Eating Disorders: From a Starving Spirit to the Wisdom Within

Seeking to help the growing number of people with eating disorders— anorexia, bulimia , and overeating —the medical community has been striving to understand and treat the causes. Theories abound about why some of us lose control over how much, or little, we eat. Some target cultural influences; other consider psychological sources ( depression ) and biological theories (hormone deficiencies). But there may be yet another more pervasive reason millions of us develop an unhealthy, often-life-threatening relationship to food—one that underlies cultural and psychological influences. With food’s ability to leave us with a sense of fullness—and its reverse, with emptiness-perhaps eating disorders may result from a “starving” relationship to both the self and food.

The Wisdom Within

When we re willing to listen to the wisdom of our bodies and release our eating disorders into the healing light of love, we give ourselves a chance to transform the spiritual starvation in our hearts and souls, while learning to fee ourselves life’s optimal nourishment: love. The benefits of such a gift to ourselves are limitless. For eating disorders are not only about the food we turn to for bodily nourishment, they are driven by a deeper, instinctive understanding that “hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread but give us roses.”*

Excerpted from the book Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul by Deborah Kesten* From the poem “Bread and Roses” (1912) by James Oppenheim

Deborah Kesten, MPH , an international nutrition researcher and Certified Heath and Healing Coach, is the award-winning author of Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul, The Healing Secrets of Food, and The Enlightened Diet. Visit Deborah at www.Enlightened-Diet.com to take her FREE 72-item What’s Your Eating Style? quiz, and to learn more about her Whole Person Nutrition Program for weight loss and wellness, coaching, and books .