not to become the “new me” that would change all those things that needed to be improved in my life. I have habits that need to change and I can do that with one step at the time. And that has nothing to do with me becoming something that I am not. If anything, I need to be me, so that I can take full ownership over my achievements. 

I encourage you to instead of fighting becoming a 'new you', to embrace and accept yourself first! That is crucial for improvement. When you accept all the qualities that you have you will be able to see yourself with compassion and love. Self compassion is an important element of self esteem. Once you believe in yourself which has nothing to do with ability but more so being available to embrace yourself and whatever else is coming with it, then you can take steps in a new direction. And that would change those habits and qualities that you would like to change. 

You will be able to do it for the only reason that matters and that is You! Not because of what other’s think or what comes from society but because of what you want for your own self. And that might be; is to have a happier, fuller and healthier life.

Get excited about those new steps, and pat yourself on your shoulder because you've not just recognised that you need to take new steps and perhaps a different path in your life, but because you are willing and ready to do so!

So, embrace yourself and own who you are and if you want to improve do it, because you want it, and not because you are manipulated into thinking that you are not enough. 

                                             Who You are is good enough!

Full recovery IS possible!

                                                                        

What does being 'recovered' from an eating disorder mean? At this point in time, we do not have a definition for recovery. It has been said that everybody has, or should have, their own idea of what being recovered means to them; therefore, each individual person can set goals based on this. Perhaps you can take a moment and collect your thoughts about what recovery means to you, and check how far you are from that place.

Once you enter the "I am recovered" status, you are out there to be looked at as an example. Unfortunately, this can come with being judged by others, while they are wondering whether you really have recovered. This is something that you cannot avoid, and you will have to learn how to handle. The best thing to keep in mind is that we should not worry about what other people think about our recovery and/or how they see us. Believe it or not, that doesn't matter at the end of the day. But there is one thing that matters, and if it isn’t obvious, that is you! You are recovering for yourself, not for anybody else. I want to challenge you to ask the following questions: "Am I recovered? Am I free?"

If your answer is "no", there is no need to beat yourself up for it. You can recover! 
What would need to happen in order to get there? Whatever it may need to take one thing is sure it needs time, effort and consistency. And most importantly you need to believe that you are worth all that. I was told numerous times that there was no way I would ever recover. Honestly, even myself did not believe in my own recovery. Yes, there was time and even during my recovery that doubt sneaked in and I did not believe that it was possible to be recovered. Now I know, it is part of not just recovery but life itself. Doubt is part of being human, so if you ever doubt in anything even things that once you felt so confident and strong about, well then : welcome to the human race! However, when you put all of the energy that you put into your eating disorder, instead into your recovery then, you can and you will recover.

If your answer is "yes", this is great news! You must be living your life to the fullest; with all the challenges, ups and downs, and joy that life throws at you. I am thrilled for you! 

You might be in an “in between stage’ or rather confused wether you have recovered or not. And as frustrating as it is, it is important to recognise it. 
There is so much idea about recovery but I really want to emphasise on the importance of your own meaning of recovery. That should be the only goal that you want to march towards.

Why? Because that is the ultimate goal if you really want to live and enjoy Your life.

I have been there myself, when I thought I was recovered, and I said that I was recovered; when in truth, I wasn't. Having said that, I know that it was part of my recovery. So, I did not have to feel guilty about my confusion, but I still did. You see, once I declared that I was “free” those who, were still fighting for their own freedom, looked up to me, I became a walking example.

I had to be honest and admit that I was still steps away from that freedom. The realization of that was rather hard because I wanted to be there. I wanted to be recovered, I wanted to help others, and I longed to be an empowering example. 

You might have realized that it may not be that simple to know whether you are recovered or not. I am hard on myself, and I wanted to have the "perfect" recovery. Just as perfectly as I was obeying my eating disorder, with the same perfection, I wanted it out of my life!

