We can use words to change our eating habits. I would say to myself all the time “I shouldn’t have eaten that”. Then I always pray to God for help to stop me from, binge eating. I didn’t want to, eat, all of that food, I wanted to change my eating habits. So, I became almost obsessive about, dieting and my relationship with food.
My guest today is Isabel Chiara.
This article is about transforming self-destructive eating behaviors with self-compassionate dialogue.
Listen to the full interview here:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1761155/episodes/9356698
Introduction Use Your Words to change eating habits
Isabel’s new book EAT YOUR WORDS is not the typical, self-help diet book, Instead, Isabel’s approach is a more narrative, semi-autobiographical exploration of the sensual-and-painful relationship to food so many of us can’t escape. The book expertly coaches from life lessons and experiences of the uber-relatable curvaceous girl entry into womanhood. Her hearty Italian appetite make for a complex-carb tale about the depth of our relationship with self-nourishment.
Myrna: Isabel, can you share with our listeners your own journey through, body shaming, and self-discovery to change your eating habits.
Isabel: Of course. In my own journey, food, eating and, dieting, has always been a big point of contention my whole life. It was through this non-acceptable way that I eat and always focus on the food. I always guilty after eating, like I shouldn’t have eaten it.
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Your Words are important
The, words, that I used all the time was “I shouldn’t have eaten that”. Then I always pray to God for help to stop me from, binge eating. I didn’t want to, eat, all of that food, so I became like almost obsessive about, dieting, and my, relationship with food.
I started using, words, like there’s a certain way to change my eating habits. There’s a certain way to be with food, and diet. Each day I try to do it, there was always a new, diet. That is what has been the journey of my life. It’s been a journey of the kind of needs to come to terms with on some level and I think the body shaming, was me telling myself my body is this way because I ate all that food.
Many times in my book, my main character, I say she’s walking around with no head. This is to highlight that sometimes we are disconnected our head from our body. It’s a very common feeling or a life existence that is happening on some level. It’s kind of introspection book on the whole journey of the body shaming, and coming to terms with the body, mind and spirit on some level.
Eat Your Words: Change eating habits
Myrna: How did you transition from walking around kind of discombobulated – which is a word where you’re not connected and then you got to the point where you’re going to, eat your words, because you’re not going to be telling yourself these negative things about food. What was your transition? Did you go to a Therapist?
Isabel: There have been a million people involved in this process, because you’re always a person with focus and you’re always trying to come up with a resolution to stop, self destructive eating. It’s almost like I became a researcher. It was really a journey of finding what was really in my own soul, what was I really like?
- What’s up with me?
- What’s bothering me?
- What’s the pain about?
- What am I trying to stuff down with food?
The Mind Body Connection to Dieting
If your body and mind are disconnected, you can’t even figure out what your, words, are saying to you. I saying to myself on a daily basis, a lot of negative, words, about myself and my body. I saying these, words, to myself before I, eat, and after I, eat.
What happens is when you take yourself to task on some level, when you start to really become conscious, you notice your, words. First thing I became conscious was I knew I needed to be in my body. Because when you are out of your body you eat unconsciously. For different people, it’s different things. I started to work out because I needed to feel my body and I was out of it.
The other thing was, as long as you’re feeling your body, then you get to hear your, words, and what you’re saying to yourself. So, the, words, started to become more conscious. What I have realized lately is that to be out of your body, you have to be really busy with things. If you’re busy, then you also have those, words, that are saying – oh! I’m so busy, I didn’t, eat, all day long and I’m starving. Now, I have a permission to just, eat, whatever I want, wherever I want and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter which is what we say to ourselves.
Self destructive Eating
Myrna: Where did your self-destructive eating, habits come from? I know you mentioned that you’re Italian and Italian food, has a lot of carbs and pastas and things like that. Is that where your, eating habits, came from?
Isabel: Yes, except for Italians are for the most part are thin! I mean I’m in the restaurant business. I started my whole life in a family restaurant business, so my focus in life became food. At an early age, when we made food, we made huge meals. I never knew what a, portion size, was like. I never used the words, portion size, until I was in my 30s and 40s!
I would go to my friend’s homes, and they would have like a bit of rice, or a bit of meat. I was like confused when I was younger, because that was never what happened at our house. I understand now the, portion size, mentality that really showed up in my whole scope of thought. My whole thought pattern shifted.
I was no longer eating like I was at an you can eat buffet. My, eating habits, as a child made me end up with this buffet mentality.
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Coping with Words and Body Shaming
Myrna: At some point in time, you developed, body shame. You took me through your self-discovery, how did you use your, words, to change your eating habits, stop, body shaming and accepting that you are a curvaceous girl?
