Alexandra Jamieson - Women, Food, and Desire: Embrace Your Cravings, Make Peace with Food, Reclaim Your Body

To my friends and family, who have always supported my evolving search for my truth.

To every client and reader who has heard the cravings of their soul for health and happiness, and invited me into their journey.

Let's shamelessly declare our desires together.

For my mother, Annabeth Eve Parker Jamieson

For Annie Fox, friend and mentor

Your body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.

Buddha

The old are kind. The young are hot. Love may be blind. Desire is not.

Leonard Cohen

contents

introduction

TAPPING INTO DESIRE

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.

Pema Chdrn

W hat do you want?

This may seem like a simple, even childish question, but I believe its the essential question of every womans life. And yet, sadly, its one we infrequently ask each other, and even more rarely, ourselves. Its a dangerous question for many of us, because its asking us to get really honest with who we are and to be willing to share that truth with others. I know from my own experience that getting to those huge, life-defining points in my life where I had no option but to ask myself this questionand be willing to accept the answerwere huge turning points for me. When I finally built up the courage to address this issue with brutal honesty, I found myself moving from doubt to deepening self-trust. I was accepting my own true power as a woman, and each time I did this, my life immediately became more vibrant, more potent, more passionate.

As I mature, Im less frightened when this question arises, because Ive finally had enough experience to know that when Im pressed to be honest this way, good things are coming. And because I want other women to experience the breakthroughs that can only come with tapping into their desires, Ive made it my lifes work to look deeply into the eyes of others and ask: What is it that your heart most desires? The answers run the gamut from, I want to lose twenty-five pounds to I want to meet my life partner, or I want to break my addiction to sugar to I want to regain my power and ability to make a positive impact on the world. This is the beauty of my work as a functional nutrition coach. My role is to be a reliable, knowledgeable, and trustworthy support to each woman as she finds her way back into her heart and body so she can feel alive and whole again.

When I first pose this question to a new client, its not uncommon for her to cry, even if were meeting for the first time. Thats because this question is bursting with such deep meaning that it often bypasses the head and goes right to the heart. Plus, its a bit of a shock when someone else asks this question with no agenda other than genuine interest. When someone wants to know what our most secret wishes for ourselves are, we immediately become exquisitely vulnerable. We immediately become seen. And if we truthfully answer the question, thenand most terrifying of allwe become known.

Being seen and truly known can scare us enough to cause us to avoid desire. Its easier, or so it seems, to be good, compliant, pleasing to others. But living this way doesnt satisfy us. Many of us spend too much time trying to be something were not or what someone else wants us to be, so this question just gets swept under the rug of a busy life. Yet every one of usregardless of our age, our weight, our relationship status, or how much money we have in the bankdeserves to ask ourselves this question and then answer it with action. Because if we dont ask and answer this question, then what exactly are we doing here?

Feeling good is the primary intention.

Danielle LaPorte

The next question we need to ask ourselves is: How do I want to feel? Women come to me because they dont feel good. They feel uncomfortable in their own bodies for a vast array of reasons, but most of those reasons boil down to having lost the ability to trust oneself.

Many women can only identify this lack of self-trust as it relates to how they look or how they feel. When someone is feeling heavy enough or tired enough or deprived of touch or sex or laughter or sunlight, thats when the instinct for self-preservation usually kicks in and a step is taken to get better. This is when the questions can be askedand answered. And the first question I usually hear is, How can I become more comfortable around food?

The Other F-Word

Im a big believer that aside from providing us with the nutritional fuel we need to function at our best, food should make us happy. Thats right: food should delight us, ignite us, and make us feel good. Really, really good.

But for most of us, the way we approach food does just the opposite. It makes us feel fat. It makes us feel ashamed. It makes us feel ugly and undesirable. It makes us feel wrong and unwelcome in our own bodies. And when we lose our knowledge that we have power over our relationship to it, it allows us to hide out from life.

Food, in our current culture, has become the other F-word; most of our interactions with it fill us with shame, guilt, and discomfort. When we eat, and especially when we overeat or eat things we know are bad for us, we tend to gobble our food as though its some kind of necessary evil that needs to be gotten through as swiftly as possible. Eating fast is the most culturally acceptable way to do it (why else do they call it fast food?).

But our relationship with food isnt meant to be so fast and furtive. What if we were to let ourselves slow down? What if we really aimed to have a relationship with food that honored how complex and ever-changing our needs and our lives are? What if we decided that we would approach our relationship to food from a place of honor and awareness rather than one of shame and guilt? What if we committed to a practice of eating mindfully and actually tastingand experiencingeach bite of food we take? What if we cared enough about our bodies to want to be really present whenever we fed them?

These are the questions we need to ask ourselves about our relationship to food if were ever going to make radical adjustments to the way we eat. We need to shine our awareness on how our bodies feel around and with food and how wed like them to feel. When we do this, we realize we are not powerless over food, and then we can begin to look at our eating habits with curiosity. Only then can we change our relationship with food.

But theres more. This isnt the only relationship crying out for attention. There are other cravings we need to meet, too. What about our desires for meaningful work, liberating play, satisfying sex, companionship, intellectual stimulation, rest? All of these yearnings, just like those for food, should be met with deep, abiding self-respect and playful curiosity. Otherwise, well stay trapped by our cravings, which keep us too distracted to take notice of our deepest, most truthful desires.

We lose a fragile quality of spirit when we overeat, undersleep, dont play enough, dont have enough sex or intimate physical contact, or spend our days doing unfulfilling work. We resign ourselves to not having and not deserving, and lose our connection to our deepest self. When were no longer attuned to ourselves, then we tend to over- or underrespondespecially with foodand this just keeps us off-balance and unwell. When we arent attentive to how were feeling, our reactions tend to be extreme. This is when we let our cravings control us. And when we blindly follow our cravings, without asking what they mean, its like applying a blunt hammer when whats required is a feathers touch. When we dont listen to the message behind our cravings, we lose all sense of nuance and measureall of the qualities that are at the heart of female desire. When were at a cravings mercy, its impossible to really listen to ourselves, to hear what we really need.