Let me share with you what it looked like when I thought I was “recovered” looked like for me:

I ate “healthy food” by the standard that is set by the experts, and I no longer counted calories. I exercised, which consisted of mainly running two or three times a week, and what I considered that to be "normal". But If you would've asked me whether I ate because I ran, or I ran because I ate, the answer would have been the latter. 

Moreover, I had a two-year-old son at that time ( now I have 5 children), so, I must have been recovered, right? Especially, considering the fact that during my anorexic years, I was told that I would never be able to have children. I amazed everybody with how "well" I looked despite of having a baby. Suddenly, I became the "good" example, and the inspiration to all new mothers out there. I was complemented and told that this is how all mothers should look! Did that make me feel good? Well, yes, at first. Eventually, I started to feel uncomfortable. Then, I began to ask myself the question: "Are you really recovered?"

The truth was, that if I didn't have time to do my "recommended" amount of exercise, or eat that "heathy" meal, I was tense, grumpy, and hard to get along with, to say the least. 
I told myself that it was important to have “me time”.  I told myself that I needed to relax and get the tension out of my system. So, I justified the need to run. While that is true, and self-care is incredibly important, The truth is there are different ways to achieve calmness and that doesn't have to be involved with pulling weights and running miles. 
The reality was that I traded my eating disorder for being "super healthy" and a "super woman”/ “super mum”.

 To clear any confusion here, I am not saying that you cannot enjoy sports or working out once you have made your recovery. I just hope that you might have noticed the enjoy part that I think should be included. I believe being “recovered”, especially for me, means that I enjoy whatever activities I do, and I don't freak out if, something comes up and I cannot do them. I eat and you enjoy it, but not whilst thinking that eating is only ok because at some point I will workout. It is okay to eat and enjoy it, even if I cannot walk 5 miles after I ate. I do not need to earn my food. I also don’t label food, so I am neither satisfied neither triggered by what I eat. And it is ok to look "good" (whatever "good" means), just as it is ok to look tired or stressed. It is ok to have a bad hair day, and believe it or not it is ok to have a bad body day. We all have them; there is no human being who feels completely satisfied in their body every single day.

I believe, when you are recovered, you actually enjoy whatever you do and you have developed coping strategies for those not-so-good days. You can accept that just because you are recovered, it doesn't mean that you will never have bad days. You are not going to be immune to hard times, but you can cope with whatever life throws at you.

You no longer need to do timeless workouts to prove your worth, or shop until you drop to make yourself feel better. You don’t need to lock yourself away and hide, or do whatever it is that does not give you lasting peace and satisfaction. You no longer have to be the toughest kid on the block, nor do you have to have everything together 100% of the time.

When you are recovered, you feel free to be who you are! When you are recovered, you can show your feelings, such as anger, sadness, and joy. When you are recovered, you can, and you do, embrace yourself; including your imperfections.

Are you there yet? If not, don't stop until you get there because you are worth it!

Who is forcing you to starve?

                                               

You may or may not have heard people say: " You chose your eating disorder!"          
 In my previous blogs, I have stated that you do not choose to have an eating disorder, and I am standing firm on that ground.
I do not keep it a secret that I myself have struggled with anorexia for many years, and I am always very honest about my experience. And I always will be.
However, I am aware of the fact that my honesty could encourage other sufferers to torture themselves even more, as that is the nature of the disorder. Therefore, I will always be careful what and how I am going to say.

 I can tell you that I still remember the day when I've made a decision that I am not going to eat anymore. So, you can say, I've chosen to starve myself. You are right! That is exactly what I did, but little did I know that I was already in the grip of anorexia.
There was that inner "voice" that told me that I did not deserve to eat, nor did I deserve to live. This voice have been living inside me as long as I have known myself, this internal voice have told me from a very early age that I was not good enough.
This voice was like a dictator giving me commands for the first 24 years of my life. It was ordering me to believe in certain thoughts, and it helped me to hold onto certain comments that I heard people say about me, so that I could hate myself and continue hurting myself. All those negative comments became the part of my inner voice. I believe that "the voice" have served a very important purpose; and that was to destroy myself! I chose to believe that I was worth nothing, I could see no evidence that would support it otherwise!

