What Are You REALLY Hungry For?

 

Feed yourself your dreams.

My friend Geena always had a deep and insatiable hunger. I used to believe that it was for food. Now I know that it was for life.

It seems all her life, she has struggled with food and feeling “at home” in her body. She has spent what seems like a lifetime trying to satisfy a hunger that never seems to be satisfied.

This expressed itself as an emptiness that she endlessly tried to fill. She struggled with emotional, compulsive eating and her life became an endless calorie count and chaotic eating, adding up the points and indulging in “allowable” sins or treats.

Every Monday morning she began another diet and promised herself that she would be good. And every Monday evening she berated herself because she had been “bad”. She seemed to live her life between those two polar opposites and judged herself accordingly. If she had been “good”, she would have a great day, and if not, she didn’t even want to leave the house.

What she failed to realize at the time was that this wasn’t about food, it was about the fact that her Soul was hungry. In fact, it was starving. Instead of feeding her Soul what she wanted in terms of feeling fabulous about herself and living a life that she truly desired, she fed herself food as a substitute and attempted to alleviate her innermost dreams and desires.

What she really wanted was to feel free with her choices, enjoy good health, and feel free of “rules” or “shoulds”.

As a collective, our relationship with food has changed dramatically. It is no longer a way to nourish, replenish and satisfy our body, food has become a way to deal with boredom, escape from our feelings and calm our anxiety. It is actually easier to pick up a pastry than a pen!

We may say to ourselves, “Who am I to write that book, start a new relationship, climb that mountain?”. And yet, who are we NOT to? When we ignore these inner dreams or creative ideas we begin to feel hungry for something that food cannot ever fulfill.

The courage to be authentic is at the core of every hunger we have. The question is, will we feed ourselves the things that we are really hungry for, or will we try to placate our passion with another piece of pie?

Unless we seek to understand and really connect with what will sustain and satisfy all of who we are, we will always go hungry.

My friend desires to live her life allowing herself to be full of all the things that she loves. She wants to consume the things that make her feel loved, radiant, beautiful, sensual, wild, and free. She wants to “romance” her body with a life that lights up her Soul.

She says she spent many years of her precious life trying to subdue the whispers of her heart that desired excitement at just being alive. She has grown weary of trying to fit into a society that didn’t prize the sheer magnificence of every human being.

Once she began to connect with what she truly desired to feel, have and experience in her life, her relationship with food began to change. She no longer desired to eat a package of cookies or a half-gallon of ice cream because she knew that, deep down, it wouldn’t satisfy her. What she truly desired would still be there long after she had eaten all of the stuff she didn’t really want.

She tells me that the saying “we are what we eat” should be “we eat what we are”. When you know who you are and what you desire to have and experience in your life, your food choices begin to reflect this.

I’m so proud of my friend. Today, she looks beautiful and truly radiant.

The next time you feel hungry, ask yourself what you are authentically hungry for and if it is food you are searching for or something else.

Then decide what you will bring to the banquet of YOUR life!