Food Foodie Food

The older I get, the more I appreciate the usefulness and healing properties of unprocessed food. When I was in my 20's and early 30's I was an emotional eater, because I was going through emotional, mental, verbal and physical abuse. I ate my way through my pain. I gained my most weight, during marriage and during the exhaustive and long process of divorce, and the pain staking heart aching adjustment period of, interstate "co-parenting". I did not just eat, my body began to pay for my self-neglect. What I put in it, did not dispel itself. It sat in my nerves, my fat cells, my metabolism, vital organs, my hormones, etc. The older you get, the slower the movements of your internal body naturally becomes, so all of those chemicals, bad fats and additives are not leaving the body as quickly, giving it more time to cause damage. I have had to put in a lot more effort to undo the harm that I did to myself, over the course of several years. Eating became an addiction that I could not simply shake, on my own.

My relationship with food has come a long way. Before I could get to a place of healthier and better eating, I had to deal with my mental and emotional health, which were the culprits that lead me to overeating and making bad food choices. There was a lot of trauma and anger from childhood and adulthood that I harbored. Whenever I found myself overwhelmed with every negative and repetitive emotion, junk food became my punishment, not my reward. I would feel an immense amount of guilt, sadness, shame and anger, after eating. Those emotions flowed into me feeling hopeless and useless. I fought with the devil, who used my vulnerabilities and low points, to war against my thoughts towards myself, even further.

There are demons attached to every mental health disorder and addiction, that leads to self-harm, including food addictions. If you ever hear someone with an addiction, talking about the demons they are battling.....whether or not they are aware that those demons are literal, themselves, when they say that.........know that those demons are literal and real. it is not just some sort of figure of speech. Humans were made in God's likeness and in His image, so at the core of who we truly are, our souls.....we are going to tell the truth, even if we do not want to. Every dark thing comes to the light. The need for help is not only physical and emotional, but becomes spiritual as well. In retrospect, "food" was not the problem, all of my issues, self-harm and the harm that was in my life from others, were the catalysts that caused me to weaponize food.

My turnaround has been a slow one, but a positive one. For me to be able to appreciate and enjoy food, I had to connect myself to the purpose of food. I had to go back to the beginning, when God created every seed bearing fruit and herb for our consumption. Then I connected that good food to how it made my body and mind feel. The better I ate, the better my thoughts were. I looked forward to movement. I hoped for my future and wanted to face my day to see what God had planned. My body did not feel weighed down by faulty hormones and chemicals. I stopped feeling ashamed and embarrassed with food. With myself. I began to like eating, which inadvertently, caused me to eat less and better. The enjoyment of food was born out of eating to live, rather than living to eat. God restored and healed my perception of food. This has not made me skinny. I am not in physical shape to run marathons'......yet. I have not dismissed junk food and food with bad fats entirely, because it tastes good and it is enjoyable sometimes and in moderation, Most soulful and fulfilling gatherings surround these comfort foods that we should not eat every day, including cultural dishes. Rather than a go to, they are now a treat.

Going back to food being used for medicinal purposes; I stopped consuming a lot of salt. In fact, I use sea salt sometimes, intentionally, to combat adrenal fatigue, which balances anti-stress hormones. My anxiety has decreased and mobility is less painful and bone crackling. I have been learning how to work with and use good fats for my health. Every good food that I put into my body, I know exactly every health quality and benefit that it will deliver. I know what it can heal and I know what it can prevent. I stopped connecting weight loss to food, and placed it as its own need, because it was causing me more stress than good. I was more focused on the pounds that I needed to lose, rather than the food that I needed to change, and it became a point of discouragement and defeat when I did not see physical changes quickly enough. That would place me right back on a bad path. My outlook on good food became the bridge to better living over all, and, at all.

This is my testimony of, what the devil meant for evil, God will turn it around for my good.

Raven