Food Regulation (The Temperance)

I ate a chocolate today. I should be normally starving myself. I am too stressful, I will eat something to ease my overwhelmness. I don’t feel secure, therefore I will eat an insufficient amount of food. Something sweet or greasy will make me feel happy, so I should eat it in order to avoid my depression.

Do these sentences sound familiar? Let me tell you about my life. Since my childhood I have struggled with food. I love food, food makes me happy, there is nothing wrong with it right? Here is the deal, if you are dealing with mental, physical struggles and you live in a toxic environment, this isn’t a well-put combination, especially if you aren’t aware of the patterns.

The relationship between food and you is a symbiotic one. There is nothing wrong with loving food. This love needs to be both healthy and create emotional fullfilment. So, you love the right combination of meals for you and the food gives you the needed support and nutritions.

I also love watching people in social media, especially contents related to food, fitness, diet culture. According to my observations, there are people who unintentionally create some misdirected projections with eating. Yes, there is nothing wrong with creating contents and giving people information about food, but let’s be real. Everybody needs different type of choice, because our metabolisms, physical and mental attributes are diverse.

For example, you are outside, okay? You are going around and you feel quiet hungry, or not. You just want food and it’s okay. What would you do? As someone who used to struggle with eating disorders, when I got home after starving myself a long period of time, I tended to eat large portions of food with high calories and these were not particularly good for my health. Now, I take time to listen to myself and hear what my body, mood and mind wants. Another example for this, yesterday I was feeling a little bit under the weather and didn’t have a proper breakfast. I was going around, and went to a store. Normally, I wasn’t planning to buy food at that moment, and mentally I was repeating to myself that previous day I had too much calories, therefore my calorie intake wasn’t supposed to high. Then, I reevaluated my reasoning patterns and be honest with myself. I didn’t want to go buy a salad, I was instinctively looked at a cookie. My inner child wanted that cookie. I decided to buy it in order to honor her. As I was walking, I opened the package and ate the cookie. At that moment, I felt like I was in heaven, it made me really happy and satisfied. This affected my day in a positive direction as well. Afterwards, my meals were more regulated and I was feeling more energized for the rest of the day.

Of course, in the 21st century, we live in a capitalistic world. According to the “system” we need to do everything based on the rules of outdated textbooks. Yet those rules often forget one thing: you are human. A human with different aspects of needs, this resonates with the Temperance card. With this card, you need to balance everything with patience. So, treat food, your eating patterns with care. Listen to yourself. Ask yourself, what does your mind, body and heart want? The reason why you need to ask this question is between these aspects, you need to create a balanced pattern. This topic also applies to other aspects in our lives as well. As someone who struggles with this disorder, I wanted to give this context as an example. Thanks for reading this small piece of writing, I wish all of you a nice and balanced day. ❤