Eat all the cookies
you are allowed to be you
It’s late summer (I refuse to acknowledge fall until Oct Horror Movie lists start showing up - the only thing I enjoy about the fall season) - time for some reruns! This is an early essay I wrote here, way before many of you were subscribers. It’s also one of my favorites as the message is something I deeply believe in.
Fall programming is about to drop. If you want updates check out the website + get free access to a 20 minute Fascia Release™ (focusing on Neck and Shoulders 🤤) New subscribers to the monthly Fascia Release™ workshop will get the same amount off their enrollment in either Virtual Run Club or the Self Paced Series this September.
Please consider supporting my writing with a monthly contribution - its only $7 and it goes so far to helping me keep these and my podcast coming out regularly. I have a small team including a podcast producer and graphic artist that are part of every episode and your subscription helps me employ them as well as compensate me for my time. Thank you so much 💖
Today I had like five conversations in a row about food guilt. Granted this is because I was meeting with the Nourish Yourself participants and a big part of the Nourish Yourself program is about undoing all the diet culture garbage floating around in our heads. But this topic comes up in so many conversations I have with clients...it comes up with random strangers! It's heartbreaking. It's infuriating. It also makes me feel deeply sad. I feel grief actually.
I feel grief that so many of us hate the body that miraculous cellular dances came together to create. I feel grief that we waste years of our lives second guessing our choices, not knowing what is 'right' or 'wrong' (under the patriarchal guidelines of rightness and wrongness of course), wringing our hands over every meal eaten and every meal skipped. I feel grief that we train ourselves to equate emptiness and hunger with being 'good' and 'healthy'. I feel grief that we see control as a goal.
Inculcating women to question, hate, and despair over our own bodies is a way to keep us from life and living. We have all been on restrictive diets at one time or another, even if it was because you had the stomach flu. That diet was about receding and retracting. It was about doing, experiencing and being less.
Control is detachment. It's a way to shove all your needs and feelings into a dark corner of your mind and body and ignore them. It's not connection. It's not intuitive, and it's certainly not healthy.
Control is for when you HAVE to do a hard thing... like save a baby from a burning building, or run a marathon, or talk in front of a roomful of people when you have a splitting headache and wish you could go home instead. In those moments it's handy to be able to detach from how you are feeling physically, and emotionally, in order to continue forwards. Control is a tool that makes things happen when they must happen, and time just doesn't allow for unwieldy things like crying... or a languid, boozy, three course meal.
Pleasure is where life is. Pleasure is how we know what we like and what we don't like. Pleasure is the sheets you choose, the couch you bought, the nail color you picked. It's the person you kiss and the cat you cuddle. Pleasure is our expression. It is also the food we eat.
Please enjoy this video of Padma Lakshmi eating a mango.
What if we just allowed ourselves to express the fullness of our lives unabashedly? What if pancake brunches could exist with post workout protein shakes? What if we could go to fun events and eat random greasy food and also plan veggie-full meals for busy weeks? What if we could have lazy days with friends, eating snacks and drinking canned drinks, and also be a person who stays present with their hunger and satiation? What if we didn't have to be ONE THING. What if we could be all the sides of ourselves. Wouldn't there be power there? Wouldn't our lives be different, if we could wield it?
My favorite part of that video is when Padma licks the mango juice from her arm. It's downright pornographic. She is a sexy woman. In that moment she is so in her body, so present, so full in the experience. It's erotic. We are the voyeur. It feels like watching something private (even though it was filmed for her enormous following) because we so rarely get to see someone, especially a woman, take such obvious, SHAMELESS pleasure in her food. It's so rare to see a woman take obvious shameless pleasure in anything.
You are allowed to have a full life without shame. You are allowed to have a full life without guilt ( at least not guilt over what you eat - save that guilt for better things, like never calling grandma.) You are allowed to bake cookies and eat the dough. You are allowed to eat all the cookies. You are allowed to stay out too late. You are allowed to go home early. You are allowed to have many sides of you. You are allowed to change and grow and like raw carrots and also stuffed crust pizza. You are allowed to lick the juice that runs down your arm and dig the crispy cheesy bits from the pan with your fingers. You are allowed to give up booze. You are allowed to drop caffeine. You are allowed to order take-out at 10pm and eat it in bed in your pjs. You are allowed to be you.
That is the power. That is our power. The story isn't that we need to find it. The story is that we've had it all this time but keep being told we don't deserve it, that it isn't ours, that we don't have the strength to hold it. Your power is you. You already have it. Whatever you like, whatever you do, whatever you think. Express it. Eat it.
That’s nourishment. That’s food. That’s you.
If you want to work with me directly my class series is open to enroll and Virtual Run Club opens for enrollment Sept 23rd - you can join the waitlist HERE.
Look here for other ways we can connect.