It was about few months after I 'declared' to starve myself, when my class had to watch a movie called: Schindler's List in the cinema (in 1994), around that time I begun to look obviously ill. After that movie my classmates, friends and family started comparing me ( my body) to those who were deprived of food and water, and as a result were starved -even to death- in the concentration camps.
I was told that it was wrong to starve myself when there is nobody forcing me to not to eat. I even heard people say : " How dare she can choose not to eat when there are people starving in Africa. What about those who are tortured and starved against their own will?" It was few months later when I was hospitalised finally, and and every morning I was weighed.  One of those morning the nurse who weighed me picked my arm with two fingers, like I was a dirty cloth and with disgust on her face said: " Do you think this is how you should look in your age?"

 Little did people know that there was my very own prison guard living in me; "threatening" and convincing me to believe that I must obey "the voice" that told me not to eat, because I don't deserve food.
And no, I did not feel proud that I could starve myself (what made me feel good was that I could diligently do what anorexia told me to do. It felt satisfying when ED "told" me: "Well done for doing what I've told you to do.") It felt good that there was at least "someone" who would acknowledge my achievements.

But did I think that I was a hero or that I was above everybody else, because hey, I can starve myself... NO, I did not!
I was crippled and disabled by the illness. I lived a sad and lonely life...well, I did not live.. It was just an existence and I longed for it to end!

Did those comments about people who starve as a a result of human cruelty or poverty or disaster, made me fell good....? No, those comments felt painful and created an incredible anger toward myself, I hated myself even more. What I thought was :" How could those dear people die, and I live? I should be the one who dies. I don't deserve to live but they do!"
Did I like being compared to thin and dying people? No, I did not ( hence the hiding in over sized clothes)! I would have been more than happy to have my food shipped to those people who were starving in the world. I would have given anything to change with other people's suffering. I wished I could remove others pain, because I believed that nobody in this world deserves to suffer but I.

When you are in a condition when there is little or no food and the body begins to starve your instinct kicks in, the one that drives you to survive. You want to feed your body, you don't want to feel the symptoms of hunger: cramping and pain in your stomach, dizziness, irritation, headaches...etc. That is why you look for food at all costs. And often you eat whatever you can in order to eliminate the symptoms of and to survive.
But when you are struggling with anorexia ( or a period of time when you starve yourself), that instinct only makes matters worse! As much as you want to nourish your body, you equally want to follow what the eating disorder is ordering you to do; starve. That itself creates a tremendous tension. But because you do believe that you have no place, no rights to be on this planet, you carry on to obey "the voice", and starve yourself.
And as hard as it may be to believe, that is how it is. In the case of an eating disorder sufferer there is no external force, ( per se) that deprives him or her from the right to exist and tortures to death, but the illness from within is that force.

Let me make it clear, eating disorder is an illness, and as long as we oppose to believe that, we will not be able to help those who are suffering.
Helping a person who is struggling with anorexia is very challenging. And it is a lot of work.
The best thing that anybody who is willing to help can do is to offer compassion and love.
However, my question is, how can that be achieved from a judgemental point of view?
Those who are battling with anorexia ( or other eating disorders) do not believe that they are ill. From their point of view they are not good enough, and they deserve to be punished. They often have these thoughts: " If you would really know what I did, do, think etc. You would agree that I am a terrible person." Therefore, not feeding themselves is justified and seems the very normal thing do.

Whether you are a counsellor a medical professional or a family member or friend; remember, when you look into the eye of the person who is struggling with anorexia, that person wants to believe that she/he can be loved and worth your time and attention. They judge themselves more than anybody else does around them.

