Eating/Food Archives

Eating Disorders/Healing, Eating/Food, Guest Posts, Self Image, Truth

The Skinny on Mary.

January 3, 2015

By Teri Carter.

Mary is skinny. Mary has a trick. Mary shows up late for lunch, which means she has no time to order or no time to eat. Both work. Mary’s just turned 50 and she is always talking food: You would not believe what I stuffed in my face at that barbecue! Your bag of Cool Ranch Doritos is in danger. I’m ordering a cheeseburger and fries! But Mary, who owns an investment firm, is an expert at moving her food around a round plate and she always gets a to-go box for her barely-touched burger and fries. Can’t wait to pound this down at midnight. She thinks we believe her, so we pretend we do. We all have our tricks.

In an August 2012 article for Forbes, Lisa Quast quotes a research study: 45 to 61 percent of top male CEOs are overweight, compared to only 5 to 22 percent of top female CEOs. Then, in her closing paragraph, Ms. Quast goes inexplicably blasé: “As for me, I’m off to the gym with my husband for weight training and a two mile run. Then I’ll probably have a veggie salad for dinner so I can keep my body mass index at the low end of the normal range. As these studies demonstrate, thin is in for executive women – although I’d prefer to think if it as ‘healthy’ being in.” Her ending leaves me cold. I go back to the beginning.

Eating Disorders/Healing, Eating/Food, Guest Posts, healing

You’re so Beautiful, But…

March 25, 2014

You’re so beautiful, But…By Erin Jay.

A while ago, I was having dinner with my dad. This is an anomaly in and of itself, but it happened. I remember that night clearly because I cried. Crying is a rarity for me; especially in front of people.

I don’t remember what brought on the statement. I don’t remember what led into it. All I remember is sitting there, across from the dad, eating some chilli, and my father spoke these words to me, “If you just did something about your weight. I don’t know what I did to deserve two daughters, two beautiful daughters – your sister and you… I don’t know what I did to deserve you. You’re both so beautiful… but if you would just lose some weight…”

Just lose some weight?

As he said this, I fought the tears and nodded my head in understanding like a good little girl. You have to understand, quick delivery is not in my father’s repertoire; I wasn’t sitting before him shamefully fighting off tears for the short amount of time it took you to read that sentence or took me to type it. And whatever he meant is not what I heard. Or maybe I heard exactly what he meant. Or maybe he didn’t even know what he meant. But all I heard was “you would be so beautiful if you lost some weight”.

I was afraid to take another bite of food during that meal.

I was already struggling with an eating disorder. I’d developed erratic eating in high school; my best friend and I would commonly walk up to the store at our lunch period and buy nothing but clodhoppers and diet Pepsi, or packages of Fudgee O cookies; three or four nights a week, I made and ate my own dinner before either parent was home from work because I had to be at my karate dojo for training at suppertime, which for me meant Kraft dinner, pizza, soup or fries. This disordered eating worsened when numbing the pain of the next chapter of my life seemed to only be possible while using food to gain a sense of control. By the time this comment was made, I was caught in a vicious cycle of binging completely on sugar then starving myself for days. Slowly my weight crept up.

My father had never commented on my weight. Home had always been a safe place for me as far as that went. I was heartbroken. I was embarrassed. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to say things that I would never say to my parents, in tones I would never dare speak to them in. I wanted to ask him if he knew how much I thought about how I looked; how those thoughts had completely overtaken my mind on an hourly basis. Or if he knew how healthily I tried to eat. Or if he knew how impossible it seemed to be to lose weight. I wanted to tell him that he was the worst kind of father, to say something like that to his daughter, who he is supposed to think is beautiful regardless. I wanted to be angry at him, but I was just ashamed that he was so disappointed in me.

I still don’t like eating in front of my father.

Erin Jay is a jack-of-all trades with seemingly endless opportunities to take on “odd jobs” including photography, writing, hair-styling, pet-sitting and tutoring. She is a soccer fanatic and Starbucks addict who could never live far from the water. Erin is the co-founder of uglyducklingsinc.com a podcast co-host and kindness lover who aspires to become a proper adult.

