[Balancing the Scales] Becoming Like A Child Again

Do you remember when you were a kid and you hung around the kitchen trying to help your mother cook a meal or bake some cookies? Many of my early childhood memories revolve around the kitchen. When I was young, I loved food and I enjoyed it. My habits probably weren’t the healthiest, but for the most part, food was simply food. There were treats and there were everyday meals, but there wasn’t guilt or shame for eating them.

Before long I realized I was heavier than other kids and diets became a regular topic of conversation. It didn’t take long for my relationship with food to become warped. Birthday cake was no longer a special treat that I could savor and enjoy. Ice cream was an enemy to be avoided at all costs.

I turned my back on foods I loved, and when I couldn’t resist, I started binging in secret. I would come home from school and snack on anything and everything I could get my hands on. I would eat until the package of Oreos was empty, until I was so full I couldn’t stand it, until I knew someone else would be home soon. And then, with guilt growing in the pit of my stomach, I would sit down to dinner with my family and eat at least two helpings so that no one asked why I wasn’t hungry. By the time I was a teenager I was wrestling with food-related guilt and self-hatred on a daily basis.

Now in my thirties, I want to believe that those days are behind me. I want to be like a child again, trusting in my body to tell me what and how much to eat. It takes practice, but I’m getting better at it. Years of negative self-talk and decades of harmful habits are not easy to erase. My childhood heart is growing, though. She’s getting stronger and I know she can help me remember how to let food nourish me and to find other things that feed the parts of me that food can’t fill.

If you struggle with emotional or disordered eating, is there a time in your life when you remember food as a neutral influence in your life? At that age, how did a piece of cake make you feel? Try to remember that feeling the next time you’re faced with food-related guilt. Just as that younger You knows, food itself is neither good nor bad. It is only food. You choose how to use it and what to feel about it. Next time, choose like a child.