 I hated myself for doing what I did during my illness. I did not understand myself, I was puzzled. I thought I've gone crazy. But at the same time I felt guilty when I didn't exactly followed the inner "voice" but just the same I felt guilt and shame when I did follow "the voice". I so wanted to be a 'good' patient who gets better easily and quickly... I so wanted somebody to tell me that what was going on with me was okay. Even if my actions were "sick".
I longed to hear ( wanted to believe ) that I was worth being loved, and I was worth fighting for, because I was more than my eating disorder! I wanted to know how I can get "the voice" to stop in my head.

I have recently read an article where the prisoner's ( in the Holocaust concentration camps) painful body was compared to those of whom are suffering from anorexia nervosa, and how "insane"it  is that in our "free and wealthy age, people are willingly starving themselves." ( So, I guess this article was describing me when I struggled with anorexia.) And I agree it is "insane" that in this "free and wealthy age" people can feel so unloved and have so much self-hatred that they believe that they are not worth to live and choose to starve themselves to death. I think it is tragic!

I personally know and respect the writer of that article. However, my question is; how helpful it is to publish an article like that? How would a person who is suffering from anorexia would turn to somebody for help who "sighs, sighs and sighs and think that his/her illness is just simply "insane"...?

Do we need to compare and most of all how helpful it is to compare people's pain? The mental and physical pain of an anorexia prisoner vs. a concentration camp prisoner.....
 What happened in the concentration camps was indeed a disaster! It is also a disaster when one thinks that himself or herself is wroth nothing! Can we actually measure the weight of a disaster when the result is the same...pain, suffering and death?

Positive Thinking...is that all that I need?

   “Be positive! All you need is positive thinking!” I hear people say this to me quite often. Are they right?

We have all heard the phrase about “waking up on the right side of the bed”. Your day starts off in the “right” frame of mind; floating to the kitchen, singing “good morning” with the birds, and making happy faces in your pancake batter. On the other hand, if we wake up cursing the alarm clock for pulling us out of our slumber, we have woken on the “wrong” side of the bed. This concept makes sense, right?

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt so upset and broken that you thought you would never survive the pain? Did somebody suggest that you “just think positively?” or “thinking yourself out of it?” And did you? How did that work for you? Did this method of coping help you feel better?

I tried to force myself to “just think myself out of it” when I experienced a less-than-ideal situation. What happened instead was that the next time I had similar feelings, all of those unresolved emotions from my previous experience also came back. Can it be possible that positive thinking is the same as avoiding feelings? Does it hinder us from experiencing uncomfortable emotions? Should we avoid feeling upset and hurt at all costs?

Let’s face it, life is full of ups and downs. We feel sadness, pain, happiness, and joy. We need to experience all of these feelings; without them, we could not appreciate the difference between one or the other. Have you noticed that if you are in emotional or physical pain, and someone tells you to simply find a positive outlook, you feel like you might snap? Because I sure do. Hearing that response may make us feel as though our feelings have not been validated, and that there is a simple answer to our problems if we could just see the silver lining.

I wish I could tell this person endorsing the positivity method that I need to have my moment of feeling pain. I need to learn that it is okay to feel sad, angry, and every other uncomfortable feeling. I don’t intend to dwell on these feelings, but I need to not be afraid of them. I do not want to live my life anticipating the next negative thing that might come along, because they are coming whether I am ready or not. Let me learn to feel these feelings, handle them, and move on. 

I wish I could tell this person to allow me to access positive thinking as a part of a balanced life and not as a scapegoat. Let me be grateful, and not by shutting out the negative, but by acknowledging the hardships of this life, and therefore, being grateful for all of the joyful moments that also come my way.

We must learn not to feel guilty for taking the time we need to feel sad, angry, or frustrated. This takes time, and there is no right way to learn. I am still trying to figure it out for myself, and that is okay. Nobody should expect you to instantly try to generate positive thoughts immediately after feeling anything negative. Your feelings are valid.