Jennifer Pastiloff is a writer living on an airplane. She’s the founder of The Manifest-Station. She’s leading a weekend retreat in May to Ojai, Calif as well as 4 day retreat over Labor Day in Ojai, Calif. All retreats are a combo of yoga/writing for all levels. She and bestselling author Emily Rapp will be leading another writing retreat to Vermont in October. Check out her site www.jenniferpastiloff.com for all retreat listings and workshops to attend one in a city near you. Next up is Costa Rica followed by Dallas, Seattle and London.

She tweets/instagrams at @jenpastiloff.

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Eating Disorders/Healing, Eating/Food, healing, Inspiration

F*ck You Devil. The Diary of an Anorexic.

August 2, 2012

“The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world that he did not exist.” ― Charles Baudelaire

Looking through my old journal I find myself at a set of train tracks which if I choose to cross will take me to the dusty town I used to live in, filled with nights of pressing my ribs to make sure they still protruded and days of heavy eyelids from not sleeping. If I choose to cross the tracks I can go back to the barren land of self-abuse and hatred with it’s county jail filled with only one occupant: me.

If I choose to cross the tracks I will meet again with the devil and shake his hand firmly, look him square in the eye and say politely: Fuck Off.

So, here I go. I am at a set of tracks and I will cross them and go back to that dusty little town so I can take back what I left there. So I can grow and expand and share with anyone what is truly possible in terms of healing and discovery.

I will not go back to that town and live there. I will go back and reclaim what was mine.

I will share what I found with you, there in that old cowboy town.

8/2/1995

I am already dreading waking up tomorrow morning because I wake up so depressed. Tomorrow I will NOT wake up depressed. I refuse! I am in control of my life. Of my emotions. No more waking up depressed, no more binge eating. I am the only person in control of my life. No more feeling sorry for myself.

Tomorrow I will not feel guilty for all the food I ate tonight. I will MAYBE eat some fruit. I will not be sad. I will not obsess. I will get in shape and lose weight. I won’t night eat anymore. I am certainly in control. I am NOT fat.

Why do I hate myself so much? Why am I so self destructive? Why do I feel so down and unworthy? Why do I feel so ugly? Why do I obsess over food? Why do I have such a fucked up relationship with food?

Well… No More!

I am so bloated. I am not eating anything else today. All week I ate so much. Pasta, potato chips, Indian food. Raisins! My new diet starts today. My does my face look so fucking ugly?

I don’t want to be this way. I want to be normal.

From now on I can deal with hunger. I’ll eat my own hunger.

~~~~

There is nothing alive in that town anymore. There are some cobwebs and old bones and skeletons. I took back any leftover parts of me that remained back in that town on a dirt road on the other side of the tracks. I have crossed back over an cobwebbed brought back with me those pieces I would like to share in the name of What Is Possible.

So what is possible?

~Joy.

~Healthy relationships.

~Eating without feeling guilty. In fact, eating with bliss!

~Looking back at old diaries and not recognizing them, as if you are reading fiction.

~Waking up happy.

~Not determining your worth by your weight.

~Letting go of old broken mind tapes.

~ Inspiring others to heal.

and so so much more.

I found this paragraph in the same entry form 1995 and I thought it was very hopeful as it is an utterly true prediction of who I am today, in 2012.

8/2/1995

I want to be happy and secure and not worry and have friends and enjoy life. I am the only one in control of my life. I, not anyone else, am the only person who can make myself happy. I am the only possible person who can be in control of my life.

~~~~~~

That was a small glimmer of what was always inside me, even back then in that dusty town in 1995, a small glint of light appeared if only for a moment as if reflected off the back of car. It may have taken me 17 years or so to trace the source of that light but I can safely say I have captured it, bottled it and am reproducing it here for you.

You can heal. Whoever you are.

In 1995 I wrote I am the only person in control of my life. Maybe I read it in a book, or maybe I really wanted to believe it, who knows. I certainly didn’t believe it at the time. I didn’t live it.

