What is up with our guilt complex?

When I was a baby, my mom tells me that I was one of those rather annoying kids, who would always eat just enough to feel not hungry any more, but then need to re-fuel again in about an hour or two. (You can imagine the amount of 'wear and tear' this little habit of mine subjected to my...mother.) Then, when I became a teenager, I somehow fell into a pattern, like so many others, of starving my self in the day time, and then gorging myself at night. I vividly remember eating, with a fork, standing up at the counter, a 1/4 of a loaf of date banana bread, and promptly running to my room and crying over my lack of self control. I really hated the fact that I wanted to eat. That I needed to eat. So it became for me a cycle of denial followed by over indulgence when my vice grip was loosened by my human biology. I can honesty say, that I still have those same feelings towards myself and eating. I often times wish that I just did not have to bother with eating at all. It is to complicated. On the one hand, I love to cook. I love to be in the kitchen and create things that my family and friends will tell me are "SOOO GOOD!" Admittedly, a part of that may just be my ego, looking for a stroke, and finding that cooking is one of the simple ways to get it. When I eat, I rarely really love what I am eating. I appreciate the concept of good food, but unlike a true foodie, I don't really LOVE anything. I often pick and the foods I have made, and I don't really taste them when I do. I feel like I am going through the motions of eating without being engaged in them at all. Which is why I can go a whole day with out eating, or eat forty five 'picks' of a raw cake I made, and then feel so bloated, but not really feeling when I was getting close to that bloat so I could stop myself. I do find that I go into a strange trance like state when I eat. I know the foods that bother my stomach (most of them) and I know that ones that don't. Yet I constantly go back to those items that hurt me, don't really pay any attention to them as I eat them, and then suffer the consequences. I find being on the raw diet does help, but the same cycle is still in effect. I want to be "good," so I Will deprive myself of anything that is not a fruit or a vegetable, or otherwise deemed "pure" to me, and then I will cook as an excuse to eat the sweet dates, and nuts and seeds, and coconut, with out having to actually sit down and eat them. It is my way of cheating. Who am I cheating? I don't know. There is no one out there who is going to come up to me at the end of my life, or before for that matter, and say "You ate things that hurt your stomach, and you ate things that you liked because you like them, even though they don't make you feel well. You are a failure at life. You have failed your mother, father and all your ancestors before. Hang thy head in shame!" Of course that sounds ridiculous, but it is in a strange sub conscious way, the way that I treat eating and food. So to try and avoid my self inflicted guilt that eating triggers in me, I numb out. I go blank. I eat without tasting or chewing or savouring. I just shovel it in. I am beginning to think that this cycle is one humbred and fifty percent self perpetuated by that one little, teensy, weensy feeling of guilt. And to be fair, it is a self created guilt. I made up the rules that I have a hard time following. I tell myself that I eat the way that I do to avoid getting fat. Which is true to a point. I think the bigger reason that I do it, it because it adds a certain stability to my life. If I am consistently coming up short of my eating goals, it makes it so I have something to worry about and focus on and improve tomorrow. I can't control what is going to happen to me out in the world. I don't know what the expectations of all the people around me are. There is no certainty there, and so I have reached into my own mind, and set up a game. This game keeps me winning and loosing, but always knowing. Things have happened to me, and to all of us, that I did not see coming, and can not explain. Those things I have let drive me to a state of fear, enough that I want to be in control of my personal state at all times. So, I focus on food, my little area of control. I make myself feel guilty for having a survival instinct, and then I do my best to be better tomorrow. I believe that most of us have issues with food, that have nothing to do with food, and everything to do with almost everything else. And we have just transplanted our not knowing how to deal with those things, and put them into our thoughts and feelings about food. Because we can touch food, manipulate food, resist or give in, make rules or break rules. Its our one play ground of control. I need to learn to listen to what the voice inside of me is really saying when I just have to pick at the desserts, or when I feel so 'naughty' for eating. I don't know if any one can relate to this, but if so, I would love to hear from you!



On another note, I think this raw bread is quite nice.



Raw bread



1 cup sunflower seeds

1 cup pumpkin seeds

1 cup flax seeds

2 large carrots

1 lemon

2 tbsp caraway seeds

1 tsp salt.



Blend the seeds into a powder. Then blend the carrots with the lemon. Stir together. Add the salt and caraway seeds. Spread thick on a drying sheet, and dehydrate for forty eight hours, at around 105 degrees. Yum.