In order to develop a balance within your thoughts and emotions, you need to get to know yourself. It is because I know myself that I am aware of the need to move on if I don’t want any negative feelings to drag me down. I have developed a list of things that I can do to help me feel better and begin to look forwards, as well as some self-soothing and self-care activities that work for me. Examples of these include having a nice hot bath with a good book and some candles lit. When I am reading in the warm water, I can feel my heart and my mood warming up. 

Perhaps try and configure your own list for the next time you feel as though you’re ready to move on from some negative feelings. Who knows? You may experience that a brighter thought will come effortlessly as you begin to embrace accepting all of your emotions. For those of you who try tirelessly to think positively all of the time, consider that you might be missing out on some real life experience. You may be robbing yourself of the things that make life more colourful. You may be missing a chance to experience your life to the fullest. Allow yourself to acknowledge all of your feelings, good and bad, and find out what works best for you to move forward. It’s not easy, but it’s worth the effort.

You cannot choose to have an eating disorder but you can choose to fight against it!

                               

                         It's your battle, your fight and your victory!

 You might have heard people saying: " you chose it for yourself"! 

As, if those who suffer from a severe headache, just as an example, have chosen it for themselves....
Having an eating disorder is not something that you can just choose. That is why it is a mistake to believe that anybody could " just get over it"!

 When I lived with anorexia for over 15 years, I was told that it was just a kind of hobby...and I chose it purely to annoy my parents and friends. I was told that all those around me, suffered a great deal, because of me.....and I was asked if I would please stop this such a nuisance game of mine.

 Now, as a therapist, when the relatives of somebody with an eating disorder tell me how hard it is for them to watch their beloved ones struggle. ( which no doubt must be devastating.) I ask the question, whether they have actually considered how hard and difficult it must be for their loved one, who is living with the diseases. ( Let's agree with the fact that it is hard for both the sufferers and the carers.)
Recently, somebody told me that:" Gosh, it must be so difficult to help somebody with an eating disorder!"
My instant reply was: " Not as difficult as living with an eating disorder!"

Whether you have an eating disorder or you know somebody who is struggling with it right now, one thing you have to accept is, that the eating disorder is an illness! And it is real!
An illness that nobody can just pick and choose. It is not your fault to have it. It is not a "dieting that went wrong"....nor it is a matter of wanting to be pretty!

Believe me, when you have an eating disorder, you think anything but yourself being pretty!

There are many people out their with body image issues and I think I can even say that that there is no one person on this earth who would have never experienced body dissatisfaction at some point in their lives. However, they have still not ended up with an eating disorder. There are also people who strife to be pretty and beautiful but have never lived with an eating disorder.

We may not fully understand and know why and how people develop an eating disorder, but the truth of the matter is, it is an illness. And a very serious one!

Those who are suffering, experience a tremendous amount of emotional and most cases physical pain. The sufferer will not talk about it, nor would he/ she like the disorder being taken away from them...as they believe that this is the only way that they must or can live.

If you are battling with an eating disorder right now, then you are going to understand exactly what I am about to say. It is basically a " love -hate" relationship.

Your eating disorder serves a purpose in your life. Therefore, it makes you strongly believe that you need it. 

However, it is a lie! Nothing that your eating disorder is promising you will ever going to happen. The only thing will remain is that you carry on existing and not living the life that you're meant to live.

You see, I get it....you believe you need Ed. because you cannot even remember life without Ed. And your Ed. seems to protect you from things that part of the 'real world' that you are so fearful of. With Ed. you can just watch the world go by because Ed. can offer you stillness....it can make you feel that time has stopped. And this feels soothing and comforting. After all, how would even your day start without your eating disorder?

However, the truth is that your Ed. is also tormenting you with its constant voice in your head. Playing games with your painful memories, keeping your thoughts trapped and focused on only the negative. Ed. seems to know what to say when you are thinking about food...Ed. knows what to do with the food you are about to eat. Ed. knows how to focus and believe the negative thoughts about yourself. Ed. knows what you are going to choose and who you are going to listen to. Your eating disorder can train you to be the best in how to disguise the truth about your feelings, thoughts and actions.  Ed. knows how to twist words in your head until you have a completely different meaning of them. 