The devil, not me, controlled my life back then.

So Fuck You Devil. Fuck You Anorexia. Fuck You any voice in the head that says You will always be this way. You will always be stuck.

The devil tries to come back every now and again, sometimes in disguise. But I am armed now. And ready.

He cannot trick me into thinking he doesn’t exist anymore. I have seen him.

And I have beat him down.

Jennifer Pastiloff is the founder of The Manifest-Station. Her work has been featured on The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, Jezebel, Salon, and more. Jen leads her signature Manifestation Retreats & Workshops all over the world. The next retreat is to Ojai, Calif over Labor Day. Check out jenniferpastiloff.com for all retreat listings and workshops to attend one in a city near you. Next up: Seattle, London, Atlanta, South Dakota, NYC, Dallas, Tucson & The Berkshires (guest speaker Canyon Ranch.) She tweets/instagrams at @jenpastiloff.

Eating/Food, poetry

Things That Break Easily. More on Anorexia.

July 22, 2012

I wrote this when I was 19. Clearly I was in the throes of anorexia.

Things That Break Easily

What is Inevitable: The window men having to come and install a new window to replace the shattered one.

They smell of bacon but are kind and helpful. They ask no questions.

They Have Seen It All.

In and out, noiseless as shock.

They cart away broken shards, slinging glass like water ,

Commenting: close those tree branches come close to your window,

good glass like this could scratch easily, even break with wind.

