By writing your own eating manifesto, you can deliberately eat in ways that will heal the causes of your emotional eating. For most emotional eaters, dieting is heavily loaded, keeps unhealthy patterns alive and doesn’t offer the opportunity to transcend the core emotional issues that got them here.
For example, if you grew up with a controlling mother who told you what to wear, how to think and even controlled how much you ate (because “you’re too fat”), and you followed a diet that someone else designed, you would have to rebel because you are being controlled! A “diet” is part of the problem! Rebelling would be the healthy response. Also, from being controlled, you probably learned to doubt yourself and to not listen to or trust your truth. You could write into your manifesto that you listen to what your body wants to eat and how much it wants. As you practice that, you will experience that you get to choose and that what you choose is right. Now you’re healing.
In another example, if you need to put yourself first because you are someone who sacrifices herself to take care of the other, then you would write into your manifesto that you make sure to have good food that you love available for you and that you stop and eat it when you need to. It’s a way to experience that you are worthy and your needs also take precedence and that you are loved.
Here’s what one woman wrote for her manifesto. She wanted to experience more gratitude, joy and presence in her eating and her life. She also incorporated her value of kindness and respect for Mother Earth and her creatures. Upon showing me and agreeing to share them here, she verbally made the addendum of not having to follow them perfectly :
- I appreciate food for what it is – an amazing resource the earth has provided to nourish my body and that of the people I love.
- I eat food close to its natural form, without crazy chemicals or processing in a mechanical plant. I eat food in a form that my great-grandmother could also have experienced.
- I eat in a way that is respectful to all other beings, to not take more than my share, and to not impact any other living being inhumanely. I ensure that what I am eating was not wasteful in how it was produced or packaged.
- With each meal, I experience the joy of eating when my body tells me she is hungry, eating to truly meet her needs and cravings, stopping when she is perfectly satisfied, and experience the joy of being just right.
- I experience diversity. I eat a variety of different things, appreciating the amazing bounty the world has provided to me.
- I appreciate my good fortune and recognize how lucky I am to have what I have, and I don’t take it for granted.