Isabel: Body shaming comes when you start a comparison with other people who are a certain size. You see people in a certain way and then you start looking at yourself as different. Each time you talk to people, you’re like wait, why don’t I look like you? But it doesn’t matter because we already internalized that there’s something wrong with us.
Whatever we look like, we want to be someone else. People start to say oh, for a little girly you’re eating a lot. Then you start to make a correlation with; I’m eating a lot, there’s weight here and there’s something wrong with what’s happening in me. I’m not okay and that’s how one starts to develop, body shame.
Change eating habits: Self-destructive binge eating
Myrna: Why do you think we purposely distract ourselves when making food choices to the detriment of our health and, binge eating?
Isabel: I’m not a psychologist, I just know. I’ve been looking at this behavior for a long time. What I think is that we distract ourselves because we don’t want to feel the things that is going on in our life. I think a lot of times, when we do choose, binge eating, we are actually eating food as a distraction.
Maybe the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing kind of thing. A lot of times, we start to, eat, because we start to feel something’s coming up. It doesn’t matter what it is, it could be happy, it could be sad, it could be like anger and/or even bored. I, eat, when I’m bored.
Notice what going on in your body before you eat that food
When there’s nothing going on, there’s still something going on in your body. If there’s something going on your body, but you’re not present to it or you don’t want to know what it is or what for every reason, you’re not used to it. I think a lot of times people don’t recognize their feelings or they judge their feelings.
I’m a night time eater. I could do all day long with no food (because every emotion from the day maybe was just piled up), but at night, I’m like a wreck for that. Not for nighttime or for that one time and it’s all starting to come up and then we’re like let’s just go for it and we start, binge eating.
Myrna: Yes, that has been my biggest struggle for a long period of time. I couldn’t stop eating at night. It’s a little under control now, but that was my biggest struggle for a while.
Diet and Nutrition
Isabel: I decided to lose the word, diet. I decided to do something different for myself which eventually added more nourishment and nutrition to my day. I first started with being in my body, and then I used my, words, to say let me give myself food instead of saying, I’m going to take away food and I’m not going to eat this.
I started giving myself different foods, I allowed myself to have more nutritious foods, and I started creating a new mindset. This new mindset was alright. I was totally resistant to this, but I started finding a place that had green drinks. I could have green drinks which took the edge off of hunger and it made me feel in my body. So, instead of going into the business of my whole day, I’m going to add a green drink. Just one thing, I added nutrition instead of taking something away, I was going to give myself things.
If someone once likes eating at night, instead of having the bad things we want to, eat, at night you and what would you give what did you give yourself to replace that because a green drink. Just starting to give yourself other more nutritional things maybe you want to give yourself more vegetables than that and rice.
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Using Your Words to Change your Mindset
Myrna: How can those of us struggling with, weight gain, and a pure relationship to food face the issue head-on?
Isabel: The first thing I say is to, change your mindset. Start creating an intention for yourself and start creating a, mindset, that you’re in the middle of the process. I always like to say we’re always in the middle of the process and that we are shifting. We’re always shifting and we’re always changing, even though it looks really bad – it always looks really bad before it gets really good. We’re going to start to use the right, words.
Myrna: Tell us about your book “Eat Your Words”, why you wrote it and what do you want someone that’s reading it to walk away with?
Book: Eat your Words
Isabel: The book was a way to be conscious for myself like it really was. I wrote it for myself like a journal. I was really writing a book, but it was the stories of my life. So the goal was for me to get to some kind of resolution in my life to change my eating habits. The stories are for people to really understand that they’re not struggling in this arena by themselves. This is really to bring the behaviors to consciousness and to show anybody that he/she is not the only one going through this. I mean most of the world is going through this on some level.
Now you become conscious of what the words, are and how they affected our behaviors and through that, there is healing that can be done when you see something that somebody else is doing and you hear what their process is. I bring up a lot of processes.
Myrna: Where does the, “Eat Your Words,” come from? I’m assuming it’s internal dialogue.
Isabel: “Eat Your Words,” is internal dialogue and it starts at the origins of the family.
Myrna: It’s all about inner dialogue? But the inner dialogue as you can imagine is kind of runs your life and it could be conscious or unconscious.
Isabel: It wasn’t so sometimes.
Myrna: It’s unconscious right?
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Isabel: It was the words, that I would say, as my mantra was, oh I don’t care. The biggest, words, were “oh I don’t care”. However, once you start saying I don’t care, it doesn’t just apply to what you are eating. It really becomes what you start to say to yourself, the, words, you use.
- I don’t care,
- Oh I don’t care about myself
- So I don’t care what I put in my body.
- Anyway I don’t care what becomes of my life.
Additional Resources