Maybe someone should think about cutting that tree down.

~~~

What can a body achieve?

What limits can we really take it to?

I was a tree!

I stood all night looking in my own room

dipping on, the wind pulling me this way and that.

I watched neighbors drink and knit in my new tree body

as a pile of sticks curled and slept in my bed.

But even this, this is not much.

I couldn’t unearth myself,

I couldn’t slither out of bark

and into the apartment across the way.

I could not become timeless.

Or as heartbreaking as the man hunched over his piano with the random tufts of hair.

Not into my past or anyone else’s present,

I could only slip into the earth.

I could not fit my body in the head of the sewing needle.

Looking out at the world through nothing but a perfect steel slit.

Perfection is Perspective.

Eating/Food, healing, MindBodyGreen

5 Ways Yoga Helped Me Beat My Eating Disorder via MindBodyGreen.

June 25, 2012

I love being a Wellness Expert on MindBodyGreen.

Please click here to read my latest about how yoga helped me heal from my eating disorder. This is an important post for me and I would love to hear your thoughts. Please share with anyone you who who is suffering or who needs hope.

Here’s an excerpt:

For many years I hated myself. It started much earlier in my life, but, once I was 17 and I discovered the addictive drug of anorexia, my self-hatred grew and flourished like a proud peacock. It was my badge of honor.

I couldn’t be with people. Someone would be talking to be and all I would be thinking about is: What did I eat today? What did I eat that? Why am I so fat? How will I burn it off? Maybe if I exercise for 4 hours I will be ok. I am a monster. I will not eat at all the rest of the week to make up for what I ate today.

Please click here and read the rest…..

A pic of me when I was very anorexic and lived on applesauce. Click to read post.

Eating/Food

Being Anorexic.

June 22, 2012

I found this poem I wrote when I was 19. Ain’t bad for a 19 year old! However, it is heartbreaking. I was severely anorexic and I share it again to provide hope to anyone suffering. The poem is about my eating disorder and how I wanted to fade away. I wish you all Healing. Please reach out if you need me.

Treeness by Jen Pastiloff age 19

Suspended by thin wrists, I hang,

swinging, branches snapping.

I can hear the snapping.

I am ready for it.

Its in my bones.

My feet don’t touch the ground, they dangle

soles slightly above the earth.

The branch: a thick arm, muscular,

strapping and mighty,

lets me grow into it,

to enter its treeness as I might enter water or age.

Casually it absorbs me.

My branch is bending, now closer than usual to the ground,

it aches to spring away from me.

I can feel it resisting, tearing to free

its weight from mine,

From my mass, this birch lurches.

Its veins, bulge out of its tree skin

Like little faces trying to press their way through wood.

It wants to pull away from me, from my arms

now covered with leaves and bark.

It sees my ugliness, realizes it is becoming part of me, I of it.

I am breaking it.

I am breaking.

For a while, I am still,

not yet rooted.

Feet still arched over the earth,

I talk to my tree.

You are lucky, I tell it, you can live on air.

The tree is tired,

And sags like an uneven breast,

One limb lies flat on the stomach of the tree.

My body attached to unflinching tree fingers.

Its humanness astounds me.

It wants to know if I’ll fall off soon?

And I will.

My bones too are snapping, I tell it, ready to break.

Pale and brittle: they lack me.

Somehow they can’t carry me.

Soon my own breast will drop heavy,

against me.

Slowly I am the cedar, willing myself to bark,

to puncture the earth, to push forward with no sense

of leaving or growing.

I will fall off like old cells, bracelets,

people trying to keep to a certain rhythm,

bodies on horseback.

Like them, I will fall out and off,

by accident, or at night while asleep, or without realizing it.

I will slip into the hole in the earth,

swimming through dark, wet mud,

stones, roots.

But while here I dangle

pendulous, I tell the tree what I am,

what has made me, why my bones break,

and why, suspended by thin wrists,

I hang.

Eating/Food, Inspiration, Owning It!, Self Image

If You Are Looking For Hope, You Must Read This.

June 14, 2012

How honest are you willing to be with yourself?

I am going to share some stuff with you from my upcoming book.

Some deeply personal stuff.

The reason I am going to share this deeply personal stuff is because I have become an Inspirational Speaker, a force of Positivity, a Mentor, and someone who loves themselves. I lead sold out Manifestation Yoga® Retreats and workshops around the world! And, I want you all to understand just how dark my life was, just how much I overcame to be exactly where I am right now, just how far I have traversed through very muddy terrain.

And where am I?

I am at a place called Happy.

It’s unsettling to look through these old journal entries and not be able to recognize any part of me, but it is also extremely exciting not to recognize any part of me. This looking through my past business is firming up my knowing that I am exactly where I am meant to be.

I hope it inspires you.

It certainly inspires me to see how far I have come.

I will be damned if I cannot provide hope for anyone suffering RIGHT NOW.

If I made it to the other side, which I indeed have, YOU can too.

I was severely anorexic and depressed for years on end. Please read this earlier post to understand more.

I hope that you read the journal entries I am about to show you from years ago and feel a surge of Hope.

How can you not feel hopeful?

I want you to know how sad and unhappy and anorexic I truly was so you can really appreciate where I am in my life right now. How I got so un-stuck.

You will, of course, have to buy my book…..

It’s hard for me to look at these old posts but I want to share them with you. There are pages and pages and books upon books of saying the same things over and over and over….