Ed. knows how to direct your focus so you can hate yourself,  punish yourself and how to make you and stop you from crying. 

Ed. knows how to pull you to the left and right at the same time.

  Despite, all the misery and sadness and pain that Ed. gives, Ed. convinces you that you are better of with IT than without IT....in fact, you believe that there is no way to live without your eating disorder!

But please hear me out! There is a way! 

The way by no means is easy, but it is do-able and you can do it too!

All you need to do is: choose the fight! You need to make a decision to choose life! To live the life that you want to have.

There is nobody who can do for your recovery as much as you can. 

It is your fight and your recovery.

 Nobody will ever be able to take away your achievement. Your victory will be yours forever.

Please, Believe me when I say this:" you have everything that it takes to recover!" All this time you have put all your energy and power to follow your disorder, now you can use the same energy and power towards your recovery and once you start doing that you will be unstoppable!

Do I hear you say that, "but how do I start?". 

You can start with one step at the time. 

 First and most important step: accept that you have got the eating disorder's grip on you. Accept that you are not in control over your eating, no matter how long you've believed that you were.

Reach out for support, do not feel you have to do it alone. As I've said you have all the power that you need to fight against your disorder, but still it is good to have a supportive network, where you feel safe, being understood and empowered.

Look for support until you find the one that is the best for you! Because you are worth it!

Make a decision today, put on your armour and get ready to fight for your life!

You can seek for help on www.heemangforyou.com We are based in Vancouver BC. Canada. Online therapy is also available no matter where you are in the world.

13 Facts about Eating Disorders

                            
                                 

1, Eating disorders are real.

2, Eating disorder kills, regardless of shape, size age or gender.

3, Anybody can develop an eating disorder.

4, Man can struggle with an eating disorder too.

5, You can have a mindset of somebody with anorexia nervosa even if you are  not thin.

6, When you have an eating disorder you have an eating disorder, there is no  such as having a little bit of an eating disorder.

7, Your BMI cannot tell anything about your relationship with food, therefore,  you can have an eating disorder with any BMI score.

8, Your shape doesn’t matter, you can have six packs and still struggle with an  eating disorder.

9, Media is not the cause of an eating disorder but it can be triggering for those      who are struggling with an eating disorder.

10, One can never be sick enough or thin enough when anorexia rules their lives.

11, Emotional eating or Emotional not eating is one aspect of an eating disorder.

12, Having an eating disorder means a lot of hiding and a lonely existence. 

13, You CAN completely recover from an eating disorder.

Mindfulness to "Bodyfulness"

               Do we need to be only mindful about what we eat or should we be "bodyful"?

I don't know how you feel about eating nowadays, but sure it doesn't seem to be as simple as it once was.

As of late, everything we eat has been tangled up with numbers, rules and contradictions. It is almost a sin to even think about granny's delicious Sunday cake, or to dive into a hearty meal whilst celebrating a special event. We are told that we must eat our "fives a day", and avoid almost everything that used to be our main source of energy. Of course, there is no question about the fact that times have changed. Only few of us start the day at dawn out on the field, and return by sunset. We are not as active physically, but more so mentally, which also takes up a considerable amount of energy. Let's face it, life is not simple! But why must we make something as simple as feeding ourselves so complicated?

Let’s just take a moment and remind ourselves what the definition of food is.

According to Wikipedia, "food is any substance consumed to provide nutritional support for the body. It is usually of plant or animal origin and contains essential nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fat, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. The substance is ingested by an organism and assimilated by the organism's cells in an effort to produce energy, maintain life or stimulate growth.”

According to the Webster dictionary, “food is something that nourishes, sustains, or supplies.”