Look at me now.

I made it, guys.

I made it.

Eating/Food, Guest Posts

Feeling Hungry

January 4, 2012

Feeling Hungry. (Today’s is a MUST READ, folks…. This blog was written on my nephew Blaise’s 5th birthday by my sister as she was fasting. Blaise has Prader Willi Syndrome which makes him feel hunger ALL THE TIME….

an excerpt~

“Today is day 2 of my juice fast. Today is also Blaise’s birthday. I am not going to lie, today was really hard. I was really hungry today. Worse than yesterday. Let’s not forget to add the massive headache and acne breakout in the mix.

Today I really understand what it is like for my son.

Today I understand what it is like to have Prader-Willi Syndrome.

Please read this one by clicking here.

Eating/Food, Guest Posts

The Mind Body Connection…Is It Real ? By Caspar Poyck

December 8, 2011

Happy Thurday my Dear Manifesters! The fact that Manifestation Station has a guest post by the Renaissance Man himself makes me giddy with delight. Caspar Poyck is truly one of the great Renaissance men of our time. He is an artist, through and through. I first met him on a retreat I attended a few years back where he was the chef. Immediately I decided that I would lead my own retreats there ( 2 years later and I have done 6 up there in Ojai and none without Caspar.) I would not DREAM of hosting a Manifestation Retreat without this guy. When you read the following post you will see why he is such a fixture at my retreats. He hosts cooking classes during my retreats and the laughter that comes from the kitchen literally makes the house shake. Plus, he is easy on the eyes and is an amazing musician. Seriously? Yes, seriously.

The Mind Body Connection…Is It Real ? by Caspar Poyck

What do you think ?

It seems to be in children’s nature to know it until nurture tells them otherwise. Shamanistic traditions, Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, etc. know it. Yoga is built on its foundation.

Harvard Medical School, through Mass General, runs the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine and many other leading medical schools are getting more active in this field.

Is it mysticism or science ? What is this about and what does it look like ? —–

Let’s talk, for instance, about a silent killer of our time and disease of prosperity:

Stress !

It is now commonly recognized by even the staunchest medical doctors that stress is tied to suppressed immune response, the healing of damaged tissue, inflammation, heart disease, osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes, autoimmune disease and allergies (including, but not limited to food allergies), etc. How does this happen ?

Some of the body’s changes caused by experiences in the mind like stress, fear and anxiety are:

Tightness of muscles

Shallow breath

Increased heart-rate

Higher blood pressure

Reduced immune response

Secretion of stress hormones incl. Cortisol

Impaired digestion

Impaired elimination Etc.

Stress is supposed to be a temporary state, but how many of us experience stress perpetually ? Imagine the long-term effects of a body under those conditions listed!

Yoga, meditation, prayer, Tai Chi, hypnosis et.al. are very effective in reducing these symptoms by calming our mind, reducing stress and exercising the body.This is why I founded “Consciously Culinary” and “What Makes You Eat?”

As a wholefood-organic chef, son of yoga teachers and licensed hypnotherapist specializing in the connections between the body and mind I came to realize that

HOW we eat may be more important than WHAT we eat !

Am I saying that WHAT we eat is not important ?

Of course not.

What I AM saying is that once we have developed a more aware relationship with food for some and one free of preconceived ideas, free of guilt or trauma, free of obsession for others, then making healthy choices about WHAT to eat will come automatically !

You don’t need the preaching of a food-guru, the study of an impressive diet or a guilt- trip to tell you that a plump, organic heirloom tomato is better than a mealy, pink GMO tomato.

Diets, systems of thinking about food and nutritional fads often have interesting things to consider, new knowledge to reflect on and valuable insights to check in with. They can also lead to obsession (orthorexia nervosa), guilt and judgment.

It is through conscious sensing, keeping a diary, happy cooking and fun-filled eating that we can find which elements of these teachings work for us and which don’t.

We are each unique individuals who go through lots of phases in our lives. A young “you” needed different food than the “you” of today, a happy “you” needs different fuels than a depressed “you”, in summer time you don’t need the same vitamins and amount of calories than in winter, etc.

Is it possible to have one diet that is the answer for everyone for every time ? If so, there would be one definitive book on the subject, instead of a new one every 6 months to rise to the top of the bestsellers lists.

Through some honest introspection and a love for the sensual experience, you will automatically be drawn to better food and become your own guru.

Instead of treating food and eating like a dogmatic religion, Consciously Culinary is a path: the Tao of cooking and eating if you will.

Next time:

Ever heard of Emotional Eating ? Comfort Food ? When checking in we need to know we’re not reading from our emotional appetite, but from our body’s appetite and needs. What Makes You Eat ?

—–

Caspar Poyck C.Ht. offers catering for retreats by some of the most widely recognized names in yoga and self-development.

He also teaches private and group classes, leads corporate teambuilding events, delivers talks and offers cooking classes and therapy sessions for stress release, anxiety control and allergy management.

To set up a session or to organize a talk, Caspar can be reached at: caspar@whatmakesyoueat.com Ph. +1.805.760.7730 www.whatmakesyoueat.com

Just a head’s up folks. The Manifestation Retreat sells out very quickly. In September we had 42.

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