Before I go any further, I want to make sure that it is understood that I am not trying to approach this subject from a nutritional point of view; however, nutrition is the key to stay alive. I am not going to delve deep into the number of calories one must take in and the amount of macro and micronutrients that one’s body might need for living. We can hear and read about it often enough online and in health magazines, or seek advice from a practitioner. I am trying to provoke thought and open the doors to consideration about the entire experience of eating. We may be told by any number of sources how many calories we must eat per a day, for example, but we should aim to focus on the quality of the food as opposed to the amount of calories the food contains. Unfortunately, I, and many others have not always thought this way.

Having a medical background myself, I had been deeply influenced by what is "healthy" or "good for me". I have often found myself in a mental debate while sitting at the dinner table; trying to decide whether to consume what I would simply enjoy eating, or to politely excuse myself and munch on something specifically designed in the name of a healthy diet.

When I was young, I spent lot of my time on our farm and in the vineyard. I loved the autumn, not just because of the satisfying feeling we had when looking at our crops, but because of the special time we had during the harvest. It was one of those occasions when the whole family would get together and work from early morning until dark. Even though we had to get up early, we had the privilege of listening to wise old tales from the adults whilst harvesting the grapes. I remember feeling so tired and hungry by lunch time, and we all, young and old, jumped for joy when we saw my father's car arriving with delicious food. Adults had to get water from the well, but us kids could only watch from a distance, as it was very deep and they were worried that we might fall in. The kids were washed and scrubbed first, and then we waited patiently in line for food to be placed on our plates. Everything tasted delicious, even food that we typically didn’t like at any other time. There was everything from chicken stew, homemade pasta, and salad, to homemade cherry pie. We often ate sitting on the sand, or wherever one could find a place to sit. There were jokes to be told and songs to be sung. At this time, eating was like a ceremony.

Not one of us were thinking whether the food was "unhealthy" or how many calories it contained. Nor did we check labels or asked mum how much of whichever ingredients were added to the dishes. We didn't eat with our head, we ate because we needed to have energy to go on working for another 6 to 8 hours. We ate because our body needed it; simple as that. What was most magical about this experience was everyone being together to share the meal, hearing the stories, and having a good laugh.

More recently, the notion of having families sit down at the table to eat together is almost extinct. We may say we have no time, but the truth that is we hardly make the time. Eating barely seems to be an enjoyable activity anymore. We go into the grocery store and purchase according to the labels. Granny is no longer called for the recipes to the family's favourites. We no longer eat simply because our mouth is watered by the smell of a freshly baked loaf of bread. We eat because we are told to do so and we are treating this activity as one of the many tasks that we have on our list of things to do over the course of the day. Thus, eating has become an agenda.

Everything around food is so complicated nowadays that we no longer know when we are hungry. We are unable to listen tour bodies and rely on what they tell us. Rather, we rely on what we learn and hear through the media, and above all, what our emotions tell us. Yes, there is no doubt that there are people who might benefit from "watching" what they eat. Personally, I doubt if that will make much difference for them long term unless severe allergies are a factor. Just think about it: How many smokers give up smoking because they know it is not good for them? They are sitting and puffing away, being completely aware of their behaviour - and so what? Does anybody care that the label says "smoking kills" right there on the packet?

Sadly, our modern lifestyle is not just demolishing the meaning of sharing and eating, but also what food is in the most basic sense. It seems the more we focus on food and eating the further we get from it and the more complicated it becomes. Perhaps what we need is to find our way back to our body and reconnect. Learning to recognize when we are hungry and what our body needs is vital, because our individual needs are all different and we cannot put everyone into one "box".

Most importantly, once we learn to appreciate our body for what it can do for us and treat it with love and respect, we will regain that ability to listen and have the instinct to give it what it needs. A holistic approach, including mind, body, and soul is essential; everything must work together to reach healthfulness and happiness. As with all good things, this does take time and patience, but can be achieved through trying new activities, practicing meditation, and being more involved in the process of cooking and learning where your food comes from.

So, here’s some food for thought (pun intended): What changes will you make in order to become more